Is your community prepared?
Our nonprofit provides expert security consulting services and trainings tailored to the unique needs of houses of worship and educational institutions – ensuring a safe and secure environment for every community we serve.
What would you do if a shooter threatened your house of worship? Your school?
Churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, and schools are places of sanctuary. But in today’s world, they’re not immune to violent incidents.
Whether you’re preparing for activate shooter threats, medical emergencies, or situational awareness challenges, our experts are ready to help your congregation’s leadership approach every situation with professionalism to minimize tragic outcomes.
Why churches and schools?
Schools: Since the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, more than 390,000 students have faced gun violence at school. Between 2000-2024, our schools faced 372 shooting incidents with 493 victims killed.
Churches: In recent years, we’ve seen an increase in the frequency of violent incidences in churches and other houses of worship. According to the Violence Prevention Project, from 2000-2024 there were 379 house of worship shooting incidents and 487 deaths, including both high-profile incidents and personal disputes. While churches are most often targeted by known individuals, attacks on communities of other faiths are more likely to be ideological or hate driven. Regardless of motive, there are clear steps your organization needs to take to build a culture of safety and preparedness.
Our Approach
At Sanctuary Defense, we’re here to empower you to create your own sanctuary. To support worship and learning, our religious communities and schools are among the most important places to build safe and sacred environments. Our goal is to help you understand methodologies you can apply to infrastructure development and staff training – creating an environment that’s equally inviting and secure.
Our team works directly with administrators, staff, and leadership to help you be proactive. We identify risks and improve security. For many religious organizations, a safety plan may include identifying individuals who are already armed or medically trained, providing additional training in communications, awareness, and de-escalation techniques, and creating an organized and well-rounded response strategy.
Sanctuary Defense Can Help
At Sanctuary Defense, we deliver fully customizable safety, medical, and security training programs. Our assessments and courses are designed to meet the unique needs of your house of worship or school – and our nonprofit model allows us to tailor our services to the scale of your organization.
Site Assessment
Understand your organization’s security strengths - and areas for improvement. We’ll evaluate your full system, including your site, staff, and state of preparedness. Then, we’ll recommend immediate steps you can take to protect your congregation.
Active Shooter Training
Empower your team to act swiftly, think critically, and protect lives. This industry-leading course will equip your church, school or organization to prevent violent incidences, respond with clarity under pressure, and survive attacks.
Medical Training
After a severe injury, a person can bleed to death in as little as 3 minutes. By participating in our training course, your team will gain the necessary skillset to keep community members alive until first responders can reach the scene.
Next Steps
Are you ready to improve your house of worship’s or school’s security systems and incident response plans? From initial assessments to advanced trainings, at Sanctuary Defense our goal is to help you create a safe, secure, and welcoming environment. We look forward to partnering with you to protect your community.