St. Joseph of the Lakes

It seems that the majority of mass shootings occur either in schools or churches. Most schools have adjusted their security styles to limit access into the school and to protect their students throughout the day. They have fire as well as shooter drills to practice what happens in those crisis moments.  Because of this, we have engaged Lino Lakes police (both on and off duty) to review our security issues and make recommendations to improve our security for both Faith Formation and general activities happening here at St. Joe’s.

Some of you have seen the uniformed officers during some of our activities. The first question usually asked when the officer is spotted is “what is wrong?”. When we answer that there is nothing wrong, and we are being proactive in securing our buildings, most people are happy that we are trying to do something about it. Our church and school buildings were built in a whole different era and they tend to be very open and inviting. Visitors often comment about how beautiful and inviting our worship space is. I think it reflects the openness of the community as well as architecture. 

Over the course of the next year, we are going to continue to be proactive in working on the security issues that our buildings present. We will also be instituting drills for our Faith Formation community to practice a couple of times a year. I am not sure what we are going to do for the weekend community, though after the hail storm of last year we did begin talking about posting evacuation maps so that in a major weather emergency we might have some ideas of where all of us need to go to protect ourselves. Security issues were never a part of theological training, yet in the present day the matter is becoming more serious and we have to be willing to discuss our reactions to dangers that can become present to us.  We will be continuing to work with security experts to help improve our responses to different emergencies.