Every church wants to have a balance between the safety and security of the people inside the building (staff, guests, children in a daycare, etc.) while still being open and welcoming to first-timers and people needing assistance.
The best way is to control access by limiting the number of doors that people can come in. Use your signage to direct people what doors you want people to use to enter your facilities. Then, make those doors and the entrance area welcome and appealing. FYI, by law, all exterior doors must have push bars (aka, panic bars) so that people can leave without any trouble.
However, when exterior doors are installed, contractors typically install key locks on the doors. That means that anyone with an exterior key can unlock and open a door; they might even be able to leave the door unlocked for others to come in. There is a simple solution to this.
For all exterior doors which should not be used as entrances, change the lock plate and put on a dummy plate. That is a flat plate with no key hole which means there is no way to unlock and open the door from the outside. A dummy plate does not affect any of the exit mechanisms on the door. And a dummy plate won’t prevent someone on the inside from propping open a door, either.
Bottom line: control how people are coming into your building and remove the opportunity for people with keys to come in other doors.
Lead On!
