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Brian Boyko, 4, of Mansfield, wears two security name tags, one for Sunday School and the other for Sunday's service, at Crossroads Christian Church in Grand Prairie.
At Grand Prairie church, security 'built in'
Structure, procedures incorporate safeguards for children on site
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, April 29, 2006
By MARY A. JACOBS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Crossroads Christian Church in Grand Prairie was built as a place for worship and fellowship. But one aspect of the space's design was borrowed from an unlikely model: an airport.
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Brian Boyko, 4, of Mansfield, wears two security name tags, one for Sunday School and the other for Sunday's service, at Crossroads Christian Church in Grand Prairie.
Architects designed the $14 million building, which was completed in July 2004, with two "secured areas," one for the nursery and another for preschool-age children. Like the secured areas in an airport, each zone has only one entrance and one exit. (For emergencies, there are additional, one-way exits.)
Parents check in their children at stations in the church lobby and are issued computer-generated name tags that match the name tags for their children. Staff, or volunteers vetted by the church, are stationed at the entrance and exit of each zone. Only parents with matching name tags are permitted to "check out" a child from the secured areas.
"Visitors can't just wander into the nursery area," said Mel Dietz, the church's administrator. "We designed the building so that nobody can walk in without walking past one of our children's leaders." Mr. Dietz and Barry Cameron, the church's senior pastor, visited other churches and studied their security systems while the building was in the planning stages.
"We just knew that, with as many kids as we have and a building this big, we had to do something to protect our children," he said. The church averages about 3,000 in attendance each Sunday.
What if a parent loses his or her name tag before picking up a child? Computers at the exits of each zone offer access to a photo directory of members and regular attendees to confirm a parent's identity.
Another feature: Every Sunday school classroom and childcare room in the church has a security camera. Images from the more than 30 cameras are projected on flat-screen TV monitors in the church's office. The receptionist and others working in the office can see what's going on at all times.
The security cameras have been used just once; church leaders reviewed security tapes after a parent raised concerns about a particular child-care worker. No abuse or misbehavior had occurred.
But churches such as Crossroads aren't really using security measures in response to threats so much as a desire for "transparency," said Carl Harkins, director of architecture for G.L. Barron Co., the Fort Worth company that handled Crossroads' design and construction. Barron has built several churches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Churches are using features such as corridor windows for pastor's offices or child-care rooms to avert accusations of abuse as well as temptation, he noted. "These are relatively inexpensive, passive systems for helping people understand that the behavior around the facility is very transparent," Mr. Harkins said. "In other words, we do what we say we do."
Mr. Harkins, who is also an ordained Methodist minister, said that Crossroads "is on the cutting edge for where church security systems are headed for the future." His company is sharing knowledge gained in the Crossroads project in two current projects that are nearing completion, Arlington First Church of the Nazarene and Hillsboro First Baptist Church.
Mary A. Jacobs, a Dallas freelance writer, can be reached at mary jacobs44@yahoo.com.