Kingdom Watchfulness

Mike Simmons

Several years ago, down in Alabama, I found myself in a dirty motel room, wrestling with a man in the motel bed….fighting over a gun.

Do you ever have those type of days?

Minutes prior to this incident, I was patrolling my city as a Police Officer. I get the call from dispatch to respond to this motel because the front desk personnel wanted a police presence due to one of the guests.

I arrive at the motel along with an additional officer and I speak to the front desk personnel. She stated that she had a guest check-in that evening and ever since he had arrived, he had continuously called the front desk about random and non-important issues. She said he appeared to be under the influence and that she was just sick of dealing with him. So, she just wanted to part ways, give him his money back, and have us get him to leave. 

As I was making my way through this parking lot towards the room, I was thinking of the elements of the situation, elements of the law, what can versus what can’t we enforce in this situation. I’m thinking to myself, “Ok, this is private property, she wants him gone, but if he has a vehicle here, we can’t just have him drive off the property if he has been drinking as the front desk personnel suspected.” All these things that Police Officers do when responding to calls-Going through the elements, so we have a direction of where we are heading as we enforce laws and protect rights.

As I approach the door, I knock and announce that it’s the police. This is where things started to jump off the baseline.

You know what the baseline is…In our society, we have typical actions and responses from people. We see it everyday, of what people typically do in their interactions with others. And when people act differently than what is typical, it stands out. And you may not have even noticed it right away. I believe subconsciously you know, your body knows, your intuition knows, as a believer the Holy Spirit inside you knows. However, depending on your awareness, you may not recognize these differences until an after-action review, if you will, of the situation.

After knocking on the door and announcing who we were, the man inside yells for us to come inside. First, this should tell you the state of the motel we were at-the doors didn’t even have a key card access, but physical key-type locks. And the doors could be kept unlocked for someone to freely go in and out. Secondly, who tells people to freely walk into their motel room without going to the door first-especially a motel where the door leads directly out to parking lot where anyone can easily access it. 

So, we enter the motel room, it’s a corner-fed room where the bathroom is a few feet away from the main door on the left, but the rest of the room lays out to the right side of the door. The male is sitting at the head of the bed, perpendicular to us with his feet on the ground next to the nightstand. His body is facing away from us but he is turning his head towards us to talk to us. Again, another behavior off the baseline. His whole presence appears somewhat lethargic, and depressed, while exhibiting slurred speech as he spoke. As the other officer is requesting an ID from the male and directly talking to him, I’m scanning the room. I observe an open prescription bottle on the floor with pills spread out. I continue my scanning, and I observe a mostly consumed bottle of liquor on the floor. Then, I shift my eyes to the nightstand. Sitting on top of it, just within arms reach of the male, is a handgun. Now, at this point, there is nothing wrong with someone having a handgun but for the sake of everyone’s safety along with it being out in the open while we are there, I wanted to temporarily hold onto it until we figured out the next steps. I look at the male and his attention was on the other officer. I didn’t want to bring attention to the male that I see the gun, so I didn’t verbalize what I observed to the other officer-I planned to tell him once I had possession of the firearm. So, I calmly but intentionally walk towards the nightstand trying not to bring attention to myself. As I am reaching for the gun, the male notices what I’m doing and loudly yells “NO!” Suddenly, rising up from the bed, he lunges towards the gun. Just as I make contact with the gun with my left hand, the weight of his hands are on top of my hand-grasping for the gun. I immediately take my right arm and swing it into his chest, then pushing all of my weight against him separating him from the gun, we land on the bed. Once I’m on top of the male, I verbalize to the male aloud for the purposes of alerting the other officer that the male was trying to go for the gun. As I was moving the male from the bed to the floor for the purposes of handcuffing him, the weight of our bodies pushed the mattress down towards the edge, causing his laptop to start sliding off the bed. Even after the severity of the situation and still in the process of bringing the male to the floor, I reactively reached out and stopped the laptop from falling and repositioned the laptop safely on the bed. It’s weird how we can worry about these little things during times like these.

After the male was handcuffed and the scene secured, we had a chance to slow things down. The firearm was inspected; it was indeed loaded, with one in the chamber. We talked with the male about what was going on. The male admitted that he was going through a hard time. He had been drinking, taking pills, etc. He did admit to continuously calling the front desk multiple times. Then, he said it…The male admitted that he was going to kill himself that night. It appeared he was working up the “Courage” through alcohol and drugs in order to go through with it. But there was something in him crying out for help. It was coming out through these multiple phone calls to the front desk. Reaching out to someone on the other side of the line-desiring some type of human connection. Someone to care, someone to ask what was wrong, someone to tell him: Don’t do it, you matter. Jail was not his destination that night. We called an on-call medical response to get him admitted to the hospital to be psychologically evaluated. His firearm was submitted into the evidence lockup. The other officer and I went back to serving the rest of our shift as if it was just another call under our belts.

It’s been years since I really thought of that incident in detail. I’m no longer a police officer. I no longer regularly deal with those type of incidents as part of my occupation. Now I have a passion for Church Safety & Security. Working in an unrelated full-time career while developing Front-Line Personnel on the side through 21 Gatekeeper. And this incident has got me thinking of those of us serving on the Front-Line of our Church. 

Our observation skills on the front line can positively or negatively impact the safety of the church…of our congregation, of our fellow volunteers, of our family members in attendance. Are we being intentional with our observations of those around us? I see us as the Kingdom Watch-Seeing the threats, seeing the brokenness in others, seeing others the way God sees them. That is our role on the Front-Line. We as the peacemakers must be observant of others, be observant of our actions and thoughts, and be observant of where God is present in our circumstances.

Who is “calling” for help in your social circles, home, work, church, right now? It may not be directly obvious of “I NEED HELP!”, but they are showing signs of unruly or disgruntled behavior or falling on the other side of the spectrum of being a loner and exhibiting avoidance.

How many times have we been the “front desk personnel” in these situations where we get annoyed by someone’s actions and just want them to leave our church? Have them be someone else’s problem we think to ourselves.

When it comes to serving on the front line, how aware are you of a statement being made, how it’s being said, body language being displayed, suspicions object, etc. jumping off the baseline? The more you have the situational awareness through training and through being aware of the Holy Spirit within you, the more you can be ALERTED of something not being quite right in the heat of the moment.

Finally, just as I was able to observe the surroundings of that motel room while the other officer was asking questions, how are you implementing the tactic of using additional security personnel to observe the subject and the surrounding area when the primary security is interacting with a hostile or disgruntled subject in your church? I believe it is imperative for all us to be in coordination where everyone has a role to play during these encounters within our church. Also, similar to the issue of notifying the subject and other officer about the gun, does your team have a discreet way to communicate potential issues without the subject being aware of it? Secondary security personnel could use code words, signals, or get on the radio and alert team members of their findings since most security ministries are utilizing radio earpieces which would be hidden from the subject.

Overall, we on the Front-Line are called to be watching out for our congregation, guests, volunteers, and even the subject. We are at the gates as Peacemakers, looking out for physical threats, spiritual warfare, and emotional brokenness amongst our community. Your faith-based community needs you to be watchful. They need you to be intentional in your service in this role. The brokenness in others are calling out for help. You are the restorers and maintainers of Peace through Jesus. You are 21st Century Gatekeepers.