The OCSA Story

Over a decade ago one of my best business clients came to me with a shocking problem. A violent mentally ill fugitive from justice was threatening his pastors life and the church. The client retained me to form and help manage a professional security firm to protect his church and pastor.

My experiences in this matter led me to write a book, “Deadly Minutes Versus Precious Seconds, A Primer On Armed Church Security.” The book was a modest success which in turn led to speaking engagements at local and regional churches.

While conferring with the churches where I was speaking a giant problem became apparent. Most church security training was woefully inadequate. When the churches bothered to train at all it usually consisted of either government sponsored “run, hide, fight” programs which are practically, tactically and ethically inappropriate for churches, civilian concealed carry training which is useless in church security situations or highly profitable quickie commercial seminars that motivated many but left them with no real skills.

I felt the call to do more but needed help. At the end of one of these speaking engagements I was approached by a tall lanky man with a quiet, gentle demeanor but body language that said this can be one tough customer. He is the pastor of a regional church, a medically retired paratrooper and a terminal degree black belt. He said he wanted to help. We began praying for a firearms and tactics instructor. Soon after, a local pastor friend introduced me to another local pastor, a medically retired FBI Academy trained former big city SWAT team leader and trainer. Together, we instituted the training program now used by the Oklahoma Church Security Association.

Since that time, the OCSA has trained over 500 people from over fifty local churches.