By Caleb McGever | FāVS News Reporter
Downtown Spokane churches are wrestling with a difficult question: How do you keep your congregation safe while staying true to a mission of welcoming everyone?
The tension between openness and security took on deadly urgency after recent attacks at churches in Minneapolis and Grand Blanc.
However, several churches in downtown Spokane said that while national coverage of deadly attacks was important in several ways, it had little practical impact on their current approaches to security, which they’ve been dealing with for years in response to criminal activity and how they want to “love their neighbors.”
Challenges of downtown
Crime rates in the downtown precinct ebbs and flows, but it tends to make up around 10% of crime in the City of Spokane, despite being the smallest precinct, according to the Spokane Police Department’s incident based reports from 2020 to 2025.
John Sowers, senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Spokane, said the church put stricter securities in place when illegal behavior like public defecation, prostitution and fentanyl use increased on the church’s block.
Part of the concern, Sowers said, was the church’s preschool and elementary school, which is a part of their ministry.
“This would be happening over on this East lawn, and the custodians would be finding dirty needles in the morning, and then our kids would be out there playing in the afternoon, and you prayed that you got all the dirty needles picked up,” Sowers said.
Sowers also said that for around a decade, houseless people would often sleep in the church’s stairwell, which the church allowed during the night. However, policy had to change when the church found evidence of fires in the stairwell, which threatened to set the wood door on fire and endanger the church.
Sowers said the church also saw bushes on its property set on fire multiple times.
Due to safety concerns for the preschool children’s ministry, the congregants and the building itself, First Presbyterian decided to put a fence around the church.
However, “we weren’t happy about it,” Sowers said. “That’s not the character of this church to want to do that, but for the reasons of safety, we felt as if we had to.”
Making security-oriented choices to add fencing, locking doors, install security cameras and more “is the way in which we try to, as Jesus says, be as innocent as doves and as wise as serpents,” Sowers explained.
Miles Rohde, pastor of now-closed Redemption Church, also said Redemption Church saw increased criminal activity during the pandemic, which challenged the church’s balance of security and ministry.
“When we got there, we knew that there was a homeless population and a need, but it wasn’t as pervasive as it eventually became, especially probably around the COVID timeframe,” Rohde said.
Redemption Church owned a city block and a prominent building on downtown Spokane’s infamous 2nd Avenue and Division intersection. The area is home to 38% of drug-related offenses listed in police reports and citations, according to the Spokane Police Department Strategic Plan for 2025-2026.
Rohde said the church saw an uptick in illegal activity, including property damage like broken windows, rails torn off the stairs, graffiti and defecation on the property.
A particularly alarming incident involved a T-shirt that had been set on fire and stuffed into the church mail slot. The fire did not spread, but the area suffered fire damage, Rohde said.
Redemption Church was forced to close in 2023 after insurance costs rose from $900 a month to around $3,000 a month, according to Rohde.
“We couldn’t afford it. Insurance was going too high, constant repairs of broken windows and other safety measures we’re trying to put in, we just couldn’t do that,” he said.
Security or hospitality?
Discussion about downtown safety and ministry “consumes a significant amount of our time and energy and resources, because there is really significant tension in all of those things,” said Kevin Longmeier, administrative pastor at New Community Church.
However, New Community Church uses different language to fit its security with its mission efforts.
“We have always tried to reframe the idea of what most churches think of as security, and try to reframe it into a language of hospitality,” Longmeier said.
New Community’s hospitality team is trained in deescalation. When the New Community’s team works with people who are “having a tough time operating in a way that would be non-distracting in our community,” they focus on the person’s needs, Longmeier said.
He added that in some circumstances, the hospitality team escorts the person across the street to McDonald’s to share a meal with them.
“It’s not a posture of ‘You can’t come in,’ but a posture of, ‘How can we walk alongside you as you’re seeking health and betterment’ in whatever that looks like for that individual’s life?” Longmeier said.
When New Community Church is empty and doesn’t have its hospitality team present, it hires a third party security service to do drive-by sweeps to mitigate camping, loitering, illegal activity and vandalism, according to Longmeier.
The church also hires a security service to send a guard when Shalom Ministries shares New Community’s building, per its agreement with the organization.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes hires an armed security service because staff members are not trained in security, according to Father Darrin Connall, a priest at the Cathedral.
“We’re a high profile church downtown. We’re very visible, and as the Cathedral and as the bishop’s church for the Diocese of Spokane, probably more high profile than others. In that sense, I’m concerned that we are a target for that kind of violence,” Connall said, referring to the violence seen recently at churches in Minneapolis and La Blanc.
In February 2023, the Cathedral was briefly thrown into the media spotlight after a man interrupted Sunday service and attacked the presiding priest, prompting conversation about further security measures.
Connall said the church started doing annual active shooter drills around five years ago.
The Cathedral’s security services differ from other downtown churches because it hires armed security services.
“According to Catholic theology, we can defend ourselves with commensurate force. If bloody means are able, then that’s what we’re supposed to do. We believe that we are morally justified in defending ourselves, even with a gun,” Connall said.
Connal said he tries to avoid in-house security because “we’re not trained to do this stuff. Our people just want to come here and worship and and, you know, they’re not really trained to engage in this.”
Different contexts, different possibilities
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lists 10 locations on its website. Its locations are spread throughout Spokane, but there are no locations in the downtown precinct.
Robert Sanders, the Mt. Spokane Stake president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said members in the eight wards he oversees receive an annual training that largely suggests “common sense” principles like opening and locking buildings in twos.
The Church also provides members with specific training for special security contexts and encourages them to work with local police when helpful.
However, Sanders said a part of the security effort focuses on treating people with respect.
“We believe we’re all sons and daughters of God. We feel like if we can treat people with that kind of respect and that kind of value, a lot of times that mitigates a lot of security problems that we might normally have,” he explained.
As a part of this principle, “greeters” stand near the building doors during meeting times to answer questions and assist people to meet their needs.
Sanders said in the last nine years he has not seen much serious vandalism at the buildings he oversees.
But location matters. Not every downtown church could weather the challenges.
After Redemption Church closed its operation downtown in 2023, it merged with Trinity Baptist Church and reopened as Redeeming Grace Church on North Monroe, five miles north of its old location.
Now that the church is in an area with a lower crime-rate, security looks “dramatically different” and the team focuses more on greeting and welcoming, Rohde, who still leads the congregation as lead pastor at Redeeming Grace Church, said.
“Our security team are somewhat bored out of their minds, but it’s become more of a ministry instead of a deterrent,” Rohde said.
Rohde said the location is better for the congregation, which is predominantly young families with children. Even so, the decision to move was “tough,” he said.
“Jesus said, ‘The poor, you always have with you.’ That doesn’t mean that we weren’t to be compassionate and to try to help our fellow human beings,” Rodhe said, “[…] but my first priority is to the flock that is under my care.”
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