Reedy River Missionary Baptist Church in Mauldin is undergoing a security review following the shootings Wednesday at an Atlanta-area megachurch that left one person dead.
The church has never had an incident, but that doesn't mean that it can't or won't happen, church leaders said.
"Whether you're a church with 10 members or a church with 10,000 members, you're not immune," Rodney Neely, a member of the safety and security ministry at Reedy River, told FOX Carolina News.
Although the church's security team wouldn't reveal what specific security measures are in place at Reedy River, according to the station, "Neely said he's not opposed to designate members of the security team carrying guns on church grounds for safety" — so long as they have permits and are properly trained to use them.
In a March incident in Spartanburg, the station reported, a man tried to break into a Southside Free Will Baptist Church service with a shotgun. A church member carrying a concealed gun was able to subdue and hold off the would-be shooter until he could be arrested by Spartanburg County Sheriff's deputies.
Churches, temples, mosques, synagogues — they are supposed to be places of sanctuary, but statistics show they can all too often be deadly places.
The incidence of church-based violence is great enough that there is even a Web site devoted to tracking it. According to the site's creator, Carl Chinn, there have been at least 603 "deadly force incidents" documented nationwide at churches and other faith-based institutions from Jan. 1 1999 through the beginning of October 2012.
Of those incidents, 245 of them, or nearly 41 percent, resulted in at least one killing, according to the site, which provides a wealth of information, including best practices, tips, and resources to help churches and faith-based organizations protect themselves.
All told, at least 744 people have died in attacks during the time period Chinn's site has tracked. The weapon of choice is typically a gun, and the most common "attack triggers" (54 percent) tend to be domestic violence, personal conflict, and robbery.
Religious bias or hate, as evidenced in the Wisconsin Sikh Temple shootings that left seven dead in August, typically is the exception rather than the rule in deadly attacks on churches, Chinn's statistics indicate.
Chinn, a devout Christian and building-security expert who has worked with a number of churches to improve safety, said security should be a top-of-mind concern for all leaders of churches and faith-based organizations, regardless of who they are and what they preach.
"We should embrace biblical teachings to 'not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear…' But being confident in our faith doesn’t mean we stop participation in our own preservation and social interaction," he warned.
See the full FOX Carolina story HERE.