Faith community preparedness ยท The plan
Prepare an Emergency Operations Plan
Write the plan your people can use when the usual leader, building or routine is not available.
Most congregations have a fire exit sign and a phone list. An emergency operations plan is the next step: a short document that says who decides, what happens in the first minutes, how people are told, and how you get back to normal. This guide follows the six steps in the federal planning guide for houses of worship, scaled for a small institution.
General U.S. guidance. Local fire, building, emergency-management, safeguarding, insurance, legal and denominational requirements control the final plan.
By Dan Whelan, founder of New World Survival
Researched from government agencies, university extension services, and other published sources. See our sources
The five-minute answer
One short basic plan, with a few annexes.
An emergency operations plan answers a handful of questions in advance. Who decides? What are we allowed to do? How do people find out? When do we close? It is written for the day when the usual leader is away, the building is dark and the person holding the keys has never done this before.
The federal planning guide for houses of worship recommends a format with three parts: a basic plan, functional annexes and annexes for specific hazards.[1] The same guide says it creates no legal requirement and is scalable from small congregations to large ones.[1] It encourages every house of worship, at a minimum, to complete the planning process and write a basic plan.[1]
A small congregation can meet that with a few pages, a contact sheet, a floor plan and one checklist per annex. Length is not readiness. Named people, usable checklists and a plan that has been practiced are.
Our estimate: four to six planning meetings over two or three months, then a yearly review, one tabletop and one evacuation drill. Apart from volunteer time, the main cost is printing. If a full plan is more than you can take on this season, start with the activation page described below. We estimate it takes one meeting.
Basic plan
How your institution operates in an emergency
Purpose, who is in charge, who does what, how information moves, how money and records are handled and how the plan is kept current.
Functional annexes
What people do
Evacuation, lockdown, shelter-in-place, recovery and security, each as a short checklist that works for any hazard.
Hazard annexes
What changes by event
The extra steps for the few hazards that matter most where you are: a tornado, a flood, a fire, a long power outage.
Steps one to six
Six planning steps, in the federal order.
The planning guide lays out six steps.[1] They are on this page in the same order, and the rest of the guide takes them one at a time.
It also sets out a few principles worth agreeing on at the first meeting. The plan must be supported by leadership, with one or more people named to lead the work. It considers all threats and hazards. It covers all settings and all times, including when the building is used by other groups and events held off site. And it provides for the access and functional needs of the whole community.[1]
Form a collaborative planning team
Leaders, the people who know the building and the programs, members with disabilities and older members, and your local responders.
Understand the situation
Get the local risk assessment from emergency management, walk your site, and rank the hazards that matter for you.
Determine goals and objectives
For each priority hazard, one goal for before, one for during and one for after, each with specific objectives.
Develop the plan
For each objective, write the course of action: what, who, when, where, how long and what it takes.
Prepare, review and approve the plan
Write it in plain language as a basic plan with annexes, check it, have leadership approve it and share it.
Implement and maintain the plan
Train people, post the routes, exercise, and review on a schedule and after every real event.
Step one: who is at the table
The guide asks for a core team that includes representatives of the house of worship and first responders, and suggests including people with disabilities and older members.[1]
- a leader with authority to approve
- whoever knows the building, keys and alarms
- finance and records
- children's and youth programs
- members who use the building differently
- a contact from fire, police and emergency management
How big
Small enough to work together, large enough to be representative and not to place an undue burden on any single person.[1] In our view, three to six people is plenty for most congregations.
The guide notes that nearby houses of worship can form a joint team.[1] Small congregations on the same street share most of their hazards and can share most of the work.
Meet on a schedule
Set regular meeting dates at the start.[1] Planning that waits for a free evening does not get finished. Give each meeting one step and a deadline.
Leadership signs first and last
Before the work begins, have the governing body record who owns the plan, who the two backups are and how the finished plan will be approved. Decide then which parts your insurer, your counsel or your denomination will want to see.
Step two: understand the situation
Start from your own hazards, not a borrowed binder.
You do not have to work out your risks from nothing. The planning guide says to get a copy of the state or local risk assessment from your local emergency management agency.[1] One phone call tells you what the county already plans for.
Open this sectionClose this section: Step two: understand the situation
Calling a government office about a congregation's plan can feel odd. Keep it short: "We are [name], a congregation at [address]. We are writing an emergency plan. Could we get a copy of the local risk assessment, and is there someone who could join one of our planning meetings?"
Then look at your own site. The guide's site assessment covers building access, visibility around the outside of the buildings, structural integrity, accessibility for people with disabilities, and emergency vehicle access.[1] Our facility assessment guide walks through it.
If you rent, share or borrow your space, start by asking the owner for their emergency plan and agree in writing who does what. Your annexes then fit around theirs. That suggestion is ours.
Finally, rank what you found. The guide offers a scoring table that rates each hazard on four factors and sorts the results into high, medium and low priority.[1] Write annexes for the high ones first.
Be honest about capability at the same time. Do not count a member's truck, generator, medical license or free time as a resource until that person has agreed in writing to what is being asked.
Four questions about each hazard
Probability
How likely is it here?
Magnitude
How bad would the effects be for our people and our building?
Warning
How much time would we have to warn the people on site?
Duration
How long would it last?
From the federal planning guide's risk table.[1]
A worked example
Picture a congregation in tornado country with a brick building, a basement, a preschool on weekdays and a creek behind the parking lot. It might rank severe storms and power loss high, building fire high because of the preschool, flooding medium, and earthquake low. Its first hazard annexes are tornado and power outage. Yours will differ.
Steps three and four: goals and actions
Three goals per hazard: before, during, after.
The planning guide suggests at least three goals for each priority hazard, one for before the event, one for during and one for after.[1] Each goal gets a few objectives specific enough to check.
Open this sectionClose this section: Steps three and four: goals and actions
Its own example is fire: prevent a fire from occurring, protect everyone from injury if one does, and get medical attention to anyone who needs it. Under the second goal the objectives are evacuating everyone from the building and grounds immediately and accounting for every person known to be on site. Under the third, they include notifying 911, fire and EMS at once.[1]
You will notice the same few actions turning up under hazard after hazard. The guide calls these cross-cutting functions and names evacuation, shelter-in-place and lockdown.[1] Those become your functional annexes, written once and used for everything.
Nine questions for every action
- What is the action?
- Who is responsible for it?
- When does it take place?
- Where does it take place?
- How long does it take, and how much time is available?
- What has to happen before it?
- What happens after it?
- What resources and skills does it need?
- How will it affect children, older people and people with disabilities?
The planning guide's test for a course of action.[1]
An objective you can check
Vague: "Ensure everyone is safe during a fire."
Checkable: "Every usher can name the two exits from the sanctuary and the meeting point in the north parking lot. The children's ministry lead brings the sign-in sheet and calls the roll there."
If you cannot test it in a drill, rewrite it until you can.
Step five: the basic plan
Ten headings, a paragraph or two each.
The planning guide's outline for a basic plan has ten sections.[1] They look formal. For a small congregation most of them are a few sentences, and three carry the weight.
Open this sectionClose this section: Step five: the basic plan
Concept of operations says in plain words how you respond, and the guide asks that it identify who has authority to activate the plan.[1]
Assignment of responsibilities lists roles, not personalities: who leads, who communicates, who looks after the building, who accounts for children.
Administration, finance and logistics covers what gets forgotten: keeping accurate logs of key activities, accounting for what is spent, and how vital records will be preserved.[1]
The basic plan outline
- Introductory material: signatures, approval, record of changes, record of distribution, contents
- Purpose and situation overview
- Concept of operations
- Organization and assignment of responsibilities
- Direction, control and coordination
- Information collection, analysis and dissemination
- Training and exercises
- Administration, finance and logistics
- Plan development and maintenance
- Authorities and references
From the federal planning guide.[1] The last section includes provisions for the succession of decision-making authority, covered below.
Agreements
The guide notes that a plan may rest on formal and informal agreements, and gives the example of using a nearby business's parking lot as an evacuation location.[1] Ask now, get a yes in writing and keep it with the plan. FEMA's guidance for emergency managers says to include legal counsel throughout the development of a memorandum of agreement or understanding.[3] We suggest doing the same on your side.
Step five: the annexes
Five annexes every plan should have.
The federal guide recommends that all plans include five functional annexes, and says its list is not complete.[1] Each one should fit on a page or two as a checklist.
Open this sectionClose this section: Step five: the annexes
Add others as you are ready: communications, continuity of your own essential work, and one for each community service you have chosen to offer. Write an annex only for something you can actually operate. A service annex needs a supervisor, a staffing minimum, supplies, an accessibility plan and closing conditions before it goes in.
The sibling guides cover security, communications and continuity.
01
Evacuation
How people leave: routes, a second route when the first is blocked, assembly areas, who helps people who need it, and how children who are not with a parent are kept safe and accounted for.[1]
02
Lockdown
The planning guide describes this as securing buildings and grounds, and getting people quickly into rooms away from immediate danger.[1] Write this annex with your local law enforcement agency. This guide does not supply one.
03
Shelter-in-place
When it is safer inside: which rooms for severe weather, which for a hazard in the air outside, and what supplies and medication needs to plan for.[1]
04
Recovery
The guide names four kinds: services, physical, fiscal, and psychological and emotional. Who can close and reopen, where you meet if the building cannot be used, and how you work with your insurer.[1]
05
Security
The routine, ongoing measures that protect the building and the people from crime, done together with law enforcement.[1]
Activation and succession
Who activates the plan, and who steps in.
Put one page at the front of the binder that a stranger to the plan could use. Ready.gov's emergency planning page for businesses gives the reason: the actions taken in the initial minutes of an emergency are critical.[4] The same page says a call for help to public emergency services that provides full and accurate information will help the dispatcher send the right responders and equipment.[4]
Open this sectionClose this section: Activation and succession
Then deal with the question most plans skip. What if the person in charge cannot be reached? FEMA's continuity guidance calls the answer an order of succession.[2] It is a written, sequential list of positions, not names of individuals, that says who takes over a leadership role when the person holding it is unable to act.[2]
It recommends listing at least three positions for each key role where possible, and having the organization's legal adviser review the list.[2] For a house of worship your governing documents may already say who acts when the senior leader cannot. Check them before you write anything new.
The activation page
- the street address and the name of each entrance
- emergency: call 911[6]
- who can activate the plan, in order, with phone numbers
- where the keys, the floor plan and the contact sheet are
- where people assemble outside
- who sends the first message, and to whom
- where to write down what was done and when
Delegation is separate
Succession says who leads. FEMA treats delegation of authority as related but distinct: a written statement of what a person may do on the leader's behalf, its limits, and when it starts and ends.[2]
The two that matter most in an emergency are spending money and signing agreements. Decide in advance who may do each, up to what amount, and write it down.
Three levels of activation
Monitor
Something may be coming. Check official sources, the building and who is available.
Partial
Leaders are in contact. Messages go out. Events are cancelled or moved. The building is secured.
Full
An annex is in use, or an approved service is open with its supervisor and staff.
These three levels are our own shorthand, not a federal standard. Use them or your own, so long as everyone means the same thing by them.
Step five: writing and review
Write it so a tired person can follow it.
The planning guide's writing rules are short. Use plain language. Use checklists, maps and flowcharts. Avoid jargon. Write short sentences in the active voice. Stay out of the weeds.[1]
Open this sectionClose this section: Step five: writing and review
It asks that the plan itself be accessible: digital text that can be converted to audio or Braille, text descriptions for images, captions for audio and audio description for video.[1] Keep the source file, not only a scan.
Before approval, it suggests testing the draft against four words, on the right, and checking that it complies with local and state requirements.[1] The four words are the guide's. The one-line readings beside them are ours.
Adequate
Does it cover the hazards you ranked high and the functions you named?
Feasible
Can you do it with the people and resources you actually have? The guide says the plan should explain where or how you would obtain what you lack.[1]
Acceptable
Does it meet the needs of your people and fit your budget, your beliefs and your governing rules?
Complete
Does each action say who, what, when and where, from the first alert through recovery?
Approve and share
Leadership approves the plan and signs it. The guide then asks you to share it with local emergency management, with partners who have a role in it and with organizations that use your building.[1] It also asks you to keep a record of who received a copy.[1] Keep the contact sheet and anything about keys, alarms or children on a restricted page that goes only to the roles that need it.
Step six: train, exercise, maintain
A plan becomes real when people have used it.
The planning guide asks for one thing every year at a minimum: a meeting to educate everyone with a role on the plan.[1] It also suggests posting evacuation routes and shelter-in-place locations, walking people to the assembly points, and inviting police, fire and emergency medical services into the building.
Open this sectionClose this section: Step six: train, exercise, maintain
The exercise ladder
The guide lists four kinds of exercise and recommends building from a tabletop up to the more advanced ones.[1] The one-line descriptions are ours.
Tabletop
Sit around a table, read a scenario aloud and ask each role what they would do. One hour. Start here.
Drill
Practice one thing for real: evacuate the building, or move everyone to the storm rooms.
Functional exercise
Run several parts of the plan together under time pressure, with messages going out.
Full-scale exercise
The whole plan, with responders taking part. For larger institutions and their partners.
How often is left to the planning team.[1] One tabletop and one evacuation drill a year is a reasonable floor for a small congregation. That figure is ours.
A good exercise
- includes your responders and partners
- is announced in advance, to avoid confusion and concern
- is sometimes run under non-ideal conditions, such as a different time of day or bad weather
- ends with a debrief and a written after-action report
Four of the planning guide's six marks of an effective exercise.[1]
The two-year rule
Many organizations review their plans every year. In no case, the guide says, should any part of the plan go more than two years without being reviewed and revised.[1] Review sooner after a real emergency, an exercise, or a change in leadership, building, membership size or the hazards you face.
Between reviews, test the contact sheet. Phone numbers go stale faster than anything else in the binder. The exercises guide has scenarios and a correction log.
Stop conditions
Do not approve a plan built on things you have not checked.
A plan that names a shelter you have not surveyed, a volunteer nurse who has not been asked and a generator nobody has started is worse than a shorter, honest one. People will rely on what is written.
If you cannot yet name the decision-maker, a safe space, a trained supervisor or a working way to communicate for some function, leave that function out for now and say so in the plan.
CISA's guidance for houses of worship makes a related point from the security side: create emergency action plans, business continuity plans and incident response plans that are well communicated and exercised.[5]
Next step: open the plan builder
The builder gives you the authority record, the basic plan outline, an annex list, the activation page and a correction log. Then return to the faith community preparedness guide.
Questions leaders ask
Settle these before you approve the plan.
Is a house of worship required to have an emergency operations plan?
The federal planning guide says it creates no requirement beyond existing law. It encourages every house of worship, at a minimum, to complete the planning process and write a basic plan. Local fire codes or your insurer may ask for more.
What goes in an emergency operations plan?
Three parts: a basic plan covering who decides and how you operate, functional annexes such as evacuation and shelter-in-place, and annexes for the specific hazards that matter most where you are.
How long should the plan be?
As short as it can be and still be used. A small congregation can begin with a few pages of basic plan, a contact sheet, a floor plan and a one-page checklist for each annex.
Which annexes should every plan have?
The federal guide recommends five: evacuation, lockdown, shelter-in-place, recovery and security. Our rule: write the lockdown annex with your local law enforcement agency.
Who should be on the planning team?
Leaders with authority to approve, the people who know the building and programs, members with disabilities and older members, and contacts from your fire, police and emergency management agencies. In our view, three to six people is enough for most congregations.
Can we use another congregation's plan?
Use it as a prompt for questions. Your authority, building, people, hazards and local responders are different, and each has to be checked for your own institution.
How often should we practice and review the plan?
Hold a meeting on the plan at least once a year. Build exercises up from a tabletop. The federal guide says no part of the plan should go more than two years without being reviewed and revised.
What if our senior leader cannot be reached in an emergency?
Write an order of succession: a list of positions, at least three deep where possible, that says who takes over. Check what your governing documents already say, and have your legal adviser review it.
Primary sources
Planning references
Each source below was opened and read on October 12, 2026. The federal planning guide describes itself as informal guidance that creates no legal requirement. Part of that guide and the CISA guide deal with armed attacks; this page does not draw on those parts. The activation levels, the worked example, the effort estimate, the team size and the suggested exercise frequency are our own and are marked as such.
- FEMA and federal partners, Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Houses of Worship (June 2013). Accessed October 12, 2026.
- FEMA, Continuity Guidance Circular, February 2018 (2024 update). Accessed October 12, 2026.
- FEMA, Engaging Faith-Based and Community Organizations: Planning Considerations for Emergency Managers (April 2025). Accessed October 12, 2026.
- Ready.gov, Emergency Plans (last updated March 25, 2026). Accessed October 12, 2026.
- CISA, Mitigating Attacks on Houses of Worship Security Guide. Accessed October 12, 2026.
- 911.gov, Calling 911. Accessed October 12, 2026.
This guide is educational. It does not replace local emergency-management, fire, building, safeguarding, insurance, legal or denominational review of your plan.
Continue reading
What’s next
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