You are so right. Trust has eroded to zero. Recent example: Our church sits near a busy highway. Not long ago, a man walked in on our Wed. night Bible Study group. He sat down and began telling this taLL tale about how his car broke down, but he was able to get it fixed. The repair, he said, took all the money he had and now he needed money to get back to S.C. We were a group of females only, and I've been around the block a time or two. I immediately saw it as a scam, preying on the generosity of Christians, and told him we didn't have any money for such things because the Ministerial Assoc. handled emergencies from a general fund. But he kept sitting there, even after I told him that he could get a voucher at the First Baptist Church for gas. He didn't want to drive back to town. I asked one of the ladies to go call the Baptist Church to see if they were open (meaning go call somebody in case we need help). After a pretty long period, one of the ladies gave him a $20 and he left. She was "sure" that the poor man was in dire need. Maybe I would have been fooled too, but I had been the victim of that scam about three times already. Churches are targets for the scammers.
Anyway, after that we have been locking the door after everyone gets to Bible Study. Late comers have to knock on the back door to be let in. Think about the bind such situations cause for a Christian.
We are taught to be "good Samaritans". We are told to love our neighbor as ourselves. So we are faced with the choice of being a Christian or being a victim of fraud. At first I chose being a Christian and leaving the thief in the hands of God, but I got tired of contributing to the sins of the thief. We have had some conversations about this dilemma. Do we let ourselves be victims, or do we stick to Christian values? Anybody have an opinion on that?
Our church has the same policy of giving gas cards and the staff is instructed to lock the doors if they are alone and people have to ring the bell. We lock the children’s wing on Sundays......and people have to check their children in and out. We do not give cash, we give numbers to community help places. God calls on us to be helpful, not to be victims. One of you ladies could have been seriously hurt.
That story is all the reason needed to keep guns in church.
Even the Disciples carried swords.
Don't know about your area but our city has a law that lets the property owner sign an agreement with the police department and then post a sign that says trespassers will be arrested without any further permission from the owners. Most scam guys see this and know that church has been down the path and is wise to their BS. It's also nice because then an officer can come on the property at will, not just when a complaint is filed.
The overwhelming majority of these scam artists are perfectly safe to deal with. A giant pain in the patootie, but not a danger to anyone at the location. The problem is that enough of them are a very real danger that you can't have a rule of thumb for dealing with them other than treat them all with much caution. There is all sorts of help out there for the legitimate person down on their luck. The ones who really need it will take it and be gracious. The guy like this one you dealt with is a scammer, pure and simple.