GAINESVILLE, Ga. — The tiny white church has new locks, peepholes and brass plates. While its parishioners pray, the sanctuary is bolted shut and a police officer is now stationed outside. Soon, surveillance cameras will be installed, and the 47-member congregation will participate in active-shooter training.

This is the next chapter for the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which the authorities said was targeted in mid-November. The Gainesville Police charged a 16-year-old white girl with planning a racially motivated knife attack to kill the black worshipers, a plot they said bore eerie similarity to a 2015 massacre at a storied African-American church in Charleston, S.C.

In Gainesville, a small city of about 40,000 residents in the heart of Georgia’s poultry industry, the police chief has urged church members to use low-tech force to protect themselves. They should hurl Bibles or hot coffee, chairs or fire extinguishers, anything, he said, that can be weaponized if they are under attack and cannot safely escape.

“It’s a shame that we live in a world today where we have to protect our institutions of worship, our schools, but evil knows where we are most vulnerable,” Chief Jay Parrish told church leaders during a recent introduction to the active-shooter training. “The lightning bolt got too close this time.”