SubscribeFinding faith in unsafe sanctuaries
In The Washington Post today is a disturbing story about the increasing number of fatal shootings occurring across the country at houses of worships. The headline tells the result: “Sense of Sanctuary Lost as Church Attacks Spike.” The story talks about the new security measures churches are adding and the importance of holding on to one’s faith after violence shatters a congregation’s feeling of wellbeing.
“Sanctuaries that once left their doors open all day now employ armed guards, off-duty police officers, surveillance cameras and even undercover plainclothes guards who mingle with the congregation,” the story said.
For decades, churches have been bombed and burned by cowards who worked under the cloak of darkness. Now there is a new brazenness, a cold-heartedness that has caused men to walk through the front doors of churches while service is going on and begin shooting or to confront a spouse in a church parking lot.
Violence in the church leaves us with a collective crisis of faith and sense of fear. We tell ourselves we are supposed to be safe in God’s house, evil isn’t supposed to touch us there. We are pressed to find hope in such situations. After hearing of recent incidents, I have asked the question, “Why God?” When no answer has come, I do what I have learned to do through my own times of personal crises, I continue to cling to my faith in God.
That’s what pretty much the same advice that the Rev. Haywood Robinson III gave the members of People’s Community Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Md., after an estranged husband fatally shot his wife on the church’s parking lot Feb. 22.
According to The Post story, Rev. Robinson spoke that next Sunday “about how Christians are tested and the importance of faith in such trying times. He also preached forgiveness for the shooter, telling the congregation he had offered to meet and pray with Kevin Kelly.”
“There’s probably people here who hate him for what he did,” Robinson said. “But God has called us to love and forgive.”
I remember hearing about the shooting on the news and later reading about it in the newspaper, fearful at first that someone I knew may have been harmed.
Sadness followed for the victim, Patricia Kelly, and for her family, and for the People’s Church family. I had been in that church, once for an early morning intercessory prayer meeting and less two years ago for a funeral. I know people who attend church here.
So the story today brought back memories and a prayer that our sanctuaries will once again be safe and that our faith will be strengthened.
Read the story and let me know what thoughts come to mind.
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