As a pastor, news of another church shooting has grieved me and brought me to my knees once again. However, as a pastor, I also oversee the institution of Redeemer Church. It is my responsibility to provide leadership in order to provide a safe environment for our church to worship. As your pastor, I don’t feel the freedom to entertain political platitudes, but rather feel the burden to study these incidents in order to implement what works. Therefore, I want to provide some comments for our church about church shootings.
First, we should grieve with those who grieve. Romans 12:15 calls Christians to mourn with those who mourn. The West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement is painfully grieving the loss of two of their people. We do not yet know the motives of this shooter, but we know that this church and these families are heartbroken tonight. Redeemer Church mourns with West Freeway Church of Christ.
Second, we should pray for this church and these victims’ families. Our culture has begun to mock prayer in these situations, but we should not buy into these worldly views. We are committed to pray for this church and these families. God responds to prayer. He heals the brokenhearted (Psalm 147:3) so we should pray for them. Please pray that God would comfort them in their pain.
Third, we should apply our worldview in order to face this problem. We live in a fallen world. There is evil in this world. These shootings are evil. Jack Wilson characterized it correctly when he said, “I killed evil.” Many in our world foolishly and dangerously do not believe in evil. Christians should not live in fear, but we should also not be foolish.
Therefore, fourth, this is an issue that requires great wisdom and discernment. Proverbs 18:2 says, “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinions.” Political talking points and laws that make some feel better but really don’t address the problem are not the solutions. We need to learn from these incidents. Proverbs 18:15 says, “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” I want to communicate to our church some of the things we know that help guide our approach to security.
Shootings have the potential to kill a lot of people quickly (especially in a crowd). The hard truth is that police will not be able to get to an active shooter fast enough. At the church in White Settlement he killed two people within seconds. If people did not shoot back he could have easily killed dozens more.
Most laws that are being proposed would not have stopped this church shooting. Laws against automatic weapons would not have helped in the White Settlement incident because he used a shotgun. We can debate some gun control proposals, but we need to be honest about the nature of an incident like White Settlement. Related, laws prohibiting people from carrying guns in a church would not have prevented the killer from bringing his weapon, but would have prevented Mr. Wilson from carrying his gun. Therefore, at Redeemer Church we do not discourage trained careful gun owners from carrying concealed weapons. We display legally required signage to ask people not to carry their weapons openly because we feel this would cause fear amongst our people (especially our children). However, again, we welcome concealed weapons as a way to keep our church safe.
Simply, and obviously, all churches must have security teams and plans. If a church cannot afford paid security then the leaders need to organize a security team. This team needs to be armed. This team needs to discuss their plans for evacuations, where to be strategically placed, and think through realistic scenarios. This might be hard for some ears to hear, but the best approach to a high-powered weapon is to shoot from multiple directions. It is best to have multiple people armed and shooting from multiple directions in order to stop most killers. Therefore, it is best for unarmed people to get down low when faced with an active shooter.
My prayer is this article will lead us to pray for those grieving at West Freeway Church of Christ. I pray we learn from the heroic effort of Jack Wilson. I also pray this article demonstrates we take security very serious at Redeemer Church. Like every other church, we can always improve, but this is not an issue we take lightly. Finally, I would also like to thank our security team who misses out on worship when it is their week to serve. Men, we love you and are thankful for your service.