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As I write, we still know very little about the tragic shooting that occurred at New Life Church in Colorado Springs yesterday. All day Sunday I called and text-messaged with friends and ex-colleagues in the building (I worked for New Life from 1998-2006), but they were under strict orders not to leave the facilities nor let much information out while authorities conducted an investigation. My wife and I spent the day shaken, trying to absorb the shock while waiting for information, which came at a trickle. Since our minds couldn't work with facts, they worked with worry for the safety of our friends and family who were at church when the shots were fired.
This morning, we know a bit more. We know a heavily armed male dressed in black fatigues opened fire on parishioners as they left the building; we know he killed two teenage girls—sisters—and injured three other victims; we know he was prevented from doing further violence by a volunteer security woman who shot him to death.
In days to come we'll see the faces of these victims. We'll see the their families on television and mourn with them. We'll get to know the killer's face, learn more than we want to know of him, and perhaps find out what drove him to this end.
What we'll never quite know, though, is how to make sense of it all, especially in the wake of an apparently linked attack last night in Arvada, Colorado, at a center for the evangelical organization Youth With A Mission, and also last week's shooting spree at a mall in Omaha, Nebraska. There are no safe places. All Americans know this by now, or should, but when danger comes calling at your own place or a place near and dear to you, it rocks you to the core.
New Life Church in is an icon in Southern Colorado and for large swaths of the evangelical world. No one who has attended there for any considerable amount of time would be surprised to find it the target of a violent attack—not because of any official New Life positions, but just because the place is big and visible and Christian, and some people hate that stuff. And more randomly, some people are just driven to senseless rage.
I first attended New Life as teenager in the mid-1990s, and I recall bomb scares and death threats in those days, plus one weekend when animal blood was poured on the church walls. When I worked for New Life, I knew of regular threats on the life of the senior pastor and was glad to know we had armed guards in the building and fine-tuned emergency protocol. Most large churches have similar systems in place for events like this, including undercover personnel like the one at New Life who felled the shooter yesterday. I imagine such protocols have been standard at least since 1999, when a gunman in Fort Worth, Texas entered Wedgwood Baptist Church and killed 7 people before turning a gun on himself.
So I'm not surprised that New Life handled this as well as it did. The place is a well-oiled machine, as everyone saw last fall when former pastor Ted Haggard was ousted amidst accusations of drug use and sexual immorality. The news about Haggard broke on a Thursday; by Saturday, he had been excused from his pastorship; by Sunday morning, his public letter of confession was being read. The Haggard story was undeniably tragic, but it would have been much worse if we had seen weeks of dodging and spinning. Instead, because the church—indeed, Haggard himself—had established protocol for dealing with an untrustworthy leader, New Life was a model of crisis management.
Of course, that the Haggard scandal was only national news for one weekend does not mean it ever left the minds of anyone at New Life Church. It's been a long, slow slog for those people as they've grieved the events of last fall and begun the transition into a leaner, quieter, humbler (and no doubt in many ways better) community. They are about 100 days into the new leadership of senior pastor Brady Boyd, and from what I've been told, were lately feeling like they had begun to heal in earnest.
And then a gunman attacked them as they walked out of church. It's hard to imagine how this church can handle another tragedy, but that's what they are going to have to do.
I don't attend New Life Church any longer, and as I've written on this site before, my views on matters theological and political caused me to drift from the place even when I did still serve on staff. But it does not take a tragedy like today's for me to recognize that the place is very special to me, that I cherish it and the people who attend week in and week out. I'm mourning with them now. Even if there are no safe places in our world today, there are sacred spaces, places that are hallowed. And, no matter how you feel about megachurches like New Life (and I can critique them with the best of 'em), they, too, are hallowed ground for people who worship in them each week. New Life certainly was for me as a young man, and is for the thousands of people who attend there week in and week out.
God bless that hallowed ground. Even if it can't be safe--because no place is--it can be a place of renewal and healing, and I trust it will be that for its members in the days and weeks ahead.
This morning, we know a bit more. We know a heavily armed male dressed in black fatigues opened fire on parishioners as they left the building; we know he killed two teenage girls—sisters—and injured three other victims; we know he was prevented from doing further violence by a volunteer security woman who shot him to death.
In days to come we'll see the faces of these victims. We'll see the their families on television and mourn with them. We'll get to know the killer's face, learn more than we want to know of him, and perhaps find out what drove him to this end.
What we'll never quite know, though, is how to make sense of it all, especially in the wake of an apparently linked attack last night in Arvada, Colorado, at a center for the evangelical organization Youth With A Mission, and also last week's shooting spree at a mall in Omaha, Nebraska. There are no safe places. All Americans know this by now, or should, but when danger comes calling at your own place or a place near and dear to you, it rocks you to the core.
New Life Church in is an icon in Southern Colorado and for large swaths of the evangelical world. No one who has attended there for any considerable amount of time would be surprised to find it the target of a violent attack—not because of any official New Life positions, but just because the place is big and visible and Christian, and some people hate that stuff. And more randomly, some people are just driven to senseless rage.
I first attended New Life as teenager in the mid-1990s, and I recall bomb scares and death threats in those days, plus one weekend when animal blood was poured on the church walls. When I worked for New Life, I knew of regular threats on the life of the senior pastor and was glad to know we had armed guards in the building and fine-tuned emergency protocol. Most large churches have similar systems in place for events like this, including undercover personnel like the one at New Life who felled the shooter yesterday. I imagine such protocols have been standard at least since 1999, when a gunman in Fort Worth, Texas entered Wedgwood Baptist Church and killed 7 people before turning a gun on himself.
So I'm not surprised that New Life handled this as well as it did. The place is a well-oiled machine, as everyone saw last fall when former pastor Ted Haggard was ousted amidst accusations of drug use and sexual immorality. The news about Haggard broke on a Thursday; by Saturday, he had been excused from his pastorship; by Sunday morning, his public letter of confession was being read. The Haggard story was undeniably tragic, but it would have been much worse if we had seen weeks of dodging and spinning. Instead, because the church—indeed, Haggard himself—had established protocol for dealing with an untrustworthy leader, New Life was a model of crisis management.
Of course, that the Haggard scandal was only national news for one weekend does not mean it ever left the minds of anyone at New Life Church. It's been a long, slow slog for those people as they've grieved the events of last fall and begun the transition into a leaner, quieter, humbler (and no doubt in many ways better) community. They are about 100 days into the new leadership of senior pastor Brady Boyd, and from what I've been told, were lately feeling like they had begun to heal in earnest.
And then a gunman attacked them as they walked out of church. It's hard to imagine how this church can handle another tragedy, but that's what they are going to have to do.
I don't attend New Life Church any longer, and as I've written on this site before, my views on matters theological and political caused me to drift from the place even when I did still serve on staff. But it does not take a tragedy like today's for me to recognize that the place is very special to me, that I cherish it and the people who attend week in and week out. I'm mourning with them now. Even if there are no safe places in our world today, there are sacred spaces, places that are hallowed. And, no matter how you feel about megachurches like New Life (and I can critique them with the best of 'em), they, too, are hallowed ground for people who worship in them each week. New Life certainly was for me as a young man, and is for the thousands of people who attend there week in and week out.
God bless that hallowed ground. Even if it can't be safe--because no place is--it can be a place of renewal and healing, and I trust it will be that for its members in the days and weeks ahead.
