Cause to Pause

On Sunday, there was another church shooting. This one in a 500 member church in Knoxville. This is a developing story at blog time, so you may need to check the link. We may not agree on some major points of doctrine, but this is a tragedy nonetheless.

There was two things I found interesting in a quote near the bottom of the article by one of the church members:

“This kind of incident could have happened in “any church on this street. … It could be in any school. … All the more reason we have to take care of those people … because this is the potential result.”
The people he referred to that “we need to take care of” were the shooters. That is grace and compassion. Can’t say I would have felt the same way directly after the incident.
The other telling point in this quote is the thought that “it could happen in any church…or school” etc. You can’t 100% prevent things like this from happening. Bad guys will always find a way to do evil. But news stories like this should make us all rethink our emergency response protocol. A couple of 6’4″ former bouncers who “got saved” and are now walking around campus during services with walkie-talkies and t-shirts that say “Cracking heads for Jesus” just won’t do.