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Hold your church leaders accountable

Andrew Allis, Minot

Let churches consider using the response to the shooter at West Freeway Church of Christ in Texas during their Sunday morning worship on Dec. 29 as a paradigm for all churches going forward. This will be one way to make sure the two parishioners who lost their lives that morning will have not died in vain.

The shooter, who pulled out a shotgun during the Sunday morning service, killed two with full intent of killing the pastor and many more. Within 6 seconds he was stopped, shot dead, by a lawfully armed congregant who fired back preventing a more extensive massacre, like the one that previously occurred in Texas at Sutherland Springs, which killed 26. That shooter was totally unopposed and just kept killing the unarmed helpless parishioners there, and would have continued doing so until all were dead, if it were not for a trained NRA instructor, Stephen Willeford who, hearing the shots, came heroically to the rescue armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

Take-away lessons for Churches and Parishioners:

Thanks be to God (quite literally) that this Church planned (planned being the operative word) ahead, creating an armed church security team . . . for the only way to stop an active shooter is with opposing firepower with people trained to employ it. Think about it. If the shooter at West Freeway Church of Christ Sunday killed two people in only 6 seconds, can you imagine how may he could/would have killed before the police arrived?

Your church leadership should have a plan in place to deal with an active shooter, and this must include armed protection, for this is the world in which we now live, and it is the only way to stop an armed assailant intent on killing as many as he can before the police arrive in who knows how long a time period? Although an unpleasant reality, this is the world in which we now live and we must face that fact or set ourselves up to be “sheep for the slaughter” during our worship services. Christians must realize that God works, in His providence, most commonly through secondary causes and means. In this case that took the form of armed parishioners. It is no lack of “trusting in the Lord,” to also take responsible steps of preparedness, heeding the admonition from Proverbs 27:12, “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” Plan, coordinate, so your church service is never lacking an armed voluntary security detail.

Members of churches should ask specific and candid questions of their leadership as to what plan of action they have in place in the event of an active shooter. Hold them accountable, do not let them blithely dismiss your concerns with empty cliches such as “we can trust the Lord for that” or some other patronizing, non-response. Make them deal with the substance of your question.

Don’t be of the mindset that, “This can’t happen here in the small obscure town of ______. If the list of towns where church shootings have occurred were read, you won’t have heard of most of them, and I’m sure if you asked many of the church members, they would have said that before the bloodshed occurred, they never gave it a thought, or if the subject was raised would have responded, “There’s very little likelihood of that happening here.”

Finally, politically, do your part to end so-called “gun free zones” for, practically speaking, they don’t exist for the lawless criminal mass-murders intent on the slaughter of as many people as time and opportunity will afford them, rather they just become defenseless killing fields. As well, support, and vote, to keep our 2nd amendment rights robust and undiminished from constant attempts to limit and actually abolish them. Let this incident serve as one more example of to our founders’ wisdom in giving us this valuable constitutional right.

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