Posted on 11/10/2017 10:59:49 AM PST by ForYourChildren
The pastor of the tiny Texas church where a madman massacred 26 people and wounded 24 last Sunday wants the building torn down.
“The pastor expressed his desire that perhaps the best way forward is to have the church demolished and replaced with a prayer garden,” Southern Baptist Convention spokesman Roger “Sing” Oldham, told USA Today.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s president and CEO of the executive committee, Frank Page, and SBC President Steve Gaines confirmed the church will be razed, Religion News Service reported. The decision came after meeting with the Sutherland Springs pastor Frank Pomeroy, whose 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle, was killed during the shooting rampage.
Pomeroy and his wife Sherri weren’t in church the day the killer opened fire.
“There’s too many that do not want to go back in there,” Pomeroy told the Wall Street Journal. Approximately half of the 100-member church was attending service that morning.
An anonymous donor has stepped up and agreed to fund the construction of a new church, Page said, according to Religion News Service.
Oldham told the Associated Press that the building is “too stark of a reminder” of the mass killings that took place in the small town of about 600 near San Antonio.
Workers replaced the front doors, repaired bullet holes and painted the outside of the church Thursday. Then a black tarp was wrapped around the portable chainlink fence that now surrounds the property.
The North American Mission Board in coordination with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention has offered to cover funeral costs using funds pledged by an anonymous donor.
“Southern Baptists are going to pay for the funerals of those in the church because we want to take care of our own,” Page said.
Viewings for some of the victims will be held this weekend.
If you would like to help the families affected by this tragedy, here’s where you can donate:
● Mercury One, a fund set up by Glenn Beck for the victims of Sutherland Springs will send 100 percent of the money raised to the relief effort.
● The North American Mission Board set up a fund to help rebuild Sutherland Springs.
This is exactly what drives the liberal leftists nuts.
People helping people.
Not the government. Not forcing. But just charitable giving by grace.
The liberal leftists hate it. They do not understand it. This is a story which they cannot grasp.
Just as the event is nearly incomprehensible to conservatives and Christians...
The response is as incomprehensible to God-hating Leftists.
A prayer park would be a nearly perfect answer to the evil shown on that day.
>>A prayer park would be a nearly perfect answer to the evil shown on that day.
A Christian prayer park. Not some generic “thoughts and prayers” place that is devoid of Christianity. This is a place where the anti-Christian holocaust that goes on around the world every day touched America.
“A Christian prayer park. Not some generic ‘thoughts and prayers’ place that is devoid of Christianity. This is a place where the anti-Christian holocaust that goes on around the world every day touched America.”
Well said. Amen.
(Bet it’s our President.)
The decision to tear down the church was not made by "us". It was made by the people affected by the evil acts of a hateful madman. I'm sure they felt that even perfect repairs to the building would not cleanse it of the evil done there. Rebuilding at another location seems wise to me. Thankfully, citizen donors (anonymous and otherwise) will help the church make a new beginning.
I hope this anonymous donor is joined by other anonymous donors to make a church that will be a landmark of grace and beauty. Too often, churches are designed for ‘efficiency’, not as places where people might pray for hours, with feelings of both solemnity and joyous expression.
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