{"id":40648,"date":"2020-01-05T21:42:13","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T21:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=40648"},"modified":"2020-01-05T21:44:53","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T21:44:53","slug":"hearing-the-unspeakable-in-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=40648","title":{"rendered":"Hearing the unspeakable … in church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(Andrew Sentipal\/Dreamstime\/TNS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I could have lived an entire lifetime without hearing the words that opened our Sunday morning worship service in church today.<\/p>\n

A wonderful gentleman who we have befriended at our Collin County church stood before us and implored those in our congregation who have a state of Texas-approved concealed handgun permit to bring their weapons with them to worship.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

To be brutally honest, the message from our friend hit me like a punch in the gut.<\/p>\n

We are reeling in North Texas by the events of a week ago, when a gunman walked into the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, near Fort Worth, and opened fire. He killed two parishioners before a volunteer security guard at the church fired a single shot from his pistol and killed the gunman.<\/p>\n

The guard is being hailed as a hero. Indeed, he did his job perfectly. It took all of six seconds<\/em> to eliminate the threat by the shooter.<\/p>\n

This is what we have come to in this country of ours. Men and women of faith are now fearing for their safety in houses of worship.<\/em> In the name of God Almighty, what in the world is happening to us? Moreover, I am quite certain other church congregations all across the country heard something similar to what we heard this morning as we prepared for prayer.<\/p>\n

Our friend acknowledged that he packs a pistol hidden away; he is licensed by the state. He said he attended a seminar sponsored by our police department that spoke to the danger posed by lunatics who venture into houses of worship to perform their evil acts.<\/p>\n

He gave us a brief primer on what to do in the event gun violence erupts in our church. Our friend told us what he<\/em> would do while standing guard at the door, as he does each Sunday.<\/p>\n

I know I am stating the obvious, but we are living in dangerous times. I just never imagined hearing what came to us today. It illustrates the dire peril we all face \u2026 even as we go to church to pray.<\/em><\/p>\n

God help us.<\/p>\n\n

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I could have lived an entire lifetime without hearing the words that opened our Sunday morning worship service in church today. A wonderful gentleman who we have befriended at our Collin County church stood before us and implored those in our congregation who have a state of Texas-approved concealed handgun permit to bring their weapons … Continue reading Hearing the unspeakable … in church<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8688,9,15],"tags":[9141,9142,2037,9131],"class_list":["post-40648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-news","category-local-news","category-religious-news","tag-church-shooting","tag-concealed-handgun-carry-permit","tag-gun-violence","tag-white-settlement-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40648"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40651,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40648\/revisions\/40651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}