“When things get hard, you flip back not to your training in Christ but to the world,” he said. “You handle things the way John Wick would. Or you handle it the way Clint Eastwood would.”
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Glenn said the gospel message contradicts the way the world around us operates. But he fears that his fellow evangelical Christians have lost faith in that gospel. Which will make it hard for folks in Nashville and the South to work together to respond to gun violence.
Pastor Kelli X. Photo courtesy of The Village Church
“The gospel message is that you never respond to evil with more evil,” he said. “You know, you don’t overcome hate with more hate. You bless those who curse you. The first response of a Christian to anybody is love. And love is not this warm feeling toward you. It’s that I’m actively going to seek your best and want to take action so that your life is the best.”
The Rev. Kelli X, pastor of The Village Church in Madison, Tennessee, said prayer and action have to be linked. Otherwise, she said, quoting the New Testament Book of James, faith without works is dead.
“I believe in praying with my feet,” she said. “I believe in praying with my vote.”
A mother of two, the pastor said she believes no school is immune from the kind of shooting that happened at Covenant. She worries nothing will change.
“I’m heartbroken and working very hard not to be numb to another mass shooting, another mass murder,” she said.
For the Rev. Aaron Marble, pastor of historic Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church, the news that the daughter of Covenant pastor Chad Scruggs was killed hit like a “gut punch.” Mable, who has young children, said he can’t imagine what Scruggs is going through.
The Rev. Aaron Marble. Photo courtesy of Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church
He said pastors often deal with a range of emotions in their work — going from visiting church members on their deathbeds to welcoming new children into the community.
Marble said he worries Americans have begun to accept these kinds of shootings as a normal part of life. That’s just not right, he said.
“When children are murdered at school, it should be really difficult to go about our next day as usual,” he said. “I think our country has become desensitized to this type of violence. Even when it happens in your own city, in your own backyard, there is a dull nulling of what should be excruciating pain.”
This article originally appeared here.
