In an armed conflict where I needed an ally, if I had to choose between one Nepalese Gurkha foot soldier armed only with a Kukri knife, or five people picked out of the phone book who each had a gun, I think I would pick the Gurkha.
Posted on 12/17/2007 9:05:27 AM PST by Balata
'We're going through a test'
A week after tragedy, New Life Church’s Boyd asks parishioners to be honest with feelings
By CARLYN RAY MITCHELL
THE GAZETTE
December 17, 2007 - 12:21AM
Hands were raised once again in praise, but it was not any given Sunday at New Life Church.
Nor should anyone have pretended it was, Senior Pastor Brady Boyd said a week after a gunman killed two young worshippers.
Boyd said he was proud of the 7,000 to 7,500 attendees of Sunday’s two morning services who rallied against fears about returning to the site of last week’s rampage, where 18-year-old Stephanie Works and her 16-year-old sister, Rachel, were killed.
“Last weekend was a test,” Boyd said. “We’re going through a test, we’re operating in a test. But we’re passing the test.”
Boyd told parishioners to be honest with their feelings.
“It is OK if you’re not doing well,” Boyd said. “I don’t want any of us to walk around with a mask or facade of strength when inside our hearts are not doing well.”
The day’s events included a brief, strange moment when one of those wounded last week was escorted from the church campus by the police, who asked him not to return.
Larry Bourbonnais, 59, left church grounds peacefully at the request of church officials, who called in Colorado Springs police for extra support.
“He cooperated, and we told him that he wasn’t welcome back on the property,” police Sgt. Lonnie Spanswick said.
Church officials told police they plan to file a restraining order against Bourbonnais, Spanswick said.
In a news conference after church, Boyd said of Bourbonnais, “We felt he was a bit volatile this morning, and we did not want any disruption to our service.” Boyd said officials will be reaching out to Bourbonnais this week to ensure an “amicable” resolution. Boyd didn’t elaborate.
Wounded slightly in the arm during the shooting, Bourbonnais has shared his story with a number of media outlets during the past week, claiming that he tried without success to persuade an armed security guard to confront the gunman, Matthew Murray; pleaded with the guard to give him a gun; then yelled at Murray to distract him before another security guard, Jeanne Assam, opened fire, wounding Murray. An autopsy concluded that Murray then shot himself.
Contacted Sunday afternoon by The Gazette, Bourbonnais declined to comment. But while leaving the parking lot Sunday morning, he told KRDO television that New Life officials don’t like his criticism of the security guard who wouldn’t confront the gunman.
“They said I denigrated the security staff and made them look bad,” Bourbonnais told KRDO.
Boyd told KRDO that Bourbonnais should have evacuated the building with the rest of the parishioners.
“His actions last weekend probably did more to harm the process than to help it,” Boyd told KRDO.
The church had more visible security Sunday, which will be the norm for the time being, Boyd said.
“We thought it was important for families and moms and dads that when they dropped their kids off in our children’s ministry or our nursery or our junior high ministry, they saw a uniformed police officer,” Boyd said.
Assam was at the 11 a.m. service on Sunday but is taking time off from her security duties at the church, Boyd said.
The Works’ extended family attended services Sunday, but Boyd said Marie Works, the victims’ mother, was at the hospital with David Works, Stephanie and Rachel’s father, who was also shot.
A memorial service for Stephanie and Rachel Works is scheduled at New Life for 2 p.m. Wednesday.
Like many church members, Daniel Ferrin, who with his family has attended New Life off and on over the past six years, said he wasn’t afraid to come to church Sunday.
“It is horrible what happened, but it is great to see that there is some good coming out of it,” Ferrin said. “As Pastor Brady was saying, let’s get rid of all of a lot of the problems with different churches with the differences in theology. We are all here for one reason, because we worship God. We’re here for Jesus because he’s our savior.”
John Phillips of Des Moines said he had traveled to New Life to share the message that the greater church community is praying for the congregation.
“When one church hurts, we all do,” Phillips said.
“you can tell the coward from the hero when you see which way they run” -Randy Travis
I thought what they had to say was that what Bourbonnais did was more of a problem than a help... Since the only reasonably detailed description of what happened came from Bourbonnais, I can't find much reason to side with the church....
I just saw that...If that's true, then all the other nasty comments about the church are most likely true also (business etc..)
Just to be clear, I do not question the man's courage in the least since he chose to overlook the First Rule and do something rather than just stand there. I guess what I have a problem with is the noisy would-be hero when compared to the quiet real hero archetype (Gary Cooper in "High Noon", Alan Ladd in "Shane", The Lone Ranger - "Who was that masked man?"). Guess I watched too many Westerns, huh?
bump
“Church leadership does not make these sort of decision without going through biblical reasoning, he must have provoked them.”
In a perfect world.
NAU 1 Timothy 5:1 Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father, to the younger men as brothers,
As I said in my initial post, if he is "bragging" and self inflating, that would tend to downplay and cast doubt on his version of events...but I cannot say whether he has or has not been doing that.
If he was dismayed with the lack of action by a guard, and had to take action, unarmed, to try and stop a killer, I can understand how he would be frustrated. Speaking of that out of frsutration, or particularly out of a desire to help make sure it does not happen again, is not being a braggard. I m just not in a position to judge that part oof it at this point.
Maybe the church leadership is trying to avoid a lawsuit.
I'm not impressed with a few of their members either. One of them asked me to attend and started talking about my tithing obligations in the next sentence. It seems more like a forgivenes factory than an organization striving to make people better persons.
Well, I wouldn’t say that either though.
What I mean is that... sometimes the situation is such that you simply can NOT pull out a weapon and start firing. There might be other people in the path of the target, the target may be shielding himself with others, or there might not be a clear shot.
Situational awareness is something that ever person that “MUST ACT” must also be clear of, and it won’t do you any good to step into the line of fire if you can’t use your weapon and stop the perpetrator, and only results in you getting killed, losing your gun or the bad guy getting it.
I guess that was my point.
I think that running to the sound of gun fire, when you’re unarmed isn’t necessarily the smartest thing to do, but, on the other hand it was heroic in and of itself.
I’ve run TO the sound of gunfire myself unarmed. Not a bright thing to do, but *I* did it to try to prevent whatever was happening from getting to my kids.
NOW I teach people to “Survive First”. Your personal survival is, for the most part, the number one thing you must think about in a dangerous situation. If you’ve got family members, children or loved ones close to you, your job is TO GET THEM TO SAFETY FIRST.
No matter what.
So, while Mr. B might have been doing something heroic, it was also kind of dumb, because apparently the congregation was aware there were armed guards in their midst.
It's not so mucvh that a year's tour in Vietnam [or similar more recent duty in the sandbox] gives forth the growth of any particular seeds of courage in an individual, so much as they simply provide an instinct to do something at the first sights or sounds of impending danger, when others might freeze.
Our very unofficial motto was Do something, even if it's wrong. And indeed, a small unit that's made the wrong decision under fire may get the chance to cancil it out later when corrective steps are taken or the other guys' bad luck or supply shortages turn things around. But one that just freezes in place while bad things are happening to it goes home in rubber bags or wrapped in ponchos.
I'm betting that they're either off-duty or retired cops, who stood by for reasons similar to those exhibited by the responding cops at Columbine who sttod by and let the slaughter continue.
There may be matters of Colorado state law involved, or *uniform* training of local police at the state level. Or maybe it's something in the water.
Those that are traumatized by the shooting and still refuse to take measures to defend themselves will probably take comfort in knowing they're no longer guarded by sheep.
The problem seems to be that the guards who froze- maybe reasonably, maybe not- are in fact still the ones watching over the flock. And one of the few who actually did anything has been ejected for his trouble. It appears that the real reason for the armed guards is to act as the pastor's bodyguards, as was Jeanne Assam, the armed female.
The analogue is the post 09/11 situation when, after the passengers of one hijacked airliner resisted the hijackers with the very limited equipment available to them, and warned the rest of the nation via repoted cell phone/skyPhone calls, the government response was to further disarm passengers and flight deck crew and to forbid carrying cell phones on board.
I hope you ARE aware of what an OODA loop is. You don't sound like it.
In an armed conflict where I needed an ally, if I had to choose between one Nepalese Gurkha foot soldier armed only with a Kukri knife, or five people picked out of the phone book who each had a gun, I think I would pick the Gurkha.
Observe, orient, decide and act... Sure, I know. And that was actually my POINT. I said that, please read ALL of my posts if you’re going to be a smart ass. Criticism is one thing, if you’re informed but if you’re reading one thing and making a decision based on the one post, then pretty much you’re making an uninformed decision.
By the way, Archy, situational awareness IS “observation” in case you can’t understand the language clearly. Thought I’d assist you in that definition.
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