Free Republic

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - One week after a Warsaw pastor is accused of sexually assaulting a teenager, protestors are calling on New Life Christian Church in Warsaw to shut down. “We feel like the church needs to be shut down. We don’t want any counseling for this. We need it shut down because for now, we see them as a parasite to the community prying on children,” Voices Against Injustice activist Zoie Lamar told 16 News Now at a protest outside the church Sunday. It all comes just seven days after former pastor John Lowe confessed to committing adultery...

Another survivor from New Life Christian Church and World Outreach in Warsaw, Indiana, released a statement less than 24 hours after the church’s pastor, John Lowe II, confessed to an adulteress relationship 20 years ago—a confession that seconds later was corrected by the woman he sexually abused. Survivor Jessi Kline posted the statement on Facebook, sharing that Lowe’s son, Jeremy, molested her when he babysat for her and her brother when they were “young, prepubescent children.”

Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard's former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard — a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image. Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.

The Associated Press is reporting that after a year of accolades that followed her shooting of a gunman who killed two teenage sisters at her church, concealed handgun license-holder Jeanne Assam remains "low key" and says she thinks of the family of gunman Matthew Murray. From the story: “He didn’t start off to be mixed up and confused. He started off to be a good person but he went down a wrong path,” Assam said during a news conference after a church service Sunday. A former police officer, Assam said that now she is hoping to join the Colorado Springs...

On Sunday, July 27, 2008 a man named Jim David Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, killed two worshipers, and wounded seven before being subdued by church-goers. At first, the story seemed like another case of a disturbed individual wanting to create mayhem for no particular rhyme or reason. These types of occurrences have almost become commonplace in our society. From attacks in schools, churches, and the workplace, it is evident in today's culture that no place is safe from those who seek fame by killing their fellow man. However, the Knoxville, Tennessee shooting, from...

Seems like the whiny babies among us have decided to lethally arm themselves and take out their post-pubescent “nobody likes me” rage on innocent people in schools, shopping malls and now . . . churches. Yes, in the last ten days we have seen Napoleon Dynamite look alike Robert Hawkins kill eight innocent people at a mall in Omaha and then blow his own head off. Here’s an aside . . . Why can’t these warped records start with killing themselves? I think I speak for all Americans when I say, hey psychopathic mass-murdering jackass who intends to kill others...

'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...

Larry Bourbonnais, who was slightly wounded during last week's shootings at New Life Church, was ejected Sunday from the same church for alleged aggressive behavior. "I took a bullet for members of this church," he was heard to shout as he was hustled out of the Colorado Springs worship complex by security guards. The Rev. Brady Boyd said the church has petitioned for a restraining order against Bourbonnais, who tried to stop Matthew Murray's killing spree.

DENVER (AP) ― ...... Colorado Springs police on Wednesday said Murray had an assault rifle, a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and a 9mm semiautomatic handgun when he entered the church. Investigators found an AK-47 assault rifle in his car and a .22-caliber handgun at his home. Murray purchased the weapons between Nov. 17 and Sept. 11, four in the Denver area and one in Colorado Springs, police spokesman Skip Arms said. Arms said 26 rounds had been fired from the Bushmaster assault rifle Murray had with him and one round from the Springfield 9mm. Arms said Jeanne Assam, the volunteer security...

The St. Gabriel Possenti Society awarded Jeanne Assam of New Life Church in Colorado Springs its Medal and Certificate of Honor, Society Founder/Chairman John M. Snyder announced in Arlington, Va., Friday. Assam, a former policewoman volunteering as a security guard, fired her weapon to stop a crazed anti-Christian gunman bent on mass murder after he killed two innocent worshippers, Christian Newswire reported Friday. According to news reports, Assam, armed with a handgun for which she has a concealed carry permit, faced down the murderer armed with two semiautomatic handguns and two semiautomatic rifles and carrying 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Snyder...

Jeanne Assam, the heroine of the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, would likely have been unable to carry the Beretta that she stopped the shooting with if she had been a licensed security guard. An AP article published on 12 December noted that licensed security guards in Colorado Springs are restricted to the use of revolvers. As Jeanne Assam was a volunteer parishioner who was performing security guard duties because the church did not want to hire “mercenaries”, she was almost certainly not affected by the regulations, which only apply to government regulated security guards. Fortunately, her lack...

The way the media cover an event influences whether there will be repetitions. For example, if a fan runs onto the field during a baseball game, the broadcast cameras usually avoid showing pictures of the fan. The TV producers know that the fan on the field is seeking attention, and that, presumably, getting his picture on television will reward him. Moreover, broadcasting the man's antics would encourage copycats. Killing time at a baseball game is a tiny misdeed, compared to killing people, but many media decisions have the effect of encouraging copycat murders. Last April, The Denver Post published on...

December 14th, 2007 COLORADO SPRINGS (APUPI) As a mass memorial service was held today for the seventy-three victims of the massacre at the New Life Church, one of the largest such grim tolls in the nations' history, gun-control advocates pointed out the continuing folly of allowing civilians access to pistols and assault weapons. "This never would have happened had Matthew Murray not been able to get his hands on those weapons, " said Sarah Brady, head of Handgun Control, Incorporated. "He had two handguns, an assault rifle, and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Seventy-three people are dead now, because the...

Jeanne Assam was in the middle of a religious fast and in the middle of the church lobby when she shot a 24-year-old gunman who had already killed four people at two religious sites and was bent on killing more Christians. Church's 'Hero' Security GuardInvestigators have announced this afternoon that Assam's bullets struck gunman Matthew Murray, identified late Monday as the man responsible for both Sunday shootings in Colorado, several times but that ultimately he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the El Paso County Coroner's Office announced today. Regardless, officials have credited Assam for calmly and coolly stopping the...

At issue: A woman using a handgun to stop a killer in a “soft target,” a church. Our view: The case shows why Michigan school staff need an option for training and concealed carry, not “gun-free zones.” Another month has brought more shooting sprees in what commonly are “gun-free zones.” Four died in two separate shootings Sunday in Colorado. Eight were murdered last Wednesday in an Omaha, Neb., shopping mall. Seven students were slain recently in Finland. That followed a Cleveland school shooting in October. Only in the latest attack did an adult have a right to a gun to...

Last April, an unbelievable tragedy unfolded in Blacksburg. A student, armed and angry, plotted and carried out a brutal assault on the students and faculty at Virginia Tech. After an early morning attack which left two people dead, he locked the doors to an academic building, and then moved methodically from room to room, shooting the occupants while they sat, stood, hid or attempted to flee. ... This Sunday, another unbelievable tragedy unfolded in Colorado. A young man, armed and angry, plotted and carried out a brutal assault on members of a Christian mission organization and a church. After an...

KSL News has learned the man who went on a shooting rampage at two Colorado church properties had been baptized into the LDS Church a year ago. Matthew Murray killed four people and wounded several others Sunday, before he turned the gun on himself. He targeted people at two Christian churches, posting anti-religion messages online before the shootings. But a year ago, he welcomed religion in his life, according to one man who taught Murray about the Latter-day Saint faith. A.J. Ormond was there the day Matthew Murray was baptized. He says he immediately noticed a change; Murray seemed happy,...

I have been waiting for this to happen. For years we have witnessed the carnage when innocents were mowed down at schools, colleges, shopping malls and post offices. The unarmed (disarmed?) were easy targets for crazed gunmen armed with grievances, weapons and ammunition. Now someone has shot back, probably saving many lives. All of the gun-control laws that have been passed and are still being contemplated could not have had the affect of one armed, trained and law-abiding citizen on the scene like 42-year-old Jeanne Assam, a volunteer security guard at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. The gunman,...

Sometimes, even decent people need to shoot to kill, especially in defense of themselves or others. After a pair of shooting rampages in Colorado left five people dead this weekend, we must realize how much worse this could have been had a church security guard not been there to shoot back. Like many Americans who came to age in the suburbs and leafy college towns, my exposure to gun violence was almost exclusively to newspaper reports of random attacks in distant places. But one awful day, as a 19-year old aspiring journalist, I grabbed a pad of paper and a...

Matthew Murray, the man who police say shot and killed four people at two separate locations in Colorado on Sunday, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the coroner’s office said Tuesday. “The death of Matthew Murray has been ruled a suicide,” CNN reported the El Paso County Coroner’s Office said in a statement. “It should be noted that he was struck multiple times by the security officer, which put him down. He then fired a single round killing himself.” Police Sgt. Skip Arms told The Associated Press that Murray shot himself in the head. Police say before Murray, 24, went...