Safe Sanctuaries?

Some people have no souls. Read on, taken from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180351,00.html.

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Md. Congregants Robbed at Church
Monday, January 02, 2006

BALTIMORE — A gunman burst into a church service Sunday evening and robbed several members of the congregation, authorities said.

About 50 people were attending the service at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Bel Air when a man entered brandishing a handgun, the Harford County Sheriff's Office said. No injuries were reported.

Wearing dark clothing and a ski mask, the thief ordered several children and their father to go up the aisles getting purses and wallets, then put them on a pile on the floor, said the Rev. Craig McLaughlin, who was in the front pew when the gunman barged in from the rear of the church.

He gathered them in a bag and, after ordering congregants to the front of the church, fled with an undetermined amount of cash and valuables, police said.

Several worshippers called police on their cell phones after he fled.

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That really boils my blood. For the past two years, the United Methodist Churches of the Holston Annual Conference (East Tennessee, SW Virginia, and a bit of North Georgia) have all been working very hard on an initiative known as "Safe Sanctuaries." As a part of this initiative, each local church has had to come up with its own Safe Sancutaries Policy dealing with things such as the screening of volunteers who work with children, procedures for when accusations of abuse are made, etc. The goal is to literally create "Safe Sanctuaries." In other words, we want to make our churches places where people of all ages can come and feel safe and not have to worry about being beaten, molested, or otherwise abused. I think that this is a wonderful thing for us to do, and especially in light of problems some other denominations (and unfortunately even some congregations of the United Methodist Church) have had, this is long overdue.

It is becoming very difficult to get people to join our churches. This is not unique to United Methodism, but it is a problem which seems to pervade churches of all types. Having people walk into sunday evening churches at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church is SURELY not going to help matters much. It is a very sad day in this world hen somebody thinks they can commit armed robbery on a church. I hope they catch this man soon and put him in jail for a very very long time, and i hope that wherever he goes to prison, they have a wonderful chaplain and that this robber can find that he does in fact have a soul, deep down there somewhere, and might turn things around in his own life before it is too late.

Grace and Peace

Jim