<p>I just heard on the news that a man was arrested and disarmed in an alley outside my church this morning by the resource officer of the high school that is right behind us. Apparently this unbalanced individual was in the act of loading a rifle, and had other guns and knives in his car and apartment. He was evidently stalking a young woman who was a fellow attendee of the morning AA group that meets in our basement multipurpose room. By sheer luck, the resource officer saw what he was doing, and came up behind him with gun drawn and ordered him to drop the weapon. He apparently was talking about “pedophiles” being at the meeting, which serves the general public, not church members. Even more disturbing: he had a guy in his car with him who is a down-and-outer who has been coming to the church to whom various people have extended a helping hand.</p>
<p>I horrifies me to think of the carnage that might have despoiled the room where we hold pancake breakfasts, dress for the Pageant of the Nativity, celebrate our annual seder, hold rummage sales…where I’ve taught cooking classes and eaten many a meal and held many a meeting with friends.</p>
<p>It’s not easy to be a downtown church these days, even in a place that is normally as benign as Portland, Maine. When I think about the shooting in Tennessee last year, I’m afraid that we will become a target in the minds of every nutcase in the region. We frequently have street people on Sunday mornings. Yesterday we were holding a budget meeting, and yet another person on the edge whom no one had ever seen before pulled out a New Testament and started trying to talk about “sin.” </p>
<p>Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be many more mentally “unstable” people in public lately? I wonder if we’re seeing the results from the cuts in mental health spending combined with the pressure of a bad economy.</p>
<p>Or the fact that access to news that would be considered “local” just a few short years ago is now readily avaialble on the internet and cable television’s 24-hour news channels (which have to fill those 24 hours somehow).</p>
<p>An increase in the actual number of “unstable” individuals will have to be proven through more diligent research besides the fact that we are more aware of the issue though better news access…</p>
<p>I think Bullet is right, but it’s even more complicated. Even if the number of unstable people is the same, does the news change what they do? I have to wonder whether they are more likely to copycat violent rampages with a bunch of guns than before.</p>
<p>A whole lot goes on at our churches that we don’t know about and probably don’t want to know about. They attract a lot of mentally unstable people. Churches want to be inclusive so they tend to tolerate some nutty people. Both of the people I’ve known who committed murder/suicide I knew from church. I know a woman in the choir who got a restraining order against a male choir member who was stalking her. </p>
<p>I had a law partner who was informal “counsel” to our church. He’d tell me things. About the threating letters the pastors received. About the mystery person who kept putting blood of some kind above the entrances to the church in some kind of repeated ritual. If anyone thinks that church pastors are naive people, they are very wrong. They have seen and heard a lot more than most of us.</p>
<p>A mentally unstable woman attacked a priest in our area. He was an unknown to her. She stabbed him twice in the back and flank. He had just completed confessions and was exiting an open confessional. She was standing outside and just started stabbing him. Apparently she though he was the antichrist. He is OK now. She is in jail. Happened in a rather quiet community where churches are always open, and no one fears for their safety in the sanctuary. Scary.</p>
<p>After Andrea Yates killed her kids, I read a good article about people who hear voices. It said that people who have a religious background tend to think the voices are either God or the Devil.</p>
<p>Wow, Missypie, we’ve had some divas in the choir–of which I am a member–but nothing that bad! We had a guy years ago who wanted to date a single mother who wasn’t interested in him, so he started calling and telling her elementary-school aged D that he was going to report her mom to DHS if she wouldn’t go out with him. We had to create a “disruptive persons” policy–something that most churches eventually realize they need-- in a hurry and apply it to him. Something else that many congregants are unaware of is the surprisingly large number of wandering con artists and others who appear at churches during the week and ask the minister for $$ for “bus fare home” or “to have my electricity turned on again” or whatever. Most ministers have had to develop a strategy for dealing with them that involves offering to pay the bill directly, not hand over cash. </p>
<p>You’re right about churches wanting to be inclusive, and therefore tolerating some very difficult and/or unstable people. We’re accustomed to dealing with an array of needy and mildly disturbed or eccentric people who come on Sunday morning, homeless or otherwise. The point at which they start bringing guns to kill people is the point at which I get seriously scared.</p>
<p>He must be a very resourceful Resource Officer to be packing a gun at school. Makes it sound like a librarian just happend to disarm the gunman.</p>
<p>All this PC. Just can’t call him a Police Officer or Security Guard.</p>
<p>I’m not certain that our increased knowledge of this type of activity is due entirely to increased reach of the nat’l news. I suspect that the systematic closing of “mental facilities” has something to do with an actual increase in these behaviors.</p>
<p>I lived in an area in the Midwest where there was very little confrontational crime some years ago. What a shocker it was to us when we learned that a nasty murderer was holed up at his brother’s house a block or so away from our neighborhood, within very easy walking distance. He had killed a father and a small child during a drug deal that went wrong, and the family had the same last name as ours and both father and child had the same first names as some of our kids. It really shook me to the core.</p>
<p>It has since emerged that this guy was a patient at the regional psychiatric hospital until recently, that he had an earlier record of felonies in Florida, yet he was able to buy guns at LL Bean last week!</p>
<p>I mean, my state has had the lowest homicide rate of any state in the union most years. Although many people own guns, most of them are hunting rifles and shotguns–like this guy–and used for that purpose. We just aren’t accustomed to this.</p>
<p>^^I think we’ll be seeing more and more of this.^^^</p>
<p>We had an incident at our church about a year ago and luckily we can laugh about it now. The police were chasing 3 men in a car and they ditched the car and started running. The whole area went into lock-down mode, including our church. A man came up to the church door and started pounding on it. The custodian opened the door and pulled him inside, saying, “You better get in here right away. There’s some crazy men on the loose.” The man asked to use the restroom and while he was in there, someone else called the police, believing this may be one of the men they were after. Sure enough, it was one of them. They searched behind the restroom ceiling tiles and never found any gun. The man must have known we’re the church with open hearts, open minds, and open doors.</p>
We had a guy years ago who wanted to date a single mother who wasn’t interested in him, so he started calling and telling her elementary-school aged D that he was going to report her mom to DHS if she wouldn’t go out with him. We had to create a “disruptive persons” policy–something that most churches eventually realize they need-- in a hurry and apply it to him. Something else that many congregants are unaware of is the surprisingly large number of wandering con artists and others who appear at churches during the week and ask the minister for $$ for “bus fare home” or “to have my electricity turned on again” or whatever. Most ministers have had to develop a strategy for dealing with them that involves offering to pay the bill directly, not hand over cash. </p>