LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — The Sunday shooting that killed two people and left two more injured happened at an unlikely location: a church. Jerry Gumm, the pastor at Richmond Road Baptist Church ended his sermon on July 13 just minutes before tragedy struck.
“I don’t want to lose anybody that I love,” Gumm said in his message which was streamed live on Facebook. “I don’t want to leave the people that I love, but I know I’ve got to go someday.”
Pastor Gumm encouraged his congregation to stand, and the video ends.
Later, a shooter killed Gumm’s wife and daughter. Gumm and his son-in-law were shot as well.
“We grieve with any church that goes through something like that, the community that goes through that,” said Pastor Ron Edmondson at Immanuel Baptist Church.
Moments like this bring a lot of questions, and it can prompt places of worship to look into their security procedures. Edmondson said his church has hosted security conferences before, and review their own procedures.
“We review them frequently anyways, but we were just in the process of reviewing them again even before this happened, so you could imagine the text threads yesterday between our staff saying, ‘okay, now we’ll definitely jump into it even more," he said.
For reviewing and implementing security measures, Edmondson encourages churches to reach out to local police departments.
“The local police department has been tremendous to work with us and come in, look at our buildings, and give us suggestions and advice,” he said. “We periodically do that and review that, and if a church is not doing that I certainly would encourage them to be doing that.”
“If we can help, we would love to help other churches figure out what we can do.”
It's certainly important to be prepared for anything, but in times like this, Edmondson hopes people will cling to faith, instead of fear.
“Anytime something happens, it causes fear,” Edmondson said. “You don't know how people are going to react, whether that's going to cause them to draw on their faith. That's what I would encourage them to do. I think in times where we're fearful, faith is even more important.”
