Our Theology is Simple; We Believe in Christ

By ROBERT WELLER, Associated Press Writer

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The leader of a megachurch where a gunman opened fire a week earlier, killing two teenage sisters and wounding three other people, said Sunday that the congregation's trials of the past couple of years were nothing more than tests... Another test came a year ago, Boyd (present pastor) said, when founder the Rev. Ted Haggard was dismissed after a former male escort claimed Haggard paid him over three years for sex. Haggard publicly admitted committing unspecified "sexual immorality."

"This is not what this church will be known for," Boyd said.

"Our heart is to be a church that gives to people," he said. "We are a group that cares for people, any person."

That was written on the faces of members of a mostly smiling crowd who sang, clapped and waved as they watched the stage or several large-screen televisions simulcasting the service above them. Some cried. Dozens accepted a call to come to the front if they needed help to deal with the pain.

"All it has done is strengthen us," Boyd said at the service, attended by at least 4,000 adults.

Reacting to the shooting and the service, Josh Caldwell, 17, said: "It's definitely been really rough. But seeing the church continue to grow is an incredible experience. And seeing God move among us."

Boyd said the church's struggles could be compared to those faced by early Christians. "In times like this our theology is simple. ... We believe in Christ," he said.

Six Students Shot in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS - While getting off their school bus in northeast Las Vegas, six students were shot .

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on its Web site that five of the victims were believed to be boys and the sixth was a girl. Two were in their late teens and the others are juveniles, the newspaper said.

Two of the wounded are in critical condition, according to police. Two shooters appear to be involved in the incident.

Spot Comments on 'God Is My Sharpshooter,' Statement by Assam

"Spot" writes:

Jeanne (Assam)... is the armed security guard at Ted Haggard's old church who killed—or at least winged pretty good—the Christian zealot turned anti-Christian zealot, Matthew Murray on Sunday last. Murray was going to be a missionary, but apparently he washed out late in the program, and he has harbored a, well, grudge, ever since:

"It appears that the suspect had been kicked out of the [missionary] program [affiliated with the church] three years prior and during the past few weeks had sent different forms of hate mail to the program and/or its director," police said.

Murray shot up the missionary training center earlier in the day.

But let's get back to Jeanne:

JA: O lord! Let me shoot straight!

HS: A little to the left, Jeanne.

It does sound like it was a good thing that Jeanne was a good shot, but how many of you, boys and girls, think that the Holy Spirit did the aiming? Michele, Katie, anybody else? And if you do, how much work would it have been for God to have stationed Jeanne out in the parking lot where two people were killed, or at the missionary training center earlier that day, where several people were shot and two were killed?

God seems like an arbitrary Fella, steadying Jeanne's aim but not protecting all of the other people who got shot. Spot guesses that they just didn't have time to pray, or they didn't pray hard enough. Sad, really.

Spot touches on the age-old problem of pain and evil in the world. Why does God allow it? Why doesn't He stop it? Why does He appear to stop one evil event while allowing another (such as the deaths of those two teenagers from the same family)? Spot seems to think God is just arbitrary (or perhaps does not even exist); that God ignores some and protects others based on prayer.

Prayer is not to change God's mind; it is designed I believe to change our mind. The prayer of Jeanne Assam did not, in my opinion, change God; it changed her. Her prayer allowed her to be in the moment, to be unafraid and focused on a task for which she had been trained, prepared. If Christians believed that God always intervenes, then why even prepare for hate crimes, mass shootings, ridiculous evil.

Rantings of Matthew Murray

Matthew Murray reportedly ranted prior to his attacks in Colorado at Youth With A Mission in Denver and New Life Church in Colorado Springs:

"You Christians brought this on yourselves," Murray reportedly wrote on a website for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organisations, shortly before the second of his two attacks.

"I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ... God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out.

"All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."

Source: KUSA TV

Matthew Murray, in these writings, sounds like a terrorist to me, a person motivated by hatred of others' religious beliefs. Someone who has decided that he has a right, perhaps even a responsibility to set himself above others. He sounds like someone who has put himself in the place of God, deciding who has the right to live and who must die.

Matthew Murray Shot Himself In the Head

Judith Kohler writes:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The man who killed four people at a church and missionary training center shot himself in the head and died after being hit by shots from a church security officer, police said Tuesday.

Matthew Murray, 24, was struck multiple times by a security officer at New Life Church Sunday, but his death was ruled a suicide, the El Paso County Coroner's Office concluded after an autopsy.

Murray shot himself in the head, said police Sgt. Skip Arms.

Volunteer security guard Jeanne Assam shot Murray after he entered the church. Though investigators had earlier suggested he killed himself, they credited Assam's bravery with averting a greater tragedy.

Account of Jeanne Assam's Response to Matthew Murray

Early on Sunday morning, Matthew Murray, 24, the home-schooled son of devoutly Christian parents, had shot and killed two people at the Youth With a Mission training center in a Denver suburb. Twelve hours later, police say, he drove to Colorado Springs and started shooting in the parking lot of the New Life church before walking inside the church building as a service was letting out, shooting as he went.

He took two more lives at the church. He was in the building when Bourbannais (a member of New Life Church who is a Vietnam veteran) arrived.

“I ran and heard the gunfire and it was roaring like thunder,” Bourbannais told Meredith Vieira (TODAY co-host).

He saw a male security guard with his gun drawn, but the guard was not firing at the Murray.

“I said, ‘Gimme your handgun. I’ve been in combat. I’m going to take this guy out,’ ” he said, adding he repeated the request four or five times, but the guard would not hand him the weapon.

Bourbannais was behind a pillar at the time, deciding what to do next.

“The only thing I could think to do was walk out from the pillar so the gunman would see me,” he said. “He was a man in black, but he sure wasn’t Johnny Cash.

“So I yelled, ‘Coward!’ stood out, and our eyes met and he lifted his rifle, fired, and I took a few fragments – very minor – in my left forearm.”

Bourbannais stepped behind the pillar again and repeated his demand that the security guard give him a gun so he could take the shooter out. When he got no response, Bourbannais stepped out from behind the pillar to confront Murray again.

At that point, another security guard, 42-year-old Jeanne Assam, arrived with her gun drawn. Unlike the male guard, she was using hers.

“They were engaged in a firefight. He was firing. She was firing,” Bourbannais said. “And she was completely exposed. I was in Vietnam for 14 months in combat, and it’s the bravest thing I’ve ever witnessed. She kept yelling, ‘Surrender,’ and returned fire the complete time.”

Bourbannais walked parallel to her toward Murray as Assam shot him.

“As he slumped down and his head tilted, I said to her, ‘That’s the calmest, bravest thing I‘ve ever seen. How did you do it?’ “ he said. “She said ‘I was praying and asking the Holy Spirit the entire time to guide me.’ ”

Vieira asked Bourbannais if he realized that he could have been killed.

“I figured my chances were 30 percent,” he said, as calm as if he were describing a trip to the corner store.

“It’s the grace of God,” he said. “Like Jeanne, we’re both followers of Christ. I want to give God the glory, because I’m convinced He spared us that day.”

Another Young Murderer: Matthew Murray Identified As Colorado Killer

JUDITH KOHLER writes:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school a few years ago and had been sending it hate mail, police said in court papers Monday.

The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray's father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis researcher.

Five people — including Murray — were killed, and five others wounded Sunday in the two eruptions of violence 12 hours and 65 miles apart.

Opposite Reactions: Pro Gun Carrying vs. Gun Control

An "Eye-Witness" of Robert Hawkins shooting in the shopping mall, writes:

This part of the story may be removed later, but I will have it here for now.

I do not have a Concealed Handgun Permit. I have completed the training class, but I keep putting off applying for the permit because I think it is useless. In the places I would need a gun most, I am not allowed to have it. I will not be a person living in fear and not go to Van Maur because they don’t allow guns.

My point that Open Carry needs to be easier in Omaha, and places like Westroads need to take down their “no guns” signs.

If I had my gun deeply concealed, I wouldn’t have been able to draw it very fast. However, If I had open carried, I could of drawn instantly.

Either way though, I could have drawn and taken a clean shot. However, in both cases, regardless of the laws, I am not allowed to carry a gun at all in Westroads Mall. If the laws did not oppress my rights, I would carry a gun most places (except work). I would certainly have had it in the mall as mall shootings have been on my mind since the incident at a mall involving a shotgun back in February.

My wife is somewhat cautious about guns as is my sister-in-law. After this event, both are now pro-guns. In addition, I will never again be caught without a gun.

Off the top of my head, this gentleman (who amazingly survived being within a fairly close distance of shooter, Robert Hawkins at the mall in Nebraska) makes me imagine the 'wild West' where everyone was armed openly everywhere... in the streets, in the saloons, in the hotels, perhaps even in the churches (?)!

I can't imagine that this sort of open gun carrying would make any of us safer. It seems to me that if we all carried guns, then any time we felt threatened, we would be faced with the awful decision: do I shoot this person or wait? If I shoot this person, will that fellow over there (who is also packing a gun openly) know why I took the shot? Or will that person draw his or her handgun and shoot me? Goodness, just about everyone around me at that particular moment might draw his or her gun and shoot me!

As for me, I think I lean towards gun control, not open gun toting.

The KEY question is: How did this 19 year old get an AK-47?

Arrested Under Suspicion: Online Killing Rampage Threat

LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles police arrested a 21-year-old Loyola Marymount University student in connection with an online threat to shoot people on campus, officials said Saturday.

Police arrested Carlos Huerta, a senior at Loyola, for investigation of making criminal threats. Huerta was taken into custody on Saturday night near his apartment on campus.

Huerta is suspected of posting a message that he would shoot and kill as many people as possible on campus before being killed himself by police, authorities said.

Colorado Springs' Church Parking Lot Shootings

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A gunman opened fire in the parking lot of a Colorado Springs church on Sunday, striking four people, the church's pastor said.

The conditions of the people shot outside the New Life Church were not known, El Paso County Sheriff's Lt. Lari Sevene said.

Lance Coles, a pastor at New Life Church, told The Associated Press he received a report that a man was shooting at people in the church parking lot and that the gunman may have entered the church.

It was not immediately known whether the shootings were related to an earlier shooting about 70 miles away in the Denver suburb of Arvada. There, two people died and two were wounded early Sunday when a gunman opened fire in a dormitory at a missionary training center on the campus of Faith Bible Chapel.

Two Dead in Denver by Unknown Gunman

Early Sunday (December 9th) a gunman entered Youth With A Mission center dormitory and opened fire, murdering two staff members: Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 23. The other two were wounded; one is in critical condition; the other stable.

The gunman was apparently a 20-year-old white male, wearing a jacket and cap, possibly sporting a beard and wearing eyeglasses. He has not been apprehended.

Denver Shooting at Youth Missionary Training Center

DENVER - A gunman walked into a training center for young Christian missionaries in a Denver suburb early Sunday and opened fire, wounding at least four people.

The shooting happened at about 12:30 a.m. on Sunday at the Youth With a Mission center, Arvada Police spokeswoman Susan Medina said.

The extent of the injuries was not clear, and the gunman was still at large Sunday morning.

According to its Web site, Youth With a Mission has about 1,000 locations worldwide and trains people to become missionaries. About 50 people were inside the Arvada site when the gunman opened fire.

Troubling Choice: Freedom or Security

(Associated Press) OMAHA, Neb. - An Amish schoolhouse. A college classroom building, bustling with students and professors. An upscale department store at a mall, decked with holiday trimmings.

In recent years, massacres have occurred in the most benign settings, confronting Americans with a troubling choice: move toward airport-style security in a wide range of public places or fatalistically accept the slim chance that tragedy could strike anywhere in a free society.

Massacres are unlikely events; and Americans must not give up freedoms in order to remain secure. Security is actually an illusion. Just as a lock on a front door will not keep a burglar from entering one's home, neither will security guards and gates keep us safe from random acts of violence in public places.

If we succumb to fear, then we will lose. And, the terrorists, the crazies will win.

Gunman Kills

OMAHA, Nebraska: A gunman wearing camouflage and wielding a rifle opened fire in a department store at a mall here crowded with holiday shoppers, killing eight people and wounding five, before turning the gun on himself.

The gunman, identified by the authorities as Robert Hawkins, who was 19 or 20, of nearby Bellevue, Nebraska, was described by friends as a depressed person who had lost his job at a McDonald's restaurant earlier Wednesday.