DENVER—Seven months after a gunman killed two people at his church, Pastor Brady Boyd was sitting in a service on Sunday morning when he was handed an iPhone bearing news of a gunfire assault on a congregation in Tennessee.
“Obviously, I was devastated,” Boyd said Tuesday. “I know exactly what that church is feeling, I know exactly what that pastor is feeling.”
Matthew Murray shot and killed two teenage sisters at Boyd’s New Life Church in Colorado Springs on Dec. 9, hours after killing two people at a missionary training center in suburban Denver.
On Sunday, a gunman killed two people and wounded six others at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville.
Boyd said he was sitting in a front row at his church, listening to a guest speaker, when someone handed him the phone linked to a news story about the Knoxville attacks. He didn’t mention it to his congregation, he said, for fear of passing on misinformation, but they met that night to pray for the Tennessee victims.
“We’re not experts, but we are experienced in church shootings,” Boyd said. “It’s terrible. It’s a sad thing. We’re praying for them.”
Boyd said New Life officials have contacted the Knoxville church and offered help, but they haven’t had any extended conversations.
If he were asked for counsel, Brady said, he would advise Knoxville church members to rely on each other, meet again soon and clean up the damage as quickly as possible.
“We repaired the building completely so there was no evidence of the shooting. That turned out to be a really good decision,” he said. “People did not have to come back to the campus and relive the trauma.”
Boyd said New Life could clean up quickly because Murray took his own life immediately after the shootings, eliminating the need for a long investigation and trial.
With 58-year-old Jim D. Adkisson facing murder charges in the Knoxville shooting, the Unitarian church may have to wait for an exhaustive investigation before making repairs.
Boyd said New Life also decided to talk freely about the shootings.
“It changed our lives forever, so we talk about that,” he said. “What happens is when you create this idea of open dialogue about a tragedy, it gives people permission to open up and talk about it.”
