Together in Grief and Hope

Dear members and friends of Park Avenue Church, 
 

It’s supposed to be a celebrative week in South Minneapolis. The State Fair is in full swing, multiple arts and cultural events are underway, teachers and students excitedly start a new school year, and a beautiful forecast for the Labor Day Weekend closes the summer season. But far more than just dark clouds overshadow our spirits… 

This past Tuesday, one person was killed and six people were wounded while standing on a sidewalk outside of Urban Ventures, a child and youth service center founded by Park Avenue UMC’s former ministry program director, Art Erickson. Less than a mile north of our church, firepower equated to a weapon of war was unleashed on community residents. 

The very next day on Wednesday morning, students, family, and staff gathered for Mass to celebrate the first week of classes at Annunciation Catholic School a few miles to our south. Amid worship, a person armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol fired through windows from outside the building into the sanctuary, killing two elementary-age children, wounding fourteen more children ages 6-15, and three elderly parishioners.  

The shooter died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Because of the personal history of that individual, actors on social media are now using this traumatic incident to unfoundedly attack the transgender community with generalized vilification. Unspeakable pain, anguish, and division continue to tear at the fabric of our neighborhood, still frayed by the racial and political trauma that escalated in Minneapolis over the past five years. Park Avenue Church courageously and faithfully stands at the epicenter of it all. 

At the time of this writing, a flurry of details stream from media outlets. It is hard not to become overwhelmed by fear and incapacitated by hopelessness. It is hard to muster words when sidewalk conversations were silenced by high velocity bullets. It is hard to offer prayers, when worship was interrupted by a shotgun shattering stained glass. It is hard to embrace the marginalized when rhetoric threatens oppressed and allies alike.

But mustering words of support and accountability, offering prayers with heart and feet, embracing the margins with peace and justice, are still what we are called to do. 

Given permit data from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, it is estimated that there are more guns than people in Minnesota. The National Alliance on Mental Illness estimates that more than half of Minnesotans with a diagnosable illness do not receive any treatment. These are just a couple root variables over which we could have direct influence to raise the assurance that our schools, houses of worship, stores, businesses, movie theaters, restaurants, and all other public spaces are safe spaces. We live in community. These tragedies didn’t happen to “others” they happened to “us”.

And every Sunday we profess, “We can do… all things… through Jesus Christ… who strengthens us!” 

Faithfully Yours,
Pastor Dan