Dear New Hope Family,
This week has been one of great trauma and tragedy for our community. In the wake of the senseless and evil shooting at Apalachee High School on Wednesday we chose to cancel our Wednesday night LUG and Kidzlife programming to gather to pray. As the week has unfolded, I wanted to share with you five things we are doing as a church community.
Before this event we had increased our security presence on our campus. While no evil is totally preventable, we have a number of procedures we had put in place this school year to protect our church body. This included bringing in one of the most sought after experts nationwide in church security as well as consulting with local law enforcement.
This Sunday at LUG AM and TrueNorth we will be addressing what happened at Apalachee with our high schoolers and middle schoolers. In our children's classes, if a child brings this up, we will pull them aside and have an adult team member listen, and pray, but leave the discussion up to parents.
We will be hosting a Zoom Family Meeting at 9 pm to discuss how to talk with your children about trauma. In addition to our trained counselors we also have a couple of success stories to share. The link is found below.
We will have a handout of information available in the lobby for parents to take home and discuss with their children of any age at their discretion. As a part of that, we will have a card for families to write notes or draw images of encouragement, prayers and love to one of the victims families that has a direct tie to our ministry.
We will also have trained/professional crisis counselors available should students, children-with parents or parents desire to speak with them. These counselors will be available in the lobby between services at this same table. We will also have elders and wives available to pray during the service. We hope these are helpful steps for our church family as we move forward in this painful season.
Grace and Hope,
Pastor Randy