How is your Sunday unfolding? For those at CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, MI, theirs turned into a tense experience. Thanks to the swift actions of a vigilant deacon and an on-the-ball armed security guard, a potential mass shooting was averted. During this time, the church was conducting a special service to showcase their vacation bible school program, with about 150 individuals present. Notably, there was a higher number of children than usual among the attendees.
Congregants heard noise outside the building, but assumed it was construction-related. Only when the security guard quickly instructed them to evacuate did they recognize the noise they heard was coming from a man with a gun:
The Wayne Police Department responded to reports of an active shooter at CrossPointe Community Church on Sunday, June 22, 2025, morning.
The church is located on Glenwood Road, between South Wayne and South Newburgh roads.
Wayne police are asking people to avoid the area as officers are still investigating the shooting.
WATCH:
More details have been revealed about how the two men helped mitigate the attack:
CrossPointe Community Church Senior Pastor Bobby Kelly Jr. said a deacon ran the shooter over, giving a security guard time to shoot the armed attacker outside the church, located at 36125 Glenwood Road in the city of Wayne.
“He was run over by one of our members who saw this happening when he was coming into church,” Kelly said.
Many wise congregations and faith centers have accepted the reality that even though they seek to create a safe and welcoming environment for all, there are those who wish to take advantage of this and do great harm, especially to children. According to Pastor Kelly, the members of CrossPointe Community Church started their security team roughly a decade ago because of the violence they saw being committed at other places of worship around the United States.
“We are sitting ducks to someone who wants to come and do harm,” Kelly said.
One of the churches I attended in California was also laser-focused on ensuring the safety of our congregation. The member-staffed volunteer security force was armed and policed the parameter of the property, remained stationed in the church lobby during services, and had men stationed in front of the children’s center. My church in Alabama has members of the local police force keep watch inside the property and outside, as well as in front of the children’s center.
The past decade has sadly seen an escalation in violence against people of faith, as well as houses of worship and faith centers. The 2019 shooting in Texas at the West Freeway Church of Christ could have had a bigger body count had it not been for Jack Wilson, an armed and highly trained congregant who took the shooter down. The 2023 at Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, CA, was focused on a soft target in a gun-control state.
Then there are the horrific attacks on Jews: In May, Israeli Embassy staffer Sarah Milgrim and her boyfriend, Yaron Lischinsky were gunned down after an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and the June terror attack against a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, CO, where a pro-“Palestine” perpetrator threw Molotov cocktails into the crowd, injuring six people. It behooves faith leaders to not just be on alert, but to implement security measures to protect their people and property, while being prepared to take down perpetrators who seek to do them harm.
We live in the age of FAFO. Too many evil actors have messed, and continue to mess around with the goal of creating chaos and taking as many lives as they can in their wake. Thank God that some of them are finding out that common sense, sober-minded, and well-armed individuals are no longer allowing carnage to happen just because it is in the mind of a killer to bring it to fruition.
