The Billy Graham Rapid
Response Team is requesting prayer for the United States and the city of
Charlotte, North Carolina, in the wake of violent civil unrest. Please
also pray for the chaplains as they decide how to best minister to the
community. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not
overcome it." -John 1:5
(Charlotte, NC)—[BillyGraham.org] A saying popped into Kelly Burke's mind late Wednesday night. (Photo via BillyGraham.org)
Standing in the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association headquarters after a night of outreach in the ministry's
backyard of Charlotte, North Carolina, he said, "Never doubt in the dark
what God has shown you in the light."
Burke, a manager with the Billy Graham
Rapid Response Team (RRT), will readily admit he's paraphrasing, but the
words attributed to late Pastor Adrian Rogers did bring some comfort
after a challenging evening. Crisis-trained chaplains with the RRT
deployed on Wednesday to Uptown Charlotte in the aftermath of violent
civil unrest triggered by a fatal officer-involved shooting on Tuesday.
The incident happened near the University
of North Carolina at Charlotte campus, and in the hours that followed,
violence ensued. Protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers.
Many officers and residents were injured, some sent to the hospital.
That violence on Tuesday night prompted Dr.
Leon Threatt to organize a group of local pastors to come together and
call for peace. The former Charlotte police officer invited the media,
along with other local clergy, imploring residents to respond
peacefully, and to pray.
"Our city is a good city," said Threatt,
pastor of Christian Faith Assembly and a Rapid Response Team chaplain
who deployed with the ministry to Baltimore in 2015. "Our people are
good people. I don't know how we've gotten to this point. I know that
we've had the tragedy, the death of a young man, and it's tragic for all
of us.
"We cannot take this route of terrorizing our community."
During the daylight, peace wasn't far from
the minds of those in Uptown Charlotte. Chaplains prayed with many in
the area, and two people made decisions to commit their lives to Christ.
The RRT's Mobile Ministry Center was parked in front of First Baptist
Church, where many stopped by. Two asked for prayer within minutes of
the RRT pulling into the parking spot.
"The ones we were able to pray with, we
could tell the Holy Spirit was stirring their hearts," chaplain Pookie
Mattingly said after walking the area with fellow chaplain Suzanne
Galvin.
Jeanne LeGall spread out a mat near
Marshall Park, site of the evening Rally for Justice, with her own
agenda for peace. A member of the Million Youth March of Charlotte, she
planned to pray for the city, just as the group did when civil unrest
erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.
"We
never wanted that to happen to Charlotte," Jeanne said, sitting on her
mat. "We didn't want to be on CNN with the name Charlotte and riot in
the same sentence. (Photo via BillyGraham.org)
"Our forefathers did not die for us to be
acting foolish like this," continued the grandmother of 19. "They turned
to the churches. They went inside the sanctuaries and they unified and
they did something peaceful. They didn't go out into the community and
do all this foolishness you see today."
Emmanuel Threatt, Leon Threatt's son and a
patrol officer with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, turned
the spotlight back on the Body of Christian Believers.
We [the Church] should be the beacons of hope that shine so bright." -Emmanuel Threatt
"We have to have a bigger role [as the
Church]," said Emmanuel, who's also a minister at Christian Faith
Assembly in Charlotte. "That's the only way to get this resolved really,
is that we are examples to the community of unity as [the] Church.
There's no other place. They're not going to get that anywhere else.
"I don't expect for the community to
understand," he added. "They don't understand hope. But we [as
Christians] do. We should be the beacons of hope that shine so bright
that it takes the scales right off their eyes because they're seeing
exactly what we're about."
Hundreds gathered peacefully in Marshall
Park for what they called a Rally for Justice for Keith Lamont Scott,
the man killed Tuesday in Charlotte. Chaplains offered emotional and
spiritual care, praying with people who wanted to do so. When the rally
concluded, the chaplains exercised a ministry of presence while safely
shadowing the protesters.
"The main focus of our ministry tonight was
a ministry of presence and just praying for calm, praying for peace and
praying for God's Spirit to overrule and override any spirit of
darkness and just for His light to shine," RRT manager Kelly Burke said.
The scene was peaceful—for a moment. Then everything changed.
"We
were close enough to hear the shot," Burke said, talking about the
gunshot that reportedly has left one person on life support. "Darkness
fell, and the atmosphere totally changed." (Photo via BillyGraham.org)
Police started putting on their riot gear,
complete with gas masks, as the violence escalated and looting began.
People on motorcycles, quads and dirt bikes zoomed aggressively, revving
their motors through the streets.
During this time, North Carolina Gov. Pat
McCrory declared a state of emergency and called upon the National
Guard. All the while, the chaplains were praying, albeit from a distance
as the violence escalated. Still, Burke knows better than to discount
the power of the light in the darkness.
"It's easy to go out sometimes and think, 'They're still burning and looting,' and say it was a failure," Burke said.
"But we have no idea what God did tonight."