Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because
you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work
so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4
I recently read of a very sad event where Fowler Methodist Church in Anapolis, Maryland was
vandalized with over $100,000 in damages. In that the church is a historically Black congregation,
it is easy to suspect that racist hatred was the motivation for the vandalism, although there was
also recent damage done to a nearby largely Anglo Presbyterian congregation’s building. It could
be that in both cases the anger was more directed at “church” than at the racial makeup of the
worshipping bodies.
Whatever the motivations of the vandal might be (and those motivations may never be known),
the congregation had to deal with the aftermath of the attack. Every Bible and Hymnal in the
sanctuary had been torn apart, “Nothing but paper — it looked like snow around our whole entire
sanctuary,” said Rev. Jerome Jones, of pages that were torn from Bibles and from hymnals that
had been in the pews, whose upholstery was ripped when a wooden cross was torn down and
tossed onto them.” ““When we do our offering, we always lift our hands towards the cross for
God to receive our offering,” explained the pastor since 2021 of the Annapolis church founded in 1871.
In recent weeks, congregants had to rethink that longtime tradition: “I told them the cross
is in their hearts.”
Every microphone cable was cut, and every cord and cable in the sound system was cut and the
television monitors mounted to the sanctuary walls were all smashed. The damage continued into
the Pastor’s office where the Pastor’s framed college and seminary degrees and pictures of Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X were smashed as well.
“Jones said he’s asking his church members to pray not only to heal their pain but the pain of
whoever is responsible for the vandalism of their building. ‘“I asked them to stand in solidarity
and let us forgive those who have hurt this church and pray for them,”’ he said.”
And soon, he hopes, there will be a prayer vigil for the community after the church and its
members clean up the signs of the vandalism that struck their building.
“I’ve got to make sure, if I do nothing else, I’ve got to let them know they didn’t win,” he said of
whoever caused the crime. “So to do that we’ve got to keep moving forward.”
I certainly hope and pray that we here at Central Christian will never face such a devastating
loss and attack as the folks at Fowler Methodist; but if we ever do, I will look back at the
witness of their example and take inspiration and encouragement from the way that they chose
to respond to their losses.
Our buildings and our stuff are not “the church”, and we must remember that we carry the
cross and Christ’s mission in our hearts, where no one can damage or destroy them.
Peace,
Pastor Layne