Early Friday morning 6/12/09 a group of uninvited teenagers and young adults gathered at our Church game room with two young adults who were given permission to play pool there. One of these uninvited individuals overheard at work that these two were going to be in the game room and decided that they would text several others and invite them to the Church. This was done without the knowledge of any person that attends our Church. This resulted in seven arrested for underage drinking.  While alcohol was found inside our Church building it appears that most consumption occurred off premises prior to these individuals arrival at the Church.

By the time I found out about these events the news had already picked up the story and it was on the radio and TV news reports and several newspapers across N.D. While we are aware that it is not the intent of the news media to report inaccuracies, it wound up that inaccuracies were included in these reports. For instance, KXNet.com reported “…the pastor told authorities the teens did not have permission to have liquor on the premises” In actuality I never spoke to any police officer concerning the events until several hours after these reports began circulating. My daughter, who lives in a private residence next to the Church building, is the one that spoke with the Police officer. Another congregant informed me that they heard one radio news report indicate that the Pastor’s son invited these individuals to the Church, I do not have a son and the only part my daughter had to do with this matter was she opened the door to the Church for the two young adults who were given authorization for being there.

I find it interesting that no one from any news agency had contacted the Church for any details before releasing the report which showed pictures of our building and broadcasted our Church contact information from our Church sign. The concern that many of the congregants at our church has is that the inaccuracies and incomplete investigation of this event by the news media leaves many to determine that these individuals were at an approved event at the Church and that the Church was somehow negligent in not supervising the underage drinkers. This of course was not the case.

At Spiritual Life we believe, that as Christians, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and we are to treat our bodies with upmost respect. The Bible teaches that we should not drink in excess and should not be drunk. It further teaches that we are to obey the laws of the land and guard the house of God. Although we leave it to each individual Christian’s conscious with God if they abstain completely from alcohol or if they limit the intake, we do not have alcohol on our premises for any purpose.

Soon after we were blessed by God with our beautiful Church facility we added a game room for use in youth and fellowship activities. As part of our outreach vision we have allowed access to our game room to the families of our congregants for private family game time. This decision has been instrumental in welcoming many extended family members of our congregants into our fellowship and we have seen some of these family members make a new commitment to Christ. We now have several regular congregants who were welcomed through this outreach.

With this said, and to be truthful, I do not know why any teenager or young adult would think that they should show up uninvited to a Church when the Church was not open to the public at the time, not alone that they would bring alcohol to the Church with them.  Yet this is what occurred.

The reality that people came into our property uninvited and disrespected the house of God makes many of our congregants feel violated. The natural human response is for our emotions to flare and for anger to surface. In the flesh, we would desire to demand that this violation be reconciled by those who made these rash decisions. We could easily step into anger and let that anger rule our responses. But as Christians, we have an obligation to seek out the answer to one simple question: “WWJD – What would Jesus do?”

To answer this question we turn to God in scripture and prayer and ask for the Holy Spirit to guide us. As Pastor of this Church, I have instructed the congregants to choose blessings and not cursing. I have led them in prayer that asked for “God to wink at the ignorance of those who made this choice and for God to bless these individuals and guide them to the truth of salvation through Jesus Christ.“

While we regret that this even occurred we see the example of Jesus upon the Cross that he prayed to the Father “forgive them for they know not what they do.” So we elect to follow Christ example and ask the same in this situation.

Pastor Bob