Almost every day we hear about another tragedy in the world or in our country. Sometimes those tragedies hit home. In Today’s Conversation, Leith Anderson talks with Joel Hunter about how to respond to crisis when it comes to your town.

In this podcast, a longtime pastor and respected leader reflects on the recent Pulse nightclub shooting in his hometown and shares:

What kind of leadership pastors can bring to communities in crisis;

How churches can prepare for such events;

How his conversion story impacts his ministry approach; and

What messages need to be communicated to church members and to the broader community, including the media.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: What do we do when crisis comes to our city? What kind of leadership should pastors bring to the table? This is our topic for today. Joel, on June 12, 2016, a shooter killed 49 people and wounded 53 others inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, your city. That happened early Sunday morning. How did you first hear about what had happened? As a pastor, what was your first reaction — your gut response?

Joel: At four o’clock in the morning, I received an email from a police officer in our congregation who was headed to that scene. The email simply said, “Pastor, there has been a multiple casualty shooting event. I am heading there now. Please pray. If we ever needed prayer, it’s now.” And so, I was up at that time, but I usually do my devotions, and so I didn’t see the email until five that morning. Of course, I immediately began to pray, and after that time of prayer, switched on the news to see the horrible event of the biggest mass shooting in the history of our country. So I just rocked back. I was driven to my knees. I wasn’t preaching that weekend, but immediately began to hear from other community leaders about the event and about how we could respond.

Leith: In some ways your not preaching made it easier that you had one less responsibility. So what did that Sunday look like for you? What did you do the rest of the day? Did you go to church? Were you able to do that? Were you out in the community? What happened?

Joel: No, I wasn’t able to be at church. I was kind of out and about. Mostly I prayed. You know, when you don’t know what to do, you don’t know the extent of a tragedy… Because it was both a hate crime and a terrorist attack, and because it happened in a gay nightclub. I told my congregation soon after that; I was so gripped by this tragedy not because I had so many relationships in that community but because I had so few. And so the first reaction I had was “I don’t know if I know any of these families.” The second reaction I had was to pray that God would undergird, personally, each of them. And then a group of us pastors soon were on the line together. We have a pretty close fellowship of pastors here, and we were all saying,“Okay, this is a community tragedy. How can we respond to this together?” Because many of the injured were from the Latino community, and so El Calvario and other Hispanic pastors that we knew would be dealing mostly with the families. But, there was just this reaction like … it’s almost surreal. You don’t know what to do, so you do the two basic things you do know to do. You pray, and you talk with other people who are spiritual leaders who you respect and try to get some sort of response plan together.

Leith: So what did churches in Orlando and in the greater Orlando area — how did they respond? And Joel, I think what I am most interested in is not hearing the outlier story of some church somewhere that did something inappropriate or bizarre. What did most of them do? And especially what did they do that was good?

Joel: Well, thanks for that question, because there were so many events, they continue to this day, to memorialize and sympathize with this horrible event.