, and across the greater Nashville, Tennessee, region, many Christians headed to worship services grief-stricken and hurting for the lives stolen too soon in The Covenant School shooting.
“We have to engage with what has happened,” he told The Associated Press a few days after the Monday shooting. “The Bible calls us to mourn with those who mourn, to weep with those who weep and so we will.” Together on Palm Sunday, and in between victims' funerals, their church members lamented the dead: the three 9-year-olds — Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney — and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school; Mike Hill, 61, a custodian; and Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher.
It's a message he thinks can be healing for Parish Presbyterian's heartbroken church members who are trying to process what happened. Several congregants have belonged to both churches, he said. Grant himself is friends with Covenant Presbyterian's leaders and also served as the church's first adult Sunday school teacher about 30 years ago.
During Sunday's service, Parker planned to encourage his congregation to think of God's unconditional promise to save them from their sins and death every time they hear the word “covenant." Due to the circumstances created by the shooting, he said he and his staff also have let themselves off the hook in terms of providing showcase Easter week services this year.
“Death and darkness never have the final say," Stauffer said on Friday before he presided over Evelyn Dieckhaus' funeral service. “We're people of the resurrection, and so we have to remember that as awful and as terrible as this has been, there is a lot of good and a lot of light coming from it.”