It was a postcard blue-sky summer morning in Minneapolis as I drank my coffee. I was working from home, about to start my daily prayers when the silence was destroyed by the horrific sound of emergency vehicles sirens and helicopters flying overhead. I turned on the TV to learn that there was an active shooter at Annunciation Catholic School.
Annunciation Catholic School is part of the fabric of south Minneapolis.
Authorities say a person in their 20s stood outside the school’s church and fired on children during Mass. They say two children — one 8 and the other 10 — were killed and 17 more people injured (14 of them children and three people in their 80s) before the suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot.
Annunciation Church is part of the fabric of south Minneapolis. You can see its tower and hear its bells. On its small patch of grass neighbors play Wiffle ball in the summer, skate in the winter and buy Christmas trees. The way the stonework of the church reflects the golden hour light can only be described as transcendent. Etched above its main doors are these words: “THIS IS THE HOUSE OF GOD AND THE GATE OF HEAVEN.”
More significant than the building and its stunning beauty are the K-8 students at Annunciation School. The students in their green shirts who overrun the Starbucks across the street when school lets out. The students who, raging with afterschool hunger, buy entire loaves of cinnamon bread at Kowalski’s Markets and tear into them on Lyndale Avenue. The students who joke and talk smack on Minnehaha Creek as they walk home. And in particular, the eighth grade Annunciation student who in many ways saved my life.
I’ve been leading one church or another for 25 years, but last spring I was at the lowest point in my life as a pastor. I parked my bike at the Washburn Library, and I walked the two blocks to the Kowalski’s Markets. As I walked, an eighth grade Annunciation student, who attends Judson Memorial Baptist Church, the church I serve in south Minneapolis, stopped me and said, “Hey, Pastor Travis.” I replied, “Hey.” I asked him how school was going, and he said, “Pretty good.” Then he asked me something so authentic I am still transformed by it. He said, “How is pastoring going?” No adult had asked me that in years, and the sincerity of his question floored me. I replied, “It’s going fine.” It hadn’t been going fine before he asked me that question, but it was more than fine after he asked it.
That Annunciation student saved my life with that innocent question. But why couldn’t I save his schoolmates’ lives? More is required than the work of one person, obviously; this is collective political work. But each of us should be asking a similar question.
Our kids deserve more than our thoughts and prayers.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus once said, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” So why in God’s name are politicians who proudly declare Jesus as their Lord and Savior not filled with conviction and responsibility for causing harm to these little ones? They are the ones who have the power and capacity to bring change.
The Annunciation kids, and all our kids, deserve more than our thoughts and prayers. They deserve our passion and commitment to making their world safe. They deserve our outrage. They deserve our commitment to do everything possible to “un-normalize” school shootings. Not because one of those kids just might save one of our lives, but so we can save theirs.
G. Travis Norvell
G. Travis Norvell is the pastor of Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Minneapolis and an adjunct faculty member at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He has served as an American Baptist pastor for 25 years in both small towns and urban churches.