On Sunday morning Matthew Murray arrived at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, armed with an automatic rifle, two handguns, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
Earlier he had entered the Youth With a Mission (YWAM) training center for missionaries near Denver and shot four of its staff members, killing two. He drove 65 miles south to 10,000-member New Life Church, where local police officers were directing traffic departing the morning’s second service. He parked and waited.
Hundreds remained inside the church, browsing through the bookstore, chatting over coffee at the food court, or praying with the elders.
Suddenly Murray got out of his car and started firing in the parking lot. David Works, shot twice in the torso, was among those seriously wounded. His daughters, Stephanie, 18, and Rachel, 16, were shot with him inside the family van. Stephanie died at the scene. Rachel, mortally wounded, would die later at the hospital.
Then Murray, 24, entered the church building, shooting indiscriminately. Frantic church members ran for cover.
This was one of life’s indelible moments. Horrible as it was, I knew God was there.
Within three minutes, Jeanne Assam, an armed security guard on duty that day, stepped out and heroically made her way down the hallway in the face of rifle fire and “took him down” with multiple gunshot wounds.
Murray, an angry young man who had grown up in a Christian home, then committed suicide at the scene.
The shootings at New Life left three injured and three dead.
Brady Boyd, senior pastor of New Life Church, was interviewed by Phil and Pam Brown about that tragic episode and its effects on the church. They also wrote an epilogue.
How did you learn about the shootings?
Around 7:30 that morning, one of our security teams came to my office and told me about the shootings at YWAM. He said, “Because of that, we’re going to heighten our security here and bring in extra security people.” I said, “I think that’s smart” and went back to praying for the services that day.
Dr. Jack Hayford was our guest speaker that day. And the services were great. He and I were having lunch in my office when my assistant, Karla, rushed in to say there had been shots fired in the building. As soon as she said that, we heard shots below us. We locked the door, and I immediately called to find out where my wife and kids were. I was relieved to find they had already left the campus. I then began to call the pastoral staff.
Then our security team informed me that the gunman had been shot and subdued. We didn’t know at that point that he had died.
Within a few minutes, the police came. With Dr. Hayford, we marched out of the church with our hands in the air out to the Tent [the youth building], where a couple hundred people had gathered.
What did you do in the Tent?
I gathered everyone around and we prayed. I noticed right in front of me a very distraught woman who looked like she was in shock. That lady turned out to be Marie Works. Someone said that two of her daughters and her husband had been shot. A doctor from the church pulled me aside and said, “Brady, I was there, and I don’t think the two daughters are going to make it.” My heart just sank.
What I saw was the greatest testimony of forgiveness and redemption I have ever seen.
Then we learned that the shooter had died and that the two girls might not survive.
I knew this was one of life’s indelible moments. As horrible as it was, I knew God was there.
I also knew we were going to need trauma counselors. I called my friend and ally, Matt Heard, pastor of nearby Woodmen Valley Chapel. I said, “Can we borrow your church building?”
Matt responded, “You can have whatever you need.” So I asked one of our pastors to start calling every licensed professional counselor we knew, to call any trauma specialists that we knew, and arrange for them to be there all week.
In what ways did you see God at work?
In lots of ways. One of the greatest miracles to me is that more people did not die that day. If the gunman had made it to the Rotunda, he had enough weaponry to harm hundreds of people. He could have taken hostages.
I’m grateful for the heroism of Jeanne Assam, who risked her own life to go down the hallway where the shooter was and stop him. That to me is a real David and Goliath story. Jeanne had 14 years of police experience and lots of tactical training, but she had never fired her weapon at anyone. The gunman had an assault rifle, 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and two handguns. I think Jeanne had 10-20 rounds and a 9mm pistol. She was way over matched. But lives were saved by her bravery. I thank God for strengthening and equipping her to do what she did.
From a personal standpoint, a huge positive was seeing the hearts of our people welded with mine, and my heart with theirs. I’ve certainly fallen deeper in love with the church, with the people, and with the city. We are closer now than ever.
We also got an opportunity to share the gospel with a lot of people. We had to cancel three of our Christmas performances because it simply wasn’t appropriate to celebrate holidays when we were burying two young girls in our church. It was a time to mourn, not to celebrate. But because of all the news media, we got a chance to share the gospel with millions of people. The enemy came to strike fear in our heart, but all it did was give us more courage and more faith.
The enemy came to take away an opportunity to share the gospel with the lost when, in fact, all it did was give us an even greater platform to share the gospel.
So are you now a believer in having guns at church?
I’ve been asked many times about my view of having guns on a church campus. I point to the story of Jesus shortly before he was arrested, telling the disciples to take a sword with them. Why did he do that? Just maybe they had a need to protect themselves. I don’t think Jesus ever had a problem with us protecting ourselves.
Then again, we don’t trust in man’s weapons, “chariots or horses,” we trust in God to protect us. It certainly was God who filled Jeanne Assam with bravery and gave her the steadiness to go down that hallway.
How has this tragedy impacted your faith?
All this has done is confirm my faith. You don’t know what you believe until you have to walk it out in adversity. It’s one thing to stand and say God’s grace is sufficient, God’s strength is all you need, when things are good. When things are tough, that’s when it has to be proven. And it was proven true.
This isn’t the only trauma that New Life has experienced recently …
In the last two years, we’ve been severely tested twice. The first thought for many people when they heard that there had been a shooting at New Life Church was How can that church go through something else? That church will never be the same.
Well, in reality, it never will be the same. New Life has lost its innocence in some ways because anytime a violent act happens to a group of people, it changes what is normal forever.
A lot of people have mentioned the poor decisions that Pastor Ted Haggard made, and certainly he did. But if we talk about those things, we also have to point out that, for 22 years as the shepherd of this church, God used him to deposit a deep well of spirituality in the hearts of people.
I’m aware of that. I’m aware that I’m sitting under a tree that I neither planted nor tended, but I’m enjoying its shade and its fruit today. I’m grateful that God let him do something very deep in the hearts of people at New Life. Had he not, the church could very well have a “For Sale” sign on it right now.
I do believe that the glory of this house will surpass that of the former. None of us as men or women can stand and take any credit for that, it’s past that now. That’s exactly the environment where God does something very special—when there is no competition for the glory for what God does.
I think New Life Church is going to have a tremendous outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the days ahead. People will be more resolute, more excited, and more faithful. Our theology will get simpler.
We won’t quarrel over minor differences of opinion. We will agree on the major things and let that be enough. Those are all things that I think are going to happen at New Life Church, and I think that it’s already started, quite honestly.
If anything great happens, it’s obviously God now. I think that gives God great license to come now and do something great among us. So I welcome that.
Epilogue: pastoral care
A few days after this interview, Pastor Boyd quietly contacted the family of Matthew Murray, “Would you like to come to the New Life campus … to see the place where your son passed away?”
Overwhelmed with gratitude, Ron and Loretta Murray admitted they had longed for this very thing, but they’d felt they would be invading what they knew had been a tragic and difficult situation for the church. So they had stayed away.
Now they agreed to come. Boyd then asked them if they’d be willing to meet with the Works family. They said they would. He asked the Works, in turn, if they’d be willing to meet with the Murrays. Surprisingly, they also agreed.
Before the meeting, Boyd spent some time alone with the Murray family, retracing the steps of Matthew Murray on the church grounds, up until the place in the hallway where their son passed away. Many tears and hugs were shared as they grieved and prayed together over the tragedy.
Later, in Pastor Boyd’s office, David and Marie Works joined the Murrays.
“What happened there in the two hours in my office … was the most significant ministry moment I’ve experienced, maybe in all of my life,” Boyd said. When they first entered the office, the two families embraced. They sat, wept, and cried together, Boyd said, for “I don’t know how long.”
Then they prayed together. Later Jeanne Assam was invited to join them. When Jeanne, who had undoubtedly saved many lives but had been forced to shoot the Murray’s son, walked into the room, “the Murrays embraced her and hugged her and released her from any guilt and remorse. The dad looked at Jeanne and said, ‘Please know we’re so sorry that you had to do what you did. We’re so sorry.'”
We are reminded in the Bible not to repay evil with evil—not to be overcome by evil but to overcome it instead with good. The families involved in these tragic events are showing how to live out their faith by clinging to what is good in the face of unimaginable pain.
“We can talk philosophically about repentance and redemption and going forward with God,” Boyd said, “but what I saw in that room in my office was the greatest testimony of forgiveness and redemption that I have ever seen. It was a testimony that God really can restore and redeem.”
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