Latest project: Fear No Evil: A Test of Faith, a Courageous Church, and an Unfailing God (Zondervan, April).

Your church suffered a tragedy on Dec. 9, 2007, when a gunman came to your campus. What happened? Matthew Murray, a 24-year-old young man, came on our campus. He had a thousand rounds of ammunition attached to the vest that he was wearing. He had an AR-15 assault rifle, a couple of handguns and some smoke grenades. He had distracted part of our volunteer security team and drove up through our parking lot, got out of his car and opened fire into a family who was getting into a van. As he fired into that van, he struck Rachel and Stephanie, an 18 year old and a 16 year old. (They) were both shot and died almost instantly. Their dad was injured, shot through the abdomen. This gunman then turned and shot into several other cars, injuring a lady who was driving by. … He then came in one of the doors of the church and was shooting down the hallway at people as they were running for their lives. A very heroic security guard, who was a volunteer at our church, stepped out and confronted him, injured him, and as he was injured, he crawled over into another hallway and took his own life, but not before two people died and several others were injured. It was by far the darkest day of my life. In fact, that day I had only been a pastor for that church for 100 days. 

And this was the same gunman at the Youth With a Mission location nearby? Yes that's right. That was the night before. … This young man had once been a part of that YWAM base, but he had been dismissed years earlier because of some mental issues. 

Murray's parents later came and met with the couple that lost their two daughters. What was that like? The four of them met in my office and I'm telling you it was the most powerful display of forgiveness and grace I had ever seen in my life. These two families embraced one another, prayed for one another, cried with one another, and I've just never seen such an expression of forgiveness. Then, of course, the next Sunday when I told our entire church what had happened, our church just erupted. It was just an amazing display of gratitude. 

Tell us about the "miracles" you say have happened in your church since. Thirteen months before the shooting, the founding pastor of New Life, Ted Haggard, had been on the front page of every newspaper for a scandal that involved him. Obviously he had to resign at the church, and all of that is a story in itself. Then we had a shooting on our campus. So in the stretch of 13 months we were on the front page of every American newspaper and newspapers around the world for two very bad things. … At that time we had actually begun the recovery. We started seeing life come back to the church. We saw the church start growing again. It's a miracle. That just doesn't happen. 

What do you hope readers will take away from this book? It's all based on the 23rd Psalm, verse 4, that even though we walk through the shadow of death, we will fear no evil. … This story is about a church who found themselves in the darkest place imaginable, and we began to worship together and pray together. We began to come alongside one another as friends, and we have found ourselves on the other side of the valley. … Those lessons that we have learned are absolutely invaluable. I shared a lot of these things in the book. 

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