Mass shooting at Super Bowl victory rally highlights the challenge facing Kansas City.
By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Even before last week’s mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory rally, Branden Mims was focused on reducing violence in this city that mourned a record 182 homicides in 2023.
Mims, the 35-year-old senior minister for the Greater Metropolitan Church of Christ, leads a faith-based nonprofit called Greater Impact that served more than 400 shooting victims last year.
“Most folks are up in arms about the shooting at the Super Bowl parade,” the preacher said before leading a special prayer Sunday. “But I was up in arms before then.”
“Amen! Amen!” the congregation responded.
“Everybody keeps saying that this is not Kansas City, but it is,” Mims told members. “The sooner we accept it, the faster we can change it.”
Missouri’s largest city — with a population just over 500,000 — has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, the minister noted.
“Lord, we ask that you would turn this city around,” Mims prayed. “We ask that you would bless us to … continue to be the emergency responders to help bring souls to Jesus. And Lord, we pray that tonight there will not be another homicide.”
“Yes, Lord! Yes, Lord!” agreed Mary Johnson, 61, seated in a pew toward the back.
Johnson wore a black shirt with white letters that declared, “I will walk by Faith, even when I cannot see.”
“God moves,” the Chiefs fan said after the assembly. “He’s going to move in this city. He’s going to stop all this stuff that’s going on.”
Greater Impact operates out of the church, which just a few years ago erected its purple-carpeted building — with a coffee shop open to recovering drug addicts — in the heart of the city.
“There have been shootouts on the backside of the church, and unfortunately, sometimes the building gets hit,” said Mims, who started the church in a storefront in 2013. “We just repair it and keep going. We came into this area on purpose.”
This story appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.
Photo by Eddy Burnett
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