We Never Dreamed It Could Happen Here

David Hogue

We Never Dreamed It Could Happen Here: Worship in the Aftermath of Violence

Introduction

The phone rang in my seminary office on a cold March Monday afternoon. The associate pastor of a nearby church spoke in hushed tones, almost whispering. A staff member had failed to appear for a weekly staff meeting, prompting a call to the police for a wellness check. Police responded and discovered a home virtually dismantled and three bodies, those of the staff member, her son, and her husband. It was a murder/suicide in the church’s former manse, a building within yards of the church itself. Information was still being gathered, but the horror was apparent instantly. A community service was planned for that evening. Could I come? 

Visiting clergy met in the church office, and just as we were about to leave for the sanctuary, the pastor asked if I would share a few words of comfort with the gathered group. I agreed, probably with a lump in my throat, having understood I was there simply to provide a “ministry of presence.” Fortunately, other colleagues were speaking first, giving me time to collect my thoughts. The sanctuary was filled with members from that church and other nearby congregations, friends and neighbors, and the Boy Scout troop to which the youngest of the victims had belonged. Counselors and social workers were there as well. 

It was my turn to speak. The exact words I offered have faded from memory, but I do recall my central thoughts. Sometimes our lament is simply too deep for words (Rom. 8:26); we struggle to make sense of the unthinkable, to comprehend the incomprehensible. But importantly, we are not alone; this gathered community represented not only our human interconnectedness, but also stood as a sign of God’s enduring presence. Gathering as we did to mark the moment and share our lament was the beginning of a process that we hoped would eventually help bring about healing from this horrific trauma. As Laurie Kraus, David Holyan, and Bruce Wismer have written,

Worship is where the community begins the challenging work of making sense of what has happened and sows the fragile seeds of hope, so that resilience may grow and restoration to wholeness bears fruit. The practiced rituals of the faith hold the story of the congregation together and provide the creative form that broods over brokenness and brings healing shape to the chaos of trauma and its aftermath.¹

Trauma-Informed Worship

As horrible as this event was, I knew that it was far from the first congregation or community to have been visited by violence. Nor would it be the last. Many communities are under threat as are everyday folk going about their everyday routines. Schools, shopping centers and grocery stores, music festivals and theaters, hospitals and doctors’ offices, parades and community celebrations of victorious sports teams are also regular sites of gun violence. Then there are those forms of violence considered “natural,” from historic flooding and mudslides to wildfires and tornadoes, all escalating under rapid climate change. How do we, as persons of faith and leaders of worship, begin to think about worship in the face of so many threats, not to mention their aftermath?

Violence leads to trauma. The depth and consequence of the trauma will vary from person to person, depending on their closeness to the event, to its victims, and their own experiences with violence. Understandably, the growing body of research on trauma, its consequences, and its healing has captured the attention of church leaders.² Theologian Shelly Rambo recognized the importance of trauma-informed theology a number of years ago. “Knowing something about trauma should change the shape of Christian ministry. When we write sermons or offer pastoral care, we can keep in mind three lessons of trauma studies: The past is not in the past. The body remembers. The wounds do not simply go away.”³

How do worship leaders prepare for the unimaginable, for shattering events like those that had unfolded just yards from where we were sitting? How do pastoral leaders care for congregations and communities when senseless violence has destroyed lives and sabotaged our sense of reality? Those questions have remained with me for years and came back in early 2023 when I served as guest editor for a volume on liturgical responses to collective trauma—more specifically, “Rites for Wounded Communities.”⁴ The subject was gripping and compelling, given my long investment in pastoral care, ritual, and liturgy, as well as the experiences I had encountered over many years of ministry.

Over the course of several months, I spoke with nearly three dozen clergy and other caregivers, as well as disaster care professionals, who shared with me their experiences. Several motifs or themes emerged, that is, what matters most: issues and questions to be considered in the preparation of religious services that are faithfully tailored to the particular trauma and the varying needs of those who have been direct and indirect victims. I first thought of these motifs as bipolar tensions, choices to be made one way or another as we prepare worship. But I have come to believe the apparent distinctions are complementary rather than contradictory, “ands” rather than “ors.” 

Seven of those motifs have emerged in my mind as claims about what matters in worship following trauma. They are descriptive rather than prescriptive, thematic rather than specific. All of them have implications for our regular patterns of worship but take on particular significance in the wake of the unimaginable. Additionally, each claim prompts questions to be pondered in worship preparation.

Worship Matters

1. Being Together Matters: Bodies and the Body of Christ 

Much of the research on trauma focuses on individual responses to violence or assault—the psychological and embodied memories of the event.⁵ And yet disaster responders have observed that entire communities experience collective trauma.⁶ They have discovered that survivors most valued being together with those with whom they have had preexisting relationships—friends, family, community members—much more than with responders who “parachute in” to help. Even complete strangers who suffer violence in public places often gather after the event to remember and reflect. In the face of tragedy, we feel an urgency to gather with those we know or with whom we have shared traumatic experiences. Of the many “tools” available for the healing of trauma—grief groups, spiritual direction, counseling—worship is the central public witness to our lament, our confusion, and our hope.

Faith communities with shared beliefs and deeply held practices have a wide range of prayers, songs, and liturgies that can provide comfort and take on new meaning following a disaster.⁷ Opportunities for healing can be lost, though, and real damage can be done, if these practices seem antiquated, empty, or ineffective. Deepening a congregation’s familiarity with our rituals and traditions, our Scriptures, our songs and prayers provides a treasure trove of practices to be called on when disaster strikes. Congregations who experience these rituals “in their bones” find meaning and reassurance in times of trial. Throughout a congregation’s life together, talking about the rich meanings of our practices—for Christians, the Lord’s Supper and baptism, our prayers of confession, our Scriptures, our gathering and sending out—can root those powerful symbols in congregational life and then be available to worshipers following trauma.

What about victims of tragedy who are not part of an ongoing community or faith group but want to gather as part of a larger community? Religion and media scholar Jeffrey Mahan notes that stable groupings like congregations are becoming less common and are often replaced by loosely networked communities. Participation in church worship and other activities is more sporadic and partial; some may attend programs and events—in person or online—only once.⁸ “These [brief, passing] connections can be deep and rich responses that connect immediate situations and emotions to a larger spiritual presence even if the goal is not sustained congregational life as we have known it.”⁹

Congregational leaders are familiar with worship settings that welcome those from outside the community—funerals, weddings, Christmas, and Easter. In times of trauma, it is also critical that we attend to the needs of those we may never see again. Visitors may not know their way around a worship service or be familiar with the prayers, readings, and songs of our faith. Hospitality demands that our worship in times of trauma welcome the stranger, planning services that open spaces for the experiences of confusion and lament, anger and protest, and that employ language and actions that are accessible to those who are not part of the faith community as well as those who are. Explaining what we are doing together will welcome those who are temporary participants. Context shapes the liturgy.

2. Time Matters: For Everything There Is a Season

Recovery following violent events is a process, not a moment in time.¹⁰ It sounds obvious, but the reality is often overlooked. We long for a return to normal. Violent events disorient us and turn our worlds into unfamiliar, even dangerous, places. Just as the body requires time to heal, so do our souls.

Responders and researchers have outlined a common trajectory for communities recovering from disasters.¹¹ They describe first a phase of Devastation and Heroism, the initial response of shock followed by heroic efforts to help and “fix” what has happened. Liturgically, this is a season of lament, of acknowledging our confusion and despair, while reinforcing hope for whatever new thing God will eventually bring about. Lament reveals a deeper trust in God than an unquestioning assent to “God’s will.” Disillusionment follows as reality sinks in—things will never be the same again. This is not a time for easy reassurance or denial in worship or pastoral care, but a constant reminder that God is present in our despair, even in God’s apparent absence. “Christ’s descent into hell” from the Apostles’ Creed reminds us of the necessity of acknowledging suffering and injustice without rushing into the joy of Easter Sunday. Reforming is an extended time of hope, hard work, and, frequently, conflict as congregations work toward a new vision of what lies ahead. Finally, a new normal, Wisdom, dawns as more profound questions of meaning arise and begin to be addressed. 

Worship in the early moments after trauma is less about enforcing a predetermined set of thoughts or feelings and more about an openness to a long process. As a result, worship will bear a different look and feel in each of these stages. In the immediate aftermath, we acknowledge our disorientation, our questions, and our lament; we trust that God is greater than our complaints and anger, and hope is yet to come. We resist the temptation to quickly claim that all is well, or to rush to forgiveness, or to embrace a slogan like “but it’s God’s will.” As we move through disillusionment to reforming and wisdom, our worship gives voice to a more seasoned hope, a hope that acknowledges that we are part of all of creation, and we worship a Creator who is constantly doing a new thing among us. 

3. The Creation Matters: Nature and Humanity

The experiences of those facing catastrophic losses in the aftermath of a tornado, fire, hurricane, blizzard, or flood are undeniably different from the experiences of those whose fifth-grade children were murdered in the middle of a school day. We experience storms and mudslides with less intense blame than if we’ve watched a beloved church leader being gunned down in the middle of worship. We have a name, a face, a personal story eternally connected to the shooting; we know, or want to know, whom to blame, what their motivation was, where to focus our anger—and perhaps even, sometime in the future, to forgive.

Natural disasters are often referred to as “acts of God.” That is not so much a theological claim as it is an implication that no human beings are to be blamed. In our humanness, though, we are seldom satisfied with randomness. Blame becomes our immediate response, and we have biblical precedent. Our Scriptures ascribe storms and plagues and war as God’s punishment or correction for sinful behavior or unfaithfulness. It can be hard to distinguish natural disasters from those we deem “human initiated.” We humans have contributed more than our fair share in damaging the God-given world in which we live. 

And what about human-caused violence? Yes, the shooter or abuser is responsible for the damage, death, and destruction they have wreaked. Yet we know there are cultural and social structures that inspire hate—racism, xenophobia, sexism, and homophobia. We understand the limits of our mental health care systems and we understand the epidemic of loneliness—that lost sense of connectedness and responsibility for each other. 

These questions may emerge over time, and the immediate aftermath is not the time for nuanced theological exploration. But we are reminded that in the aftermath of violence, our worship must acknowledge the breadth and depth of human experience, give voice to questions and recriminations, allow ourselves to raise issues of injustice, and avoid quick answers to eternal questions. That will come later, if at all.

4. Justice Matters: Anger and Forgiveness

Our passion for justice prompts us to hold someone(s) accountable. We pray for justice and consequences. For God’s sake, our own sake, and that of our neighbors, communities, and faith groups, perpetrators of harm must be stopped and held accountable. At the same time, our faith traditions hold out the promise of forgiveness. Some victims say, at some point, that they needed to forgive to relieve themselves of the burden of prolonged anger. It is also true that the church promotes an imperative to forgive. Yet a rush to forgiveness evidenced in some very public settings in the wake of disaster can be damaging. “For most of us, forgiveness is not so much an act of will shaped by intention and practice as it is a process, rooted in relationship, that in time brings reconciliation and peace. An exhortation for forgiveness, when imposed too quickly by well-intentioned faith leaders, short-circuits the work of lament and impedes the psychological work of grieving.”¹²

Our best worship may eventually lead to actions like advocacy, lobbying, or protesting that grows not only out of our anger and lament, but also out of our ongoing quest for hope. These responses will come later, but eventually they must be raised, since worship is concerned with more than restoring our comfort. What steps are we being called to take in the face of senseless gun violence? How do we address the needs of marginalized communities when basic rights are at risk and distrust grows among citizens of a nation and even among members of God’s kin-dom? Leaders serve best when they open spaces for lament, for protest, and for grief. The natural healing of communities requires honesty at each stage of recovery and a refusal to push toward premature forgiveness or closure. We pray for reconciliation, but recognize the hard work and time required to get there.

5. Meaning Matters: Wait for It

Following acts of violence, our deepest beliefs about the world, about human nature, about fairness and justice, about the trustworthiness of those around us, about God, have been shattered. We naturally want to hold onto what we have known, to the way things were, to the familiar. We knew how to operate in that world, what to expect, whom to trust, how to get what we needed, and what to give. Prayer and lament and honesty will do their work in the days ahead, but the world has changed. And the work of community, leaders, and worship begins—grieving the loss of the former reality. 

Worship leaders will avoid the temptation to offer unrealistic hope or promise a return to normal. As time unfolds, questions will emerge. Who are we now as a community, as a neighborhood, as a people of God? What do we retain from before tragedy struck? What do we abandon? These are time-consuming, painful processes, often lasting months or years. How might this congregation’s worship going forward take on new forms, new practices, new times and places? 

6. Rituals Matter: Word and Deed

Our Reformed tradition has emphasized word over deed, speech over ritual, even sermon over sacrament. We have inherited a healthy suspicion of “empty” or meaningless repetition that engages neither the mind nor the heart. And yet ritualizing is central to who we are as human beings. Ritual is “an imaginative and interpretive act through which we express and create meaning in our lives.”¹³ “Rituals also shape our stories, and our instinct to perceive life as a narrative urges us to rehearse that narrative through our bodies.”¹⁴

Earning enough to “keep body and soul together” is a catchy way to describe subsistence living, but the phrase suggests that body and spirit can exist separately. This body-soul dualism has led to the valuing of mind over body, of reason over emotion, and often to a persistent sexism. We know that the mind and our senses shape our bodily experiences. But we often overlook the reverse—the ways the body shapes our mental and spiritual experience. What we do with our bodies—whether we bow, stand, sit, kneel, or dance, the position of our hands and arms, the gestures of bowing or making the sign of the cross—profoundly shapes what we think and feel, even how we experience God. Over-reliance on language can clutter or limit our worship experience while our bodies express our praise and awe, our lament and our hope in simple movements. Respecting our bodies is even more important in the aftereffects of trauma.¹⁵ “To consider worship as an embodied event is to explore all the various ways bodies are involved in meeting God. We are the body of Christ; we are fed by Christ’s body; we encounter the divine in bodily experience; we worship with our bodies; we tend to others’ bodies as part of our Christian vocation.”¹⁶

To be sure, this wisdom applies to all worship. But it is particularly significant following acts of violence. How do we honor the wide range of ways people give bodily expression to grief, or anger, or despair, to hope and joy? How can we include silence for reflection and meditation or incorporate movement and gesture? What would it mean to hold hands with other worshipers, tangibly experiencing our connectedness? At the same time, how do we honor those for whom touch may seem dangerous or traumatic? How do we address the needs of the whole while respecting the differences of each?

7. Worship Leaders Matter: Care for the Self

Much current research highlights the secondary trauma that spiritual caregivers can suffer, either directly or through the exhausting work of hearing the constant pain of those affected by violence. Not everyone is at the same spiritual place at the same time, so worship leaders have the additional burden of attempting to give collective voice to the wounds of many: those direct victims of disaster, their families and close friends, the larger communities of which they are a part, and even those watching from afar in this age of livestreaming. 

The growing focus on self-care has influenced caregivers of all kinds as we have watched burnout, addictions, self-harm and suicide, boundary violations, and misconduct (along with damage to their most intimate relationships) take a heavy toll on those trauma caregivers whose boundaries of time and energy have been tested.¹⁷ Sleep and healthy eating are easily neglected in the wake of disaster, to say nothing of regular spiritual practices or psychotherapy. The toll on caregivers’ families, congregations, and communities has been even more devastating.

We’ve learned much about the sharp difference between selfishness and self-care, illustrated by the familiar warning on airplanes to first mask ourselves before attempting to help others. Without the ability to breathe and think, we are of no service to those for whom we want to give care. This warning bears repeating, since it is often forgotten. Worship leaders are as much at risk as direct care providers. We need alone time for prayer and reflection, meeting with other colleagues in services of prayer and song and conversation, freed from responsibilities for leadership. In the press of caring for others, we must also attend to our own lamentation, anger, sense of betrayal, and grief, restoring our own convictions of hope.

And So?

The wounds we experience in our various communities in this broken world will not go away. The end of political and ethnic divisions is nowhere in sight. Gun violence seems to go unchecked in a nation divided about the rights of individuals versus the common good. Climate change will continue to wreak destruction even if we move to more sustainable practices. With all the dire predictions about the demise of organized religion in the United States, our worship spaces are still familiar places of refuge and meaning in the face of tragedy. At least, we pray, they are places to ask questions.

We human beings are built for connection. Our sacred texts remind us that it is not good for us to be alone, and mental health professionals and neuroscientists repeatedly confirm that we need others to grow and thrive. Communities also have a natural impulse to ritualize, to find ways to enact the healing resources that our faith traditions promise. That is especially true when tragedy strikes. Our collective practices of prayer, song and reflection, whether they are formal or informal, ancient or contemporary, will continue to open spaces—in our sanctuaries and auditoriums, in our offices and on our playgrounds—for lament, protest, anger, and eventually hope. 

Our worship in times of tragedy has much to say to our week-to-week worship practices, including the central role of ritual. “Why do we wait for the worst to happen before we stop taking worship—and its amazing capacity to touch and transform our lives through symbol, song, word, and ritual—for granted? Why would we need a traumatic shattering of our faith-world in order to examine carefully each element of worship, to see how they can vibrantly evoke and truthfully reflect the complex realties of our lives and our world?”¹⁸ Our worship in extraordinary times has much to teach us about our practices in ordinary times.

Those two central claims that came to me on that cold winter night, in a sanctuary filled with people shaken and confused, continue to ring true. God hears our cries when words fail us, when we don’t know how to pray. And gathered together in one place, we are physically reminded of our spiritual connections to each other—and of God’s refusal to leave us alone.

Notes

1. Laurie Kraus, David Holyan, and Bruce Wismer, Recovering from Un-Natural Disasters: A Guide for Pastors and Congregations after Violence and Trauma (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 43.

2. As “trauma” becomes a more universally familiar term, there is danger that more and more areas of human experience—panic attacks, depression, even common sadness—will be assumed under that diagnosis. Stretched too far, the term is diluted; if everything is trauma, then nothing is. But rightly understood, trauma and PTSD research provide powerful ways
to understand human suffering—and to respond.

3. Shelley Rambo, “How Christian Theology and Practice Are Being Shaped by Trauma Studies,” Christian Century, November 20, 2019, www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/how-christian-theology-and-practice-are-being-shaped-trauma-studies/.

4. An earlier version of this essay was first published in Liturgy 39, no. 2 (2024).

5. Cf., for example, Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Viking, 2014).

6. Jack Saul, Collective Trauma, Collective Healing: Promoting Community Resilience in the Aftermath of Disaster (New York: Routledge, 2014); Kate Wiebe, “Faithful Marking: Learning to Observe Collective Pain,” Liturgy 39, no. 2 (2024): 4–14.

7. Cf., for example, “Justice and Reconciliation,” including Prayers and Services after a Violent Event, Book of Common Worship (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 591–632; Congregational Resources, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), https://pda.pcusa.org/pda/resources/list/?type=congregational; Kathy Riley, “Responding When Sacred Space Is Violated,” Liturgy 39, no. 2 (2024): 15–22.

8. Jeffrey H. Mahan, Church as Network: Christian Life and Connection in Digital Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

9. Jeffery Mahan, personal communication.

10. Wiebe, “Faithful Marking”; Kraus et al., Recovering from Un-Natural Disasters. 

11. Wiebe, “Faithful Marking”; Kraus et al, Recovering from Un-Natural Disasters. 

12. Kraus et al, 37.

13. Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals: Weaving Together the Human and the Divine (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998), 26.

14. Anderson and Foley, 27.

15. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score.

16. Kimberly Bracken Long, The Worshiping Body: The Art of Leading Worship (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 14.

17. The term “self-care” has been invoked to excuse neglect or legitimate care for others. Much more commonly, however, caregivers are likely to neglect their own health as they face the overwhelming needs of others.

18. Kraus et al, Recovering from Un-Natural Disasters, 109.