Monday, September 3, 2007

Neighborhood Pastors are Robbery Targets

In the past few weeks, several ministers in southern Dallas have been the targets of burglaries and aggravated robberies.

The latest victim was Bishop McGriff; he was held up at gunpoint of his offering in his driveway after leaving Church. Bishop is the pastor of the Church of The Living God in South Oak Cliff. If you read this blog, you know that Bishop McGriff is a local pastor that helps a countless amount of people in southern Dallas.

I take this one personally. Bishop McGriff has been really supportive in the cleaning up of his neighborhood and helping people. The zip code in which his Church resides is one of the most crime ridden and dangerous in the City. It's right around the corner from the Sunset and Southern Comfort Motels. Too many crack houses, too much violence and a sense that the criminals own the streets is contributing to this trend. When you're dealing with people that would stoop so low as to rob a preacher of his offering, you're dealing with terrorists that respect nothing.

Help is on the way. Dwaine Caraway is talking about addressing this issue at a City level. My hope is that this post contributes to a higher level of awareness about this issue. Watch out for your minister. Especially in our small churches, make sure that when the pastor closes down for the day there is someone closeby looking out for him or her.

Here is the news clip from Channel 8. Thanks to Brett Shipp for covering an crime wave that sometimes gets overlooked.

1 comment:

Black Majik said...

This is getting out of hand. These folk have no business carrying around the gun in the first place. And they are attacking the very people who are trying to stand up for them. This is a community issue as much as anything.