Texas congregation has first service since mass shooting

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas — The sprawling white tent was already packed with hundreds of mourners Sunday, some of them spilling outside beneath an overcast sky, by the time Frank Pomeroy, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, took to the stage. He stood in front of a wooden cross wrapped in holiday lights.

At this moment a week earlier, with Pomeroy out of town, Devin Kelley entered the small white church and started shooting members of the pastor’s beloved congregation with an assaultstyle rifle. Twenty-six of them, including a pregnant woman’s unborn child, would die in the massacre.

In a tent erected on a baseball field a few blocks away, Pomeroy was again preaching, this time to a far larger congregation made up of victims, their family members, locals and outsiders who arrived from around the region to show their support for this tiny, heartbroken town.

“I know the name of every single person who lost their life that day, some of which were my best friends, and my daughter,” Pomeroy said, pausing to hold back tears as the crowd began to applaud and yell encouragement. “I guarantee you that they are dancing with Jesus today.”

Pomeroy told the crowd that his church, just days removed from being full of FBI crime scene investigators and the horrors of the largest mass shooting in Texas history, would reopen to the public Sunday as a memorial. It had been cleaned and painted and had audio from previous services playing in the background.

“I haven’t seen this done in other catastrophes,” Pomeroy said. “But I want the world to know that that building will be open so that everyone who walks in there will know that the people who died lived for their lord and savior.”

Members of the crowd listened to sermons from Pomeroy, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Mark Collins, a pastor at a nearby church, who spoke about the importance of faith and healing. They sang along to songs and hymns, many hugging and breaking down into tears.

Meanwhile, Kelley’s former wife said that he had threatened to kill her over the course of their relationship, once putting a gun to her head while he was serving in the Air Force and asking her whether she wanted to die.

The comments were the first public statements made by the gunman’s first wife, Tessa Brennaman.