Today's pastor talked about a church tragedy that made national and international news

Rurel Ausley, Lead Pastor of Niceville United Methodist Church, shared a recent experience his church went through when a young family died in a plane crash. The accident made national and international news, and even got the attention of Westboro Baptist Church.


Your church had quite a tragedy happen. There was an airplane accident, and a family of seven died. What exactly happened?

Well, it was a young family in our church. He did all our computer consulting and work. She had a daycare in the community.

They were flying their plane back - no one knows exactly what happened, except their engine went out.

They had five children under ten.

It was a shock not only to our church, but to our entire community.

This made national and international news.

I talked with ABC, CBS. And Reuters.

This is not something that pastors are prepared for, so we had to feel our way through it.

It was a learning experience and a very stressful experience for us.

Almost every reporter would say, "Anything you want to add?" And I would say...we believe in Jesus Christ, and so did everyone of these family members, so they're in heaven.

It gave our church an opportunity to speak to the community about things that are very important.

How did your church help each other?

I think part of what I tried to do in the message was to bring some kind of sense to the thing.

I used Romans 8:28, and said all things work together for good for those who love good.

One of the things I helped the congregation understand that God did not cause this tragedy.

Life is fragile. We don't know from day to day, and we can't take things for granted.

Life is about relationships. You just have to make that a priority.

Another thing I said is, if you've got something to forgive, go do it.

The last thing I said, nothing would please the Teutenbergs more than to know that you came to Jesus Christ as a result of their death.

This is a bombshell event. Is that a similar kind of message you'll share when someone dies unexpectedly?

Yes. In fact, we had a young man who was 16-years-old who got tackled on the football field and died.

I just told the congregation, we're starting to heal together.

Our counselors on staff went to the children's facility.

It's something that we're continuing even to this day, that we're continuing to talk about.

The grieving process is exactly that; it's a process.

It's not like you can say a few words somewhere and everything will be fine.

A lot of it starts with trying to get it framed in God's eyes.

I imagine the first question out of the blocks is "Why, God?" Do the questions change over the weeks?

My first reaction was grief. Then it went to anger.

Yes, I think the questions probably do change from why did this happen to what do I need to do.

They were a family that challenged all of us by how they lived.

When the tragedy happened, you heard that Westboro Baptist Church was going to show up. What happened?

That was an interesting thing.

We were issuing statements to the media that we do not agree with this.

We also prepared our congregation. We sent out emails to our congregation. The best way to treat these people is with silence.

A local radio station negotiated with them to give them time on the air with them if they would not come. Of all things, they took that up with the radio station.

By 9:00 that morning, at least 100-150 people had shown up with American flags on motorcycles to protect the family, so they didn't see any of the protesters.