National Faith and Blue weekend celebrated at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church

Letters were sent out across the nation alerting pastors about the National Faith and Blue weekend. Senior Pastor David Brighton jumped on the opportunity to host an event and linked with the local police department.

Mount Calvary Lutheran Church and the Warner Robins Police Department teamed up to bring a Faith and Blue event to Houston County last weekend.

Due to the ongoing social tension toward law enforcement, Brighton said something like this would be an open house and a great way to get the conversation going so that citizens and police can come together as a community.

“As a pastor of this congregation, we are all about community,” said Brighton.

The goals of the Faith and Blue weekend were to get conversations going, to break down stereotypes and allow real discussions between the police and the citizens.

“What do we do so that we can have a community where we really love and care for each other no matter what skin color, no matter what your social economic level is?” asked Brighton.

Brighton said that Houston County has people in the community that have good faith and good will, and he did not see any reason that citizens and the law enforcement could not come together to address and figure out where the problems are. “If there is a problem somewhere, we need to deal with it,” he stated.

Although this was the first Faith and Blue event hosted in Houston County, Brighton does not want this to be his last time hosting an event like this and hopes to make it a yearly thing.

“Maybe next time we’ll do some kind of a panel discussion,” he said. “It’s just been a need for me to hear what the SWAT thing is all about.”

Warner Robins Police Officers Joshua Wilcox and Greg Martin came together with Brighton to make this event happen. They were contacted by Brighton about the National Faith and Blue initiative that was going on across the country, he asked them to be a part of the event and the officers absolutely agreed with it.

“With everything that is going on in the world and the negative press that police officers have been getting,” explained Officer Martin, “this was a way to partner with the church and get out in the community and be a positive influence on people.”

Martin says that there are positives to being a police officer and having police. The police department’s goal for taking part in this event was to spread positiveness.

“We’re not the bad guys,” said Martin. Events like Faith and Blue provides the community with information to let them know that the law enforcement is here to help, serve and do whatever they can to make sure that people can live in a comfortable and safe space. Its purpose also fosters good relationships between the citizens and the local police officers.

Brighton spoke about how police are supposed to be there to protect citizens, to be their friends, to be the people they should look up to and to be the people that are going to come to their rescue when they need it. “So let’s do all we can to foster those relationships,” Brighton proclaimed.

Although there have been tons of riots throughout the nation, Martin gave examples of how the Houston County police have great relationships with citizens in the community.

“We did have protest here; they were peaceful, there were no issues,” stated Martin, “And that speaks volumes.”

Martin says that situations like those are a testament to the community and police officers as far as the relationship the Houston County community has.

Pastor Brighton said that if they do this event again next year, he has hopes for more churches to be involved. “It would sure be great to have more folks involved; more Faith and Blue.”

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