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Subscribe to RSSThieves tore apart the youth center of a Georgia church and made off with nearly everything they could — including a refrigerator, a stove, a microwave oven, broilers and the copper in the ceiling — while the congregation worshiped during Sunday services upstairs, the church's pastor says.
"They stood on the chairs and took all the copper. They took our kitchen utensils," said Mona Harper, pastor of Kingdom City Church in Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta.
But then they went a step further, NBC station WXIA of Atlanta reported.
"They took crayons, magic markers and DVDs. They left the Bible and the Scrabble game, but they took the board games," Harper said.
"Things that we use to get kids off the street, they just took it," she said.
WXIA-TV
Pastor Mona Harper surveys the damage at Kingdom City Church in Stone Mountain, Ga.
The break-in was discovered Wednesday when members arrived for weekly Bible study. Harper said she believes the break-in started during Sunday night services because the sound system and lights began malfunctioning.
"They were apparently downstairs cutting electricity to some of our units," she told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
News of the break-in galvanized community support in the Atlanta area.
Within an hour, Home Depot — whose corporate headquarters is in Atlanta — donated a refrigerator, a stove and a microwave oven. The School Box, a chain of education supply stores in the Atlanta, offered to replace the stolen school supplies. Mount Carmel Christian Church in Stone Mountain, meanwhile, offered to let Kingdom City use its facilities for services.
Harper, whose leads the congregation with her husband, James, the church's bishop, said the robbery had left her undeterred.
"If somebody could come in on a Sunday night while church is going on and literally rob a church — not only rob it but endanger the people and possibly could have set this place on fire — I believe that my work here is more needed than it's ever been."
Police said they were investigating the incident.
M. Alex Johnson of msnbc.com contributed to this report by Bill Liss of NBC station WXIA of Atlanta. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.
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Grinch"s.........
"If somebody could come in on a Sunday night while church is going on and literally rob a church — not only rob it but endanger the people and possibly could have set this place on fire — I believe that my work here is more needed than it's ever been."
Yes, Pastor Harper. You said a mouthful.
Wonderful to see Home Depot, The School Box and Mount Carmel Christian step up right away to help and support Kingdom City Church. Community helping those who help the community - Blessing those who Bless.
WONderful SEEing
Perhaps if the church had had some kind of activity going on downstairs at the same time the theives wouldn't have done this, that being said those theives will surely go to H**L when they die unless they return the property and ask the whole congregation for foregiveness.
god forgives not some collection of other sinners. now if you said apologize or i'll kick your ass and call po-po.....well that makes sense, though it doesn't make the apology sincere
you can't even prove that creature exists, let alone what it does or thinks. stop saying silly things.
And WHY ARE YOU HERE IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD! I mean REALLY though.....for your sake I hope he does not exsist to but hey i believe so we will both see in the end wont we.
Hell only exists for those that believe in heaven. Besides all the criminal needs to do is ask forgiveness with his dying breath and St. Pete will open the pearly gates. He doesn't have to have anything to do with the congregation and their forgiveness.
There is more evidence of Santa, the easter bunny, and the tooth fairie. Look around and you can surely see who the world is worshipping right now. When was the last time god was in the mall asking people what they wanted?
what do you mean by that? where am i supposed to be? i have to believe in your cult god to post on NewsVine???
they must send from hell. People now days are just evil. May God have mercy on them
Amen.
I am left totally slack jawed. Just when you thought you had heard everything...you have not heard or seen everything until you die and you might see something then. These people will rot in hell.
lol, they're going to get sent to a mythical place, huh? wow, there's a punishment!
I hope the first thing she does is to get a good (top of the line) security system. Any rat who breaks into a church and steals needs to be sent away for a long, long time! To disrespect your neighbor is bad enough; to disrespect God is blasphemy!
You are kidding us right? Is stealing from the elderly a lesser crime? Is stealing from anybody a lesser crime? The crime here is that people are so stupid that everything was lifted under their noses and I think it was planned and an inside job.
Wow. Reading some of these comments is astounding, with all of the "burn in hell" remarks that feel as though they were said with relish.
I wonder which grieves God more - the fact that some of His "lost" robbed a church, or the fact that some of His apparent "believers" seem to be relishing in the demise/rotting of said lost.
Robbing the church was a criminal act and a rotten thing to do. I hope the law finds the people who did it, but I hope more that the hearts of the criminals who did this are are convicted. I also hope the hearts of those indignantly and self-righteously glorifying in their judgment are as well.
It always floors me when an "evil" act committed by a non-believer results in believers exhibiting the same staggering lack of Christ.
Your god burns people in hell, but we are to believe he'd be upset at someone that, like him, "relishes" the idea? If god doesn't want people relishing that idea, why use that form of torture?
Our God does not send people to hell. It's not His desire to see anyone be separated from Him. It is man who sends themselves to hell led by his own desires and his own will to not believe in God and do whatever they want to do. God, Johova God is a God of covenant, you can chose to follow the covenant or not, just know that their are consequences to all actions and hell is a consequence of an unrepented heart
You earlier stated that god does not send people to hell. So that means that they just don't get authorization from St Pete to proceed further.
I'm not sure I want to get into heaven. There doesn't seem to be much of a screening process. There may be people already there that I don't want to confront. You know, ex-mother-in-law. And then I would think I went through the wrong door and ended up in an equivalent of hell after all.
There you go again. You can't even prove this cult god of yours exists, yet you talk of this god-that-created-the-universe as if you know what it thinks, how it feels, and how it handles all the billions of people on this planet.
And you have no idea how ridiculous you look and sound to everyone you are babbling to! LOL!!
One group was trying to buy there way to heaven as the other group were stealing there way to hell
so, everyone there had their eyes on mythical cult places, huh?
now THAT'S funny!
If these culprits are found and convicted, I hope they get LOTS AND LOTS of community service, cleaning churches, youth centers, schools, senior citizen facilities while being required to CONTRIBUTE financially to the purchase of some of the items they stole. That is of course after they spend a bit of time behind bars, possibly suffering some humiliation from their peers for stealing from the poor, who are trying to help kids in their communities. Shame on the B@$tards.
I'd rather send them to Afghanistan to assist in the clearing of minefields....using lead boots and highly magnetic probing stakes.
yeah. steal a fridge and some kitchen utensils, so, your reply is to blow their legs off.
you must be a christian republican. there can be no doubt.
because YEP! that's exactly what your jesus-myth would suggest.
how quickly you people crap all over the values of the mythical jesus cult-creature you claim to worship...
The GOP and BAGGERS have sent out their militia again! What is wrong with these thieves of LIFE?
I read about stealing the Salvation Army Red Kettle full of money and Now this.
If ONLY THE MORON THIEVES would stop following the GOP AND BAGGERS Ideology OUR WORLD would be a better place.
Send the repair and replacement BILL to CONGRESS They should pay for their damages done to SOCIETY!
You need to get off the crackpipe Alain. It's very liberal-atheist to steal from a church, illegal aliens (one of the Democrat Party's most favorite kind of people) are one of the most often arrested for stealing copper from buildings/homes for scrap metal, and it looks like an inside-job. Someone who knew the property well. Meaning some liberal welfare-recipient they were assisting cased the place for robbery.
While it's very conservative-believer for a church to steal from everyone else. How dare ANYONE turn the tables on these fleecing POS's!!
Has anyone here given thought to whether this was a pre meditated crime from the inside? Just because you run a house of worship doesn't mean you play by the rules.
Something fishy...They noticed things going haywire and malfunctioning during the service but nobody checked on it for a while.....just saying....
Sad that God wasn't on their side like he was on Tebow's.
yeah, funny that -- while they were hand-mumbling to their cult-god (if it even exists) this cult-god allowed them to get burglarized! i guess he felt they deserved it.
DMorgan, I'm sorry that you seem like such an unhappy person. As one of those hand-mumbling cult God worshipers, I'm sorry you feel the way you do, though it is you choice. You may wish ill against those of us who do believe, but we do not all wish ill against you because you choose not to believe. Though I must say you are trolling a bit, an atheist (I assume) coming onto a news page about Christians just to insert your ill opinion, but to each their own.
I am a happy person. Just because someone speaks factually, it doesn't mean they are unhappy. What an odd creature you are, to suggest that just because someone doesn't swallow your Cult Cool-Aid that they must, therefore, be unhappy... How weird and funny! LOL!!
No need to feel sorry for me. I choose education and enlightenment over bronze-age cultism, and i dont need that silly cult nonsense as a crutch to get through life. And yes, it is my choice to disbelieve in your cult along with the thousands of others through history. You and I are barely any different. I only disbelieve in one more cult then you do (you disbelieve in all the others as well...)
I wish education, common sense, rationality, the ability to employ critical thought and reason -- I wish that upon everyone. Maybe you see that as "ill wishes" -- but I don't.
You see rationality, logic and critical thought as "ill wishing" -- again, what an odd creature you are. I hope you feel better about yourself, and Ido hope you get a bump in your self esteem someday.
Cheers!
HEY, easy on Tebow!
Reading some of these comments, I have to wonder about people, especially those who blame the church for allowing it to happen or those have some praise for the thieves for taking away from the "evil" churches. A church was robbed. Simple enough, no? What if it were a school that got robbed, perhaps during an assembly or maybe a game? People probably would have a problem with that, but a church is okay to steal from? News flash, not all churches and congregations are bigots, intolerant people and/or serve as ways for clergy to get rich via dubious means.
Your Government robs from you.So what are you going to do about it??? I see..........
no, but most of them are. This one's in Georgia...so, chances are...
This has got to me the most heartless thing I have read in a long time. I will pray for the thieves, takes a certain type of person to be this classless.
There is hope for all with God.
except for this church, obviously, since they were all glorifying this cult-god, while he let them get burglarized.
Didnt Jesus warn you folks to be a Watchman? See even a real thief can steal you blind in daylight.It was known as the Material Rapture..Good thing you folks were left behind...lol
Alert all of the metal re-cycling places. Tough times bring out the Rats hiding in the basement and rafters.
I find it pathetic that when a church gets robbed, it brings out the non-believers spewing their hate rhetoric. Typical.
How about you people actually blame the ones responsible for this instead of the church-going people? Oh right, I'm sorry. It's because their Christians. How silly of me to forget that little fact.
One thing about non-believers is that I can always count on them to start in on their stupidity at a moments notice.
"Typical" "One thing about non-believers is that I can always count on them to start in on their stupidity at a moments notice"
Now wait a minute....just because some people are non-believers dos'ent give YOU the right to judge them..Typical? u look down on them?,isnt that against what u believe in?i might be a non believer, but im not some ahole..im a shining example of upright citizen of my community....Im the one who helps people when there car isnt functional and are stranded on a side of a road while others past them as well as take them to a tow station or repair shop or wherever they was originally headed to....and besides that..on every other topic of this site, People tend to put god into everything from a guy crashing a lambo to someone hacking a website,so i think its fair to say that there's a reason other people would bash...btw i was raised in a christian Family and still go to church once every 2-4 months with my family because i dont want to us to have this little kiddie war that's going on in this article...and they know i don't believe in anything.. so i think u need to stop contributing to who's right and who's wrong in religion...some people robbed a church-there's the ones who did it and there the ones who will hopefully rot in jail...
BoomJay. You've just underscored one of the Main Reasons (one of many) why I find cultism like christianity so preposterous and laughable: their Boundless Hypocrisy.
I've never seen people who so easily throw off their values for any opportunity to display their Hypocrisy -- a level of Hypocrisy that burns like the Sun.
@ BoomJay
I also help those who need it; I am not saying you have to be a Christian to be a good person.
But I am sick and tired of people CONSTANTLY blaming the Christian community (as a WHOLE) for this and that all the time. I hear about how Christians are at fault for things that one sect in the religion may have done; that doesn't mean ALL of us are like that and I'm tired of people blaming us as a WHOLE for when one part of us does something. I'm just frustrated and was venting my anger. Was it a good idea? No, no it wasn't.
BTW Several posters way up there before me started in on their "well God hates them because he isn't real" or something rants, so don't blame me for having an opinion of my own regardless if it's "right" or "wrong" with my religion. I try not to judge but I'm human. I make mistakes. But I will not stand down because those out there want to take me and my religion down a peg. I will stand up for what I believe in regardless if you or anyone else likes it.
Then stop whining and clean up your ranks. Own your crap and deal with it...or face the fact that "your ilk" will continue to give you a bad name. Do something about it!!