Fort Worth-area church strives to recover after shooting. ‘Evil is not going to win’
Britt Farmer’s career as a minister — his Christian faith, in fact — started when he answered a stranger at the door.
He was 12 years old and living in Longview. A large, intimidating man stood outside. His name was Buck, and, as Farmer recalls, a burn mark from an oil fire scarred half of his face. Buck wanted to talk about the Bible. Farmer’s father, who was not religious, let him in. From that day forward, his father grew into a follower of Christianity. Soon, after he passed along a Bible and a set of Jule Miller cassette tapes to Farmer, Farmer did, too.
He had always been a “why” student and found himself listening to new questions and answers on the tapes. As the years have gone by, he realizes his destiny to preach was set in motion by the man at the door, someone Farmer could just as easily have avoided.
“Every time someone knocks on the door, I try to answer,” he says. “I mean what’s it going to cost me? When it could cost me everything if I don’t?”
The church shooting
Last year on Dec. 29, a bald man wearing a wig, a fake beard and a long coat sat in a corner pew of the Sunday morning service at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement. As the congregation prepared to celebrate communion, the man pulled out a shotgun from under his coat and fired twice.
The church’s volunteer security team, formed by Jack Wilson about a year earlier in the aftermath of the Sutherland Springs shooting, had eyed the man because of his odd appearance. Using a Sig Sauer pistol, a popular firearm among law enforcement, Wilson shot at the man’s head, killing him with one shot. Farmer was at the front of the church when it happened. After the first shot was fired, he collapsed to the ground and picked up a handgun a woman on the security team had slid toward him from her purse.
The ordeal lasted just six seconds. That was all the time needed for West Freeway to experience an unfathomable tragedy. The gunman killed beloved congregation members Anton “Tony” Wallace, 64, and Richard White, 67. The other 100-plus people in attendance, who had ducked for cover, witnessed the death of their friends.
Farmer quickly realized he knew the gunman. He had answered him at the door many times. Keith Thomas Kinnuen, a 43-year-old with an extensive criminal record, had showed up at the church occasionally over the past few years. Farmer offered food and clothing, but Kinnuen always asked for money and grew angry when the church didn’t give him any. If he had known it was Kinnuen under the wig and coat, Farmer says he would not have allowed him in that morning.
As the one-year anniversary nears, he has thought more often about the shooting and especially about Wallace and White. The past nine months certainly didn’t make a difficult situation any easier. The church shut down at the early stages of the pandemic, and Farmer and his immediate family contracted coronavirus in November. Earlier this month, his son’s car was stolen after he had given a stranger a ride. Farmer’s faith, built on opening doors, has been tested.
“It’s been a very difficult year,” he says.
Remembering Tony and Richard
Anton Wallace was known to most everyone as Tony. He was a deacon, a counselor and a Bible class teacher. He regularly made house visits to members of West Freeway Church of Christ, and he preached for a congregation in Mineral Wells once a month. Churchgoers remember him as a quiet, compassionate leader. Often, after communion, Wallace would walk up to Hugh Galyean, who helps lead music at the church, and tell him he had selected the perfect song. “Just little compliments,” Galyean says.
White was Farmer’s best friend, a type of confidante he had not had until they met in 2011. Farmer had known White’s parents from a previous town where he preached for about 20 years, so it felt like they’d known each other longer. Their families started spending holidays and vacationing together. They went on seven cruises in eight years.
Their last trip was to Lajitas Golf Resort near Big Bend. White was a good golfer but probably better at creating humor on the course. In the bunkers, rather than take practice swings on the grass, White would swing his wedge in the sand. When Farmer told him those counted as strokes, he would dismiss him with a joke.
“We didn’t keep score a lot of the time,” Farmer says. “(It was) just for the fellowship and the fun.”
The morning of the shooting, Farmer was in his office reading his Bible and iPad and preparing for the service. White entered with a Christmas gift: a pack of Titleist Pro V1 golf balls. They were inscribed with the message, “If found, this is the property of Britt Farmer.”
“Those will never be lost,” Farmer says. “Those will never be used.”
The new church
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting last year, many members of the congregation waited outside as law enforcement officials conducted interviews, singing “Peace Like a River.” West Freeway hosted a special service the next day, and Mayor Betsy Price and U.S. Rep. Kay Granger were among the attendees, Galyean says. Sen. Ted Cruz visited a few weeks later. “He worshiped and didn’t say a word,” Galyean recalls. “He just wanted to support us.”
Farmer and the church’s elders had a strategy for helping the congregation recover. One step was to bring in guest speakers in January to share coping techniques for PTSD.
Farmer didn’t preach again until about three weeks after the shooting. He is a fastidious planner and before the shooting usually prepared sermons months in advance. He had to throw them out. “I couldn’t preach what I was going to preach,” he says. “It wouldn’t have made sense.” Farmer decided to focus on the book of Hebrews from the New Testament. It’s largely about the trials Christians faced while trying to gather during the early days of the Roman Empire. “Sometimes they were having to meet secretly and sometimes they were able to meet openly, and it was difficult for them to feel like they were able to accomplish what they needed,” Farmer says.
A few weeks later, when the coronavirus shut everything down, the Hebrews chapters took on more meaning. West Freeway Church of Christ held remote worship sessions and when they gathered again, with social distancing, it didn’t feel like a traditional service. Nor did it feel like traditional mourning from the tragedy: Two of the major PTSD coping techniques the congregation had learned were compassion and communication, and the pandemic upended close personal interactions.
In the unplanned solitude of the pandemic, Glenda White, the wife of Richard White, found more time to think about her husband. “I was so busy making sure everybody else was OK. I was putting on a good front because I didn’t want to bring anybody else down,” she told The Christian Chronicle. “And so it really — it forced me to really grieve him.”
She was at West Freeway in August for the first service in the newly renovated worship center, when White and Wallace were honored. Many members of the congregation have not returned. “And they maybe never will,” says Ted Aldred, a deacon.
‘Anybody that comes is welcome’
The last few weeks have shown, yet again, the church still has a long way to go before returning to normal. Farmer, his wife and his two sons contracted COVID-19 in late November. When he was supposed to be celebrating the ninth anniversary of his tenure at West Freeway in early December, Farmer couldn’t preach at all. On Dec. 20, he was finally ready to be back in the pulpit inside the worship center. Then, another member of the congregation tested positive, and the in-person service was canceled.
Unless new infections or other complications arise, Sunday will be the first time in a month that West Freeway Church of Christ will host an in-person service with Farmer presiding. It will also mark nearly a year since Wallace and White were killed. Farmer doesn’t expect to dwell on what happened and instead preach a forward-looking message of gratefulness that builds on Hebrews.
“The night of the shooting when I spoke that night, I said, ‘evil took a swipe at us but evil is not going to win.’ I tried to be as encouraging as I could for the congregation,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to this next year. There are so many good, positive things that are happening. We’re in a situation at West Freeway where our young families are growing. We’ve got a family atmosphere. We’re looking out for each other, and anybody that comes is welcome.”
And he still does mean anybody. The day after the shooting last year, when law enforcement officials were at the church, a stranger came through the door. Farmer didn’t hesitate. He started talking to him and noticed the man’s gloves were worn out. He gave him a new pair, some food and a few pairs of socks.
“And then immediately I stopped and thought, ‘Why did we have to suffer yesterday?’” Farmer says. “This is what we do and what we’re going to continue to do.”
This story was originally published December 27, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
