Mike and Pookie Mattingly had just crossed the state line when they received a call from their fellow Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplains alerting them of the police ambush in Baton Rouge. The chaplains had been eating breakfast with a police chaplain, and they immediately headed to a nearby hospital to offer emotional and spiritual care.
The Mattinglys turned the Rapid Response Team’s Mobile Ministry Center around and headed back toward the Louisiana state capital. Six checkpoints stood between them and the hospital, and at each stop, the Mattinglys were greeted warmly.
“Every one of those checkpoints I drove up to, they knew who I was, they knew where I was going and they just gave me directions,” Mike Mattingly said. “You can’t put words to something like that. They’re so grateful that we turned around and came back. And they were so appreciative of why we were here all last week. But they are so glad that we came back. You can’t measure that.”
Mike Mattingly, his wife Pookie and several other chaplains with the Rapid Response Team had been ministering in Baton Rouge after the civil unrest that followed the police shooting death of Alton Sterling. The crisis-trained chaplains offered emotional and spiritual care for the public as well as the police officers in the days that followed.
On Sunday, the Mattinglys returned to join the chaplains on-site, this time providing a ministry of presence within the local hospital where two critically injured officers were fighting for their lives.
“We’ve cried with the officers, we’ve cried with the families,” Mike Mattingly said of the emotional day. “There are a lot of broken hearts; a lot of sobbing and crying, and it’s what you do [as a chaplain]. You come alongside folks that don’t have a full understanding of what they’re facing, and you just listen. You just hug them. You just cry with them.”
Family members, fellow police officers and friends all visited the hospital quarters. Some officers who were involved in the active shooter scene shared their stories of horror with the chaplains. In one case, Mattingly said, an officer recounted how a bullet came through his windshield and as he turned his head, it grazed his cheekbone and the side of his neck before entering the headrest.
Many of the police officers thanked the chaplains over and over again for just being there. On Monday, the chaplains continued to be on-hand for prayer as police officers and families began to navigate next steps. A total of nine chaplains are in Baton Rouge ministering to law enforcement officers as well as the community at large.
Jack Munday, international director of the Rapid Response Team, met with members of the media on Monday morning to address the deployment. He told them, “If there’s ever been a day that law enforcement needs to be encouraged, it’s now.”
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