Six years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, churches in New York City are marking the anniversary with remembrance services and continued outreach to those directly affected by the tragedy, but they’re also experiencing a sense of healing, pastors say.
“The five-year anniversary, I think, was a real key to the healing that happened,” said Kareem Goubran, adult ministries director at East 7th Baptist Church (Graffiti) in New York.
“People just felt the weight off their shoulders a little bit, though obviously if you lose a loved one that trauma continues. But still, even there we’ve seen a lot of healing.”
Aaron Coe, pastor of The Gallery Church, a church planted in response to the 9/11 attacks, told Baptist Press he also sees evidence that people in the city, while not forgetting the magnitude of the event, are looking forward.
“New Yorkers are very resilient people, and I just don’t see a lot of the emotional trauma that you might expect today,” Coe said. “There are still some things, and I imagine there are people who were directly affected with family members who are still having to deal with that, but I don’t see that as much anymore.”
To help facilitate the healing, Graffiti Church hired Goubran in the immediate aftermath of the attacks to serve as the church’s director of 9/11 recovery. In that role, he implemented a five-year plan to address the needs of people in New York who were directly impacted by the event.
“In those five years, we worked on three major components of ministry,” Goubran said. “One was grief support. We did support groups and one-on-one crisis counseling, and basically just helped people deal with the trauma of 9/11. The other component we worked on was financial assistance, because if you lost your job in 9/11 and you can’t pay your rent, all of a sudden you’re homeless. So we worked on helping people pay back rent and pay back bills and that kind of thing.
“The third thing we worked on was job development – which was basically, you lose your job, you can’t pay your bills; we can pay your bills for one month, but better yet if we can help you get a job,” Goubran said. “So we started job development where we do job readiness training, computer classes and English-as-a-Second-Language classes.”
Though the five-year plan officially ended last year, Graffiti Church continues some of the programs, including a computer class and an English class held even on the day of the sixth anniversary of the attacks. Goubran said that sense of normalcy allows people to pick up their lives, but the church also scheduled a special service to mark the anniversary.
Goubran noted that when the terrorist attacks happened, New York lacked the infrastructure of Southern Baptist churches that would have been present had the attacks happened in Alabama, for instance. But that has since changed.
Coe said Southern Baptists took advantage of the opportunities that arose when something meant for evil could be used for good. First came a massive disaster relief effort, then came the church plants.
“9/11 threw open a window of opportunity for ministry here in the city, and the relief effort directly related to what happened at Ground Zero only lasted about nine months or so,” Coe said. “The cleanup was done within nine months to a year after the events happened.
“Everything that has happened afterward has been new churches planted as a result. I think 9/11 put New York City on the radar of a lot of people that it wouldn’t have necessarily been on, so I think the net result is we’ve seen a lot of new churches planted,” Coe said. “Volunteers have come primarily to help get these new churches started.”
“Really, our vision for the city is one of wanting to see God move spiritually and kind of rebuild the spiritual climate of the city,” Coe said. “So it kind of played along well with the rebuilding that’s going on at Ground Zero.”