The Journey of the Kingdom of God Continued Unhindered on September 11, 2001

A personal remembrance of September 11, 2001 by George Bullard (Reposted from 2023)

The Journey of the Kingdom of God Continued Unhindered on September 11, 2001

Where were you 22 years ago on September 11, 2021 when the airplanes crashed into the towers in New York City, and another into the Pentagon?

In what ways did your life and ministry come to a halt, and in what ways did it keep moving forward?

During the actual attacks, I was having a breakfast meeting in a hotel lobby restaurant in Indianapolis, IN with the new national director for church planting for a Protestant denomination.

His background was as a successful church planter, and as a member of a network of people in his denomination planting churches. He was chosen to lead a church multiplication strategy for his denomination.

How could he do this?

He sought me out because of my personal experience leading a large denominational region in planting 500 churches over a 15-year period. Also, I had consulted with major metropolitan areas throughout the USA on their strategies for church planting.

How could he jump start a movement of congregational multiplication within his denomination?

We brainstormed. I shared approaches that had worked before. We wrote notes on paper and even napkins when we ran out of paper.

The Attacks

In the middle of our breakfast meeting, waitpersons began pointing to the television screens about the first and then a second airplane hitting the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

After the first airplane hit the towers, we felt it was a tragedy, but that CNN and other news sources would carry the news story throughout the day. We did not need to stop our meeting due to the importance to the Kingdom of God of the strategy we were developing.

When the second airplane hit the Twin Towers, we decided we should conclude our meeting to pay closer attention to what now seemed like a planned attack instead of an accident. I immediately thought of Osama bin Laden.

The Project in Indianapolis

I went back to my room in the hotel as I did not have a meeting with my Indianapolis client until later that day.

My sponsoring client was the Indianapolis Center for Congregations. I was working on a project for simultaneously helping 11 congregations experience a Spiritual Strategic Journey.

We launched the process Friday and Saturday of the previous week. Now I would meet with each congregation’s leadership team throughout this week for a couple of hours at their church location.

Once the full attack played out, no one was immediately ready for the meeting with a congregation for Tuesday afternoon. They needed some time to ponder what had happened that morning. The meeting was postponed until later in the week.

The Tuesday evening gathering with a congregation went forward. They did delay the beginning of the gathering for an hour so they could hold a prayer meeting first.

All the remaining gatherings went forward as planned through Friday afternoon. Every congregation realized the value of what we were doing. Their need for it.

The journey of the Kingdom of God continued! Both in church planting and in helping congregations envision a new future with God’s leadership.

Church Attendance Following the Attack

For the next month or so, attendance in congregations in Indianapolis and throughout the USA went up. More people chose to worship God as gathered congregations. To pray for peace. To pray for their personal safety, and that of our nation and the world.

The attendance increases did not last. Within a month or so church attendance returned to its pre-9/11 levels.

However, a 9/11 form of PTSD lingered for several months to a year or so in some cases.

Immediate 9/11 Impact

When I got back to my hotel room both of my young adult children called me. ‘What does this mean, Dad?”

They were terrified to recall that we had stood at the top of the Twin Towers as tourists just seven years earlier. They needed reassurance everything was going to be fine. I assured them that we would courageously move forward beyond this attack.

By the time I was finished in Indianapolis on Friday afternoon, commercial airplanes were still not flying as all flights were grounded. The rule made by many rental car companies was if you had rented a car at an airport before the attacks, you could drive that car to what would have been your final destination without any penalty or a drop charge.

My car was at the airport in Charlotte, NC. Friday night I drove to Knoxville, TN, and then on to Charlotte on Saturday. I retrieved my car and drove home to Columbia, SC.

My wife, who was anxious just like all of us, was glad to have me home. The journey of the Kingdom of God continued unhindered.