A few years ago, Matt Sexton noticed that police officers were sometimes parking in the back lot of his church to take a break.
And Sexton — whose background was in law enforcement — saw it as an opportunity for his church, Wallace Memorial Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, to help them have something better.
At the time, Pastor John Green was challenging the church to think of the groups of people they wanted to serve in their community, and for Sexton, it was an obvious connection.
“My background is in law enforcement, my oldest son is in law enforcement, and my middle son aspires to be in law enforcement too,” he said.
Confronting daily struggles
Sexton knows the daily struggles police officers can have, and he thought he and his church might be able to alleviate a few. So he mentioned it to Green, and Green asked him what that might look like.
“He said, ‘What is most needed for police officers?’ and I said, ‘A private bathroom,’” Sexton said, explaining that police aren’t able to take off their gear in just any restroom.
Green asked what else they needed, and Sexton said a comfortable place where they could kick back and get out of the public eye for a little bit — a place with coffee, water, snacks and a key-coded entrance.
Green’s response: “That kind of looks like my office.”
So he decided to relocate.
“He was gracious enough to move out of his office, and we started doing work on it,” Sexton said.
Respite
The result is a room that for the past few years has offered a respite for local law enforcement officers and offered a way for the church to serve them well.
Green said they have “police on our campus almost 24 hours a day at various times dropping in and using the first responder room.”
“It’s been great,” he said. “We have several officers in our church, and they’re always telling us how much it means to their colleagues.”
Officers also regularly leave notes in the room letting them know how much they appreciate it.
A listening ear
Sexton said they hear from officers in other ways too.
“We’ve left info in the room for them to be able to text me or email me because as first responders — the things you see, the things you encounter, you can’t unsee. There are times you just need someone to listen to you,” he said.
He’s been able to connect with a number of officers, and he and his wife, Holly, have also talked with several couples with one spouse in law enforcement who were struggling in their marriage.
“We’ve built relationships where we get to speak into their marriage and give them Jesus,” Sexton said.
Green said it’s been “so neat to see Matt and Holly take this and get it going.”
“I think one of the things we tried to say to our church when we launched the E-Team (Evangelism Team) initiative — we wanted to put the onus on our church family to personally be involved in evangelism and look at what are your hobbies, your interests, who are the people you’re connected with,” he said. “As a church, we wanted to say, ‘How can we resource you and help you reach people?’ Birthed out of that is things like this and dozens of other groups.”
Opening new doors
While the room serves mostly law enforcement officers, Sexton said occasionally they have EMTs drop by as well.
They’ve recently started a room at their church’s Cumberland campus also, and other churches in the area are also hearing about it and picking up the idea too.
“We’ve had other churches say, ‘We heard about what you’re doing and we’d love to do this for our law enforcement officers in our county or in the next town over,’” Sexton said. “We’ve been challenging other churches in our area to do the same thing, for that to give them a way to reach out.”
