LEWISTON, MAINE — Following the mass shooting that claimed 18 lives in Maine a team of chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team quickly deployed to provide spiritual and emotional support to this devastated community. BG-RRT chaplains are now helping in six locations.

The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team is responding to a mass shooting that claimed 18 lives in Lewiston, Maine in the US last week. The chaplains are providing emotional and spiritual support to those devastated by this tragedy, as their coordinator James Kilgore explains.

James Kilgore:

We have nine chaplains on the ground here to offer that spiritual and emotional help to them. And we first deployed, you know, to the command centre, working with them and hearing their stories. We’ve worked with people from individuals from, I got a call yesterday morning early at 6.30, a mother that was crying. Her 15-year-old daughter was afraid to go back to school. So it’s not just the families and the relatives and the close friends, this has reached the entire community.

And the team of chaplains will remain on the ground for the next few days before handing over follow-up to their local church partners.

About the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team

The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team was developed by Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It has since grown into an international network of chaplains in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia who are specifically trained to deal with crisis situations. They have deployed to more than 760 disaster sites across the globe, including shootings, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes.

Media Contact: Christine Batchelder, cbatchelder@bgea.org

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