Minister Joey Spann expected to die.
He lay bleeding, collapsed on the floor of Burnette Chapel Church of Christ, and watched the masked man who had just shot him in the chest and hand walk farther into the church.
“The shots kept going,” Spann said. “I thought he was going to kill everybody.”
The gunfire stopped. But Spann, who leads the small congregation in Antioch, still thought he was dying. So the minister prayed.
He didn’t pray to be saved by the church members who applied pressure to his wounds. He didn’t pray to be saved as he heard them call 911. He prayed for forgiveness.
“God, I’m sorry for things I didn’t do right,” Spann said in a telephone interview Monday evening from his hospital room.