CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 18, 2020 – Having recently held its ninth National Law Enforcement Retreat at The Cove in Asheville in late October, the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team (BG-RRT) has announced that it will be expanding its law enforcement ministry with Law Enforcement Appreciation events in multiple cities across the United States.
The first three Law Enforcement Appreciation Dinners for sworn officers and their spouses will be Dec. 14-16 in Charlotte. Additional dates and cities for the Law Enforcement Appreciation events are still being confirmed and will be released at a later date.
“Law enforcement officials serve 24/7 protecting our communities,” said Franklin Graham, CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. “Their lives are in danger every day on the streets. Here at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, we hold law enforcement retreats and seminars. We’ve been doing this for years where we bring officers and their spouses together for a few days of prayer and Bible study. It’s been an incredible opportunity to minister to them, but we want to take what we’ve been doing for the last several years, and in 2021, we want to expand this.”
The first National Law Enforcement Retreat was held in 2014 in Asheville, before adding a second site at Horseshoe Bay, Texas, in 2018. Now, the BG-RRT will begin hosting additional events which will allow the organization to provide emotional and spiritual care to additional law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line every day.
“Law enforcement are being discouraged, demoralized and devalued at a level unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” said Jack Munday, international director of the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team. “And so for me personally, I think that the need to expand ministry efforts is there because if we don’t support law enforcement, they are the only defense or shield that we have in our society to protect us from anarchy and the collapse of civil society as we know it.”
In 2020, the BG-RRT has deployed crisis-trained chaplains to four cities amidst civil unrest: Minneapolis, Minnesota; Kenosha, Wisconsin; Greensboro and Charlotte, ministering to the community as well as law enforcement in those areas. The BG-RRT also sent chaplains to provide emotional and spiritual care to multiple agencies after the death of a law enforcement officer within their department.
For more information on the ministry, including videos, photos, news articles and an interactive map of former and current deployments, visit the RRT press kit or BillyGraham.org/RRT. Updates can also be found at Facebook.com/RRTChaplains.
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 450 disaster sites across the globe, including shootings, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes.
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