Take the message of the Cross. Add cops. Welcome to Cop Church

Hamilton County SRO Jonathan Parker stands for a portrait on Jan. 27, 2015, in the main auditorium of Venue Church in Chattanooga, Tenn. Parker has started Cop Church Chattanooga, a ministry and worship service for law enforcement and their families.
Hamilton County SRO Jonathan Parker stands for a portrait on Jan. 27, 2015, in the main auditorium of Venue Church in Chattanooga, Tenn. Parker has started Cop Church Chattanooga, a ministry and worship service for law enforcement and their families.
photo Hamilton County SRO Jonathan Parker stands for a portrait on Jan. 27, 2015, in the main auditorium of Venue Church in Chattanooga, Tenn. Parker has started Cop Church Chattanooga, a ministry and worship service for law enforcement and their families.

Sgt. Daniel Jones can close his eyes and picture every death he's worked. The crime scene tape. The shotgun shells. The faces.

There was the time he pounded out CPR on a man's chest on Tunnel Boulevard for five desperate minutes only to have the man die under his hands.

"I still feel guilty about that," said Jones, who is now an administrator in the Chattanooga Police Department.

Jones is a committed Christian. He's about halfway through seminary at Liberty University. Crime scenes can be haunting. But sometimes walking into church Sunday morning proves difficult, too. Everyone at his church knows he's an officer. They want to talk about the shootings, the murders that make headlines.

"Sometimes the congregation doesn't understand," he said. "Or they're so enamored with the actual event that they don't understand the psychological implications of what's going on with that particular officer."

But that won't be a problem at one of Chattanooga's newest churches. Cop Church Chattanooga is designed specifically for law enforcement officers and their families. The brainchild of Jonathan Parker, a CPD officer based at Brainerd High School, the nondenominational church will hold its first service Tuesday night. Parker has spent months pulling together a leadership team, finding a location to meet, signing up musicians to lead worship and getting the word out to his fellow officers.

Everywhere he goes, he hears the same reaction:

"I've repeatedly got people saying, 'We've never seen anything like this,'" said Parker, who attended the Church of God Theological Seminary in Cleveland, Tenn., and holds a master of divinity degree in ministry leadership.

The local church is opening amid growing national concerns about the strained relationships between police forces and those they police.

Laurence Miller, an expert in police psychology, thinks a church just for cops could be a good idea. Or a bad one.

He said many people are drawn to others within their own profession -- nurses, military members and teachers like to socialize off the clock. Miller counsels police for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and West Palm Beach Police. He's a psychologist and a professor at Florida Atlantic University.

He thinks commiseration among peers is healthy. But too much camaraderie could lead to insularity and an us-vs.-them attitude at Cop Church or within any group.

"You want to be out there in the wider world," he said. "That's what makes a healthy human being. You may need to retreat and lick your wounds with members of your own tribe sometimes. But that should enhance, not detract from, your ability to interact in the world."

Parker's motivation is simple: He just wants to bring people who wear the badge to Jesus. And people from various local law enforcement agencies -- the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, the Bradley County Sheriff's Office, Chattanooga Airport Police and CPD officers -- are already buying into the ministry.

Rodney Brown, a 23-year-old rookie Chattanooga officer, works from 11:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. in some of Chattanooga's roughest neighborhoods. And he always works weekends, so it's tough to make it to church on Sunday morning. That's why Cop Church meets on Tuesday evenings.

Brown, who is serving in the church's leadership, says the ministry is helping him meet other people he can relate to in local law enforcement.

"Cops have a hard time going to regular services," he said. "It's great going to a place where we feel welcome. The people here, the spouses, know what we're going through."

Law enforcement officers have unique stressors, says H. Anthony Cothern Jr., a former officer and one of about a dozen volunteer chaplains for CPD. Officers confront angry drivers with speeding tickets. They walk into the middle of dramatic domestic disputes. And when the shift's over, they go home and are expected to play the role of parent or spouse and leave the uniform behind.

"During the day you go out and a child has been abused. And then you come home and your spouse tells you that the washing machine is broken down," Cothern said. "It's different levels of priority. That's the most important thing when you get home, when earlier that day it was a child hurting somewhere."

Chaplains are on call so officers can decompress. But most of the department's chaplains are nondenominational Christians. So Cothern and others are working this year to expand the range of faiths represented among chaplains by including more Christian denominations and other faiths like Islam and Judaism.

Officers sometimes feel uncomfortable commiserating with civilians, Cothern said. But venting with clergy or other officers can be therapeutic. Organizers hope Cop Church will be a safe place where officers can share their experiences and worship together.

Leaders at other faith-based law enforcement groups are optimistic about the idea.

The church could help edify officers, said Paul Lee, executive director of the Chattanooga-based national Fellowship of Christian Peace Officers. There are police stories all throughout the Bible, he said. And Christianity's moral code translates well into an officer's job.

"You can just think about the Ten Commandments," he said. "Do you want cops lying? No. Do you want them stealing? No. We can go through the whole list of 10."

Lee spent nearly 30 years as an officer at CPD and retired as a captain. During that time, he felt like he was alone on an island.

"I tell people, not once did anyone call me to come to their house to tell me they had a good day," he said. "It was always tragedy, bad news, trauma and drama."

It was his faith that convinced him to treat all people as people -- not just as suspects or victims, but as people created in God's image and worthy of his respect. He believes ministries like Cop Church could help heal police-public tensions.

"There's no more them versus us," he said. "I would rather it all be us."

Contact staff writer Kevin Hardy at khardy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.

Contact staff writer Shelly Bradbury at sbradbury@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6525.

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