Pastor Larry Wright was talking to his small eastern North Carolina congregation about the senseless deaths in his community when a man with a rifle walked into his church.
Wright, who leads the Heal the Land Outreach Ministries in Fayetteville said the man had a gun in one hand and an ammo magazine with shiny rounds in the other.
The glint made the retired Army sergeant first class recognize the weapon was real. Still, he was worried the man had one round in the gun.
"I'm the first person to see him and when I saw him, I thought it was a dummy gun, but then I sawthe bullet clip in his hand and the bullets were shining," he said.
As first reported in the Fayetteville Observer , Wrightsaid he walked up to the man and said, "Can I help you?"
The man asked Wright to pray for him, the pastor said Wright took the rifle and handed it to a deacon. One by one, the deacon and three others hugged the man to make him feel loved.
"And then I began to minister to him and pray to him and talk with him," Wright said.It was 20 minutes before midnight, and Wright wanted to finish the New Year's Eve sermon and do an altar call. He told the man to sit in the front
row and stay there.
"I finished the message, I did the altar call and he stood right up, came up to the altar, and gave his life to Christ," Wright said. "I came down and prayed with him and we embraced. It was like a father embracing a son."
Wright whispered in the man's ear that police were waiting in the vestibule because he had scared a lot of people. Then the man asked to speak to the 60 or so churchgoers. He apologized to them, telling them when he set out that evening he intended to do something terrible that night. But the Lord spoke to him, he said.
He told the pastor he had just gotten out of prison, had a new job and a new bride. The man looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s, Wright said.
culled:cnn
