FLINT -- Police have identified the victim as 28 year-old Steven Edward Lawson. Friends say Lawson was attending the funeral service for Flint's 66th homicide victim, Gerrell Tyler. Now a Flint church leader is questioning Flint's future.
"The church has to realize we have to go them or they are going to come to us," said Pastor Robert McCathern of Joy Tabernacle Church.
Saturday's church shooting is forcing places of worship to make changes. They are places considered sacred.
"It is very serious and it's not only coming to the church but coming to the downtowns and everything that we call sacred," said McCathern.
While the flint police department is investigating Pastor Robert McCathern is working on the cities roots, calling for old church concepts to be brought back home.
"This is a wake up call we have a community out there that is a very urban young community and churches out there are detached from reality. It's time to do mission work in our own back yard," said McCathern.
McCathern and local churches say there is a laundry list of work for changing flint's violent reputation.
“You mention flint and people say oh, we are scared to come there you guys have murders all the time,” said McCathern.
Flint's 2013 brutal beginning is in the past. McCathern is looking into the future and planning to stop violence before it happens.
"We need to become a healthy city. Not a city that reacts but a city that is proactive,"
Pastor McCathern is asking for help from larger sources like the Mott Foundation, and Hurley and Mclaren hospitals because he says this violence is also a health issue.
