Pastor Jerry Gumm, who leads Richmond Road Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, boldly returned to the pulpit after he was seriously injured and lost his wife and daughter after an attacker entered his church and went on a shooting rampage. Gumm, 81, urged his congregants not to let the tragedy hinder them from praising God.
For background, on July 13, 2025, Richmond Road Baptist was attacked by 47-year-old Guy House, who took the lives of Pastor Gumm’s wife and daughter, along with severely injuring Pastor Gumm and his son-in-law, Randy. On Sunday, August 18, Pastor Gumm returned to the pulpit after spending about a month in the hospital recovering from his injuries.
During a sermon that was broadcast on Facebook, Pastor Gumm displayed both resilience and humor in the face of tragedy. He told his congregation, “I’m going to say it like Mark Twain said, ‘The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.’ I was supposed to be dead.” He added, “He got two of us but didn’t kill all of us. And I’m thankful he didn’t get none of the rest of you,”
Continuing, Pastor Gumm acknowledged the lasting pain caused by the shooting, saying, “I know that you all have been terrorized and traumatized, probably even more than me.” He added, “I came into [the shooting] and almost immediately I was out of it. I had no idea what was going on, what you all had to see. And I’m very sorry for that.”
Moreover, the pastor said that he knew it was going to “take a while for us to just adjust back” following the tragic event. He then clarified, “I want to encourage you, we’ve got to do it. We can’t let the devil stop us from serving the Lord.”
In addition, in an August 15 interview with WKYT, Pastor Gumm reflected on his horrific experience on the day of the shooting. Referring to House, the shooter who took his own life after terrorizing Pastor Gumm’s congregation, the pastor said, “I ran into evil itself. This man had already done his evil, back behind me and terrorized my church.”
Pastor Gumm went on to recount how House “murdered my wife and my daughter, and then he badly injures my son-in-law, and I’m on my power chair.” He continued, “He ambushed me, an 81-year-old man, unarmed, crippled on a power chair, and he began shooting.” The pastor then said that House “began taunting me, cursing me, laughing at me.” He added, “He shot me off of my power chair. It was either on my head or up on my head, and tried to kill me, but he didn’t manage it. He wasn’t as bad as he thought he was.”
Furthermore, during the interview, the pastor praised God and expressed gratitude to the doctors who operated on him after a bullet struck his tongue, saying, “The doctor said if that tongue hadn’t caught that bullet, it would have gone in my head and it would have killed me.” He added, “God and those miracle workers gave me my tongue back.”
Featured image credit: Jerry Gumm via Facebook