Person Breaks Forest Hills Church Doors; Community In 'Disbelief'

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — When Bob Wilson walked into Grace Lutheran Church last Sunday morning, as he's done for the past 50 years, he saw something at the building for the first time.

The church's glass paneled front doors, set back from Union Turnpike, lay in shards on the ground; shattered to pieces by a large rock, which he assumes someone picked up from the front lawn and hurled through the doors.

"What thrill can you get from doing that? I don't understand it myself," Wilson told Patch, adding that the doors were memorials, donated by church members in honor of loved ones who passed away. "I was surprised and disappointed that anybody would do something like that," he said.

Wilson, a church council member who serves as treasurer, discovered the broken doors about an hour before Sunday worship, so he quickly reported the incident to police.

The police confirmed the report, and said that officers are still investigating the act of "criminal mischief." Neither Wilson nor the police said they have reason to believe that this incident was a hate crime; unlike a statue-smashing incident at another Forest Hills church this summer.

Next, Wilson started getting the building ready for services; including blocking off the church's front door. "Despite all of that we did hold our religious service," he said. "People just came through the other entrance."

After the service, during his usual announcement, Wilson told congregants — some of whom had seen the shattered glass and some of whom were on Zoom — what happened to the door. He said that churchgoers were in "disbelief," including one of the family members who'd donated a panel in memorial to her father.

Since then, Wilson and the church have begun picking up the pieces: a specialist stopped by the building this week to board up the door, and Wilson is still waiting to hear back about how much it will cost to replace the glass paneling.

As for the emotional impact of the damage, Wilson is still trying to make sense of how to move forward.

"I wish I could just ask the person [who did this], 'why did you do that?' Not to be vengeful and get them put in jail for ten years, just to say that this isn't the right thing to do," Wilson told Patch, adding that there's a value to forgiveness, even though it might be hard for him in this instance.

"When you're a church you're supposed to have a certain amount of forgiveness," he said.