How one church is helping heal Newtown

Rethinking practices began with the junior and senior high school group. The regular January outing for church teenagers was scheduled to be laser tag, a game involving pretend guns. While popular with the youth in past years, laser tag struck organizers as a bad idea so soon after the tragedy. One reason: The bereaved Kowalskis' older children might feel awkward and not attend.

Instead, the group chose one of the family's favorite activities: racing go-carts. It worked. The event drew 30 participants, including the Kowalski children and parents, who kept racing even after the group left at 9 p.m.

"It wasn't an event for [the Kowalskis], where they would have needed to feel, 'Oh, you're doing this just for me'," says event organizer Mr. Agnew. "There was no pressure. No one went to them and said, 'Hey, how are you doing? Is there anything I can do?' None of that. Just have fun."

Then the church began a new outreach to neighbors who'd experienced the strain of December in different ways. In addition to grieving losses, many of them had felt captive in their homes as traffic jams added hours of travel time to any trip. Local retailers missed out on crucial December sales because no one felt like shopping. One restaurant closed as a result of lost business. News trucks had occupied the center of Sandy Hook for a week. No one wanted to be assaulted by reporters.

In mid-January, the church invited all the neighbors over for tea, to share experiences and identify community needs. The event drew some who'd lived in town for decades and had never entered the church, but now saw it as a gathering spot for mutual support. Jane Sibley recalled one woman telling her afterward: "I hope the church will get us together again."

"The church is becoming a different place in the life of the community," she says. "Hopefully we can be known for more than our spaghetti dinners and bluegrass concerts.... We can be the face of healing and love for the community."

Individuals are reexamining who they are, too, with hopes of making something good come from a terrible event. Some changes are small. After a snowstorm, church member Sharon Poarch made a point not to berate plow drivers for taking two days to get to her street, but instead sent her daughter out with homemade cookies. Leon-Gambetta made pork-and-bean chalupas for Rob Sibley's family to make their lives a little easier.

"It made me so happy to be able to do that," says Leon-Gambetta, her voice cracking with emotion. "I can't wipe away the images that Rob [Sibley] must have in his mind. But making someone a meal is easy."

Some have thrown themselves into more high-profile pursuits. Parishioners who traveled out of state in January learned that just saying where they're from now evokes an impassioned response – "you're from Newtown?" – as well as compassion. To leverage this unsought visibility, Ms. Poarch has joined fellow parishioners Barbara Manville and Rob Sibley in advocating for stricter gun-control measures. In January, Poarch marched in Washington, D.C., behind a Newtown banner.

"We're accidental activists," says Poarch, who's never before taken part in a political movement. "I hate politics. It seems there's so much talk and nothing gets done. But I just feel like I couldn't sit and do nothing."

Her nascent activism isn't unusual. Joining a movement to prevent similar tragedies can be a first step in healing, according to Tom Johnson, cofounder of the Center for the Study of Health, Religion and Spirituality at Indiana State University in Terre Haute. Charitable service is another common response, which often brings purpose to an otherwise senseless episode.

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