A 9/11 Survivor Says Apathy, Not Terrorism, Is the Real Threat to the Church

On September 11, 2001, Darin Kinder was a 27-year-old Secret Service agent working in 7 World Trade Center when the first plane hit. Over the next few hours, he carried a wounded woman down a stairwell, watched the South Tower fall from eighty yards away, and called strangers through a blinding debris cloud toward the sound of his voice. He received the Secret Service Medal of Valor.

This week he joins Dr. Jack Graham and Jeremiah Johnston, PhD, on Hold the Pattern to tell the story he kept to himself for twenty-four years.

As the cloud bore down, he started toward a fire truck for cover, then felt stopped. That truck was later found crushed flat. Kneeling beside it, he says he felt “a reassuring squeeze on my shoulder. And a whispered promise, ‘I am with you.’” The night after the towers fell, he made a vow to spend the rest of his life getting his suit dirty for God. It became the title of his book, Bury Me in a Dirty Suit.

Asked what threatens the church today, a man who survived terrorism up close didn’t point to an enemy. He pointed to comfort.