Corinth Missionary Baptist Church (Texas)

The Corinth Missionary Baptist Church is a historic African-American Baptist congregation located in the census-designated place of Shadybrook, a small community (named for a nearby gated community) in northeastern Cherokee County, located approximately 1/2 hour southwest of Tyler, Texas near the shores of Lake Palestine.

In September 2015, Abdul Aziz (a resident of nearby Jacksonville, Texas, and no stranger to law enforcement) walked into the church after the Sunday morning service, and confronted the pastor (Reverend John D. Johnson III) threatening to kill everyone in the church. Aziz, however, did not know that Johnson was a former parole officer (with special training in verbal de-escalation, crisis prevention and experience dealing with mentally ill offenders, and also held a full-time job with the nearby Tyler school district dealing with troubled students); Johnson was able to calm Aziz down and get the church evacuated before leaving Aziz alone. Aziz later returned to the church and, interestingly, left a note thanking the church for the kindness extended to him. (Aziz was apprehended later that evening in a nearby subdivision, still heavily armed.)

With the exception of an article in the Tyler Morning Telegraph^[1] (the local paper, which is a rare conservative newspaper in a profession that is overwhelmingly liberal), the mainstream media has not bothered to report on this story.

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