McKinney church vandalized with racist graffiti for the second time this summer

MCKINNEY, Texas - The reverend of a McKinney church said he is frustrated after his church was vandalized with racist graffiti for the second time this summer.

An employee of Stonebridge United Methodist Church found the graffiti on Sunday morning.

The messages included racial slurs and swastikas.

"It’s white supremacist hate speech that they put on our building," the church's lead pastor, Reverend Jeff Lust, said.

The church’s dumpster was also set on fire.

The church notified police and said they were able to remove a majority of the artwork before service that morning. Some of the graffiti is now covered by a sheet.

"We don’t preach hate here, we preach and teach the love of Christ," Lust said. "One of our slogans is we want to live and love like Jesus. We believe Jesus loved all people, not just some."

A similar incident happened back on July 17, when an entrance to the building was covered with white supremacist language.

A message scrawled on the front door Sunday said "not my best work yet."

"I feel anger and frustration and, at the same time, compassion for someone who has that much anger and hate in their life," Rev. Lust said. "I think this can be a launchpad, a springboard for us to have maybe some more deep and meaningful conversations about what we do about racial justice in the community."

McKinney Mayor George Fuller called the vandalism "disgusting and cowardly" and "not representative of our diverse and wonderful community."

"This is not who we are, this is an indictment of one individual or some handful of individuals who represents the greatest stupidity in humanity, not who we are as a community," Fuller said.

He's now offering a reward from his own money to find who did this.

"$5,000, anybody that can come forward, provide the police with information that leads to the arrest and conviction," Fuller said. "It's unacceptable, this is in my backyard, in the community that I live in. This is not who we are."

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The church has a surveillance system, but it didn’t have cameras that could capture the crime.

Moving forward, Rev. Lust said he wants to enhance surveillance and add new cameras and lighting to its building.

"Something like this makes you check everything, make sure everything is working," he said. "We are doing that, stepping up what we can, contacting our security to help us with the next step."

So far police have not made any arrests, and are asking the public for help.