This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on June 30, 2026.
“Take him out! Blow him up! Take him out! Blow him up!” the children chant during a vacation Bible school program at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Lexington, Ky. With eerie music looming over the scene, the viral TikTok video shows an armed soldier dressed in black on the church stage peering out at the kids. Three additional armed soldiers in camouflage walk a man in a hoodie down the center aisle and drop him on the stage.
As the victim cowers on the auditorium steps, the soldiers surround him.
“Take him out! Blow him up! Take him out! Blow him up!” the children and adults demand as their bloodthirsty anticipation for violence builds.
Suddenly, the soldiers open fire. Three automatic weapons shoot for 10 seconds straight as the victim’s body convulses and shakes. Their pastor later identified the guns as “air rifles that are basically paintball guns.”
“As the bullets are flying and children are cheering, an adult picks up the chanting again.”
As the bullets are flying and children are cheering, an adult picks up the chanting again.
“Take him out! Blow him up! Take him out! Blow him up!”
The soldiers grab the victim by the ankles and drag him out the side door.
Mothers are seen laughing. Children are smiling and jumping in delight. A man repeatedly yells, “Yeah!”
The pastor walks over to the side door.
“Gotta love this,” he says as he listens for the explosion. “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
The kids quiet down to listen, while the pastor begins to count.
Some of the children press their hands against their ears, apparently hoping to muffle the sound of the body blowing up outside.
“What’s after four?” The pastor asks, inviting the kids to join in.
“Five!” They all yell.
Then when they say “eight,” an explosion goes off outside the door, kids begin screaming, and the video ends.
The independent Baptists behind the ‘assassination’
Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Lexington is part of the independent Baptist world of fundamentalist Christianity. Independent fundamental Baptists are the people who thought Al Mohler was a compromising liberal during the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention during the 1980s and ’90s.
Dewayne Walker, Mount Olivet’s pastor, is an instructor for Independent Baptist Online College, which is “unapologetically fundamental, Baptist, unaccredited and King James only.”
He started Mount Olivet Baptist Church in 1992. His IBOC profile says the church offers bus routes, a Patch the Pirate Club, a Christian school, a nursing home ministry and addictions ministry.
People commenting online have claimed the church has been doing violent skits like this during VBS since the 1990s. One person claiming to be a former member of Mount Olivet said they remember as a child when the church would have men in military garb dragging in the devil to shoot and kill him while the children chanted, “U-G-L-Y! You ain’t got no alibi! You ugly!”
The church’s response
Due to the firestorm of response to their assassination cosplay, Walker released a video statement.
“I’m quite frankly befuddled,” Walker said. “The misinformation out there is sad. And I guess it’s a part of what this generation has become. … It’s so odd to me, after 32 years of doing this, now this comes up.”
Continue reading at Baptist News Global.