Alex Johnson – Journalist at Large

Pastor Mona Harper surveys the damage at Kingdom City Church in Stone Mountain, Ga. (WXIA-TV)

Thieves tore apart the youth center of a Georgia church and made off with nearly everything they could — including a refrigerator, a stove, a microwave oven, broilers and the copper in the ceiling — while the congregation worshiped during Sunday services upstairs, the church’s pastor says.

“They stood on the chairs and took all the copper. They took our kitchen utensils,” said Mona Harper, pastor of Kingdom City Church in Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta.

But then they went a step further, NBC station WXIA of Atlanta reported.

“They took crayons, magic markers and DVDs. They left the Bible and the Scrabble game, but they took the board games,” Harper said.

“Things that we use to get kids off the street, they just took it,” she said.

Full story and video (msnbc.com and NBC News)