When Virginia Tech in Blacksburg became the stage for the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, Baptists rushed in from just steps away to offer comfort and help.
Officials from the Baptist Collegiate Ministries (BCM) at Virginia Tech had only to cross the street onto the school’s campus to minister to hurting people after Cho Seung-Hui gunned down 32 students and faculty on campus before killing himself April 16.
The immediate opportunities for ministry pointed "to the strength of Southern Baptists having Baptist Collegiate Ministries," said Jim Burton, director of volunteer mobilization for the North American Mission Board. "The fact that it (the ministry) was so well established at Virginia Tech, this doesn’t give us a short-term presence. This gives us a history and a future to build upon to help this community put themselves back together."
The night of the shooting, hundreds of students joined together with the BCM and Campus Crusade for Christ for a prayer service. Students began in prayer on their feet but ended on their knees, sobbing and crying out to God for healing and comfort.
"We’ve been praying for God to break the heart of this campus," said freshman Jerod Stepp, who is active in the BCM. "I can see that God is doing something really big here."
Stepp’s fellow BCM member and graduate student Brian Bluhm, 25, was one of five Baptists counted in the death toll at press time. Sophomore Nicole White, 18, a member of Nansemond River Baptist Church, Suffolk, Va., was also killed, along with freshman Rachael Hill, 18, a graduate of Grove Avenue Christian School, a ministry of Grove Avenue Baptist Church, Richmond, Va. Jarrett Lane, a member of First Baptist Church, Narrows, Va., and Lauren McCain, who was part of Restoration Church Phoebus Baptist in Hampton, also died.
And as Baptist leaders and students grieve their own in the midst of shock, they’re also preparing for the long haul of emotional and spiritual need campuswide that no doubt will come after the media frenzy.
With students’ future needs as the focus, the Baptist General Association of Virginia (BGAV) mission board — sponsor of the BCM at Virginia Tech — activated two of its crisis care chaplains to develop resources that will be given to students, their parents and their home churches.
The resources will describe secondary stress. Chaplains will explain what symptoms to watch for and what students and parents can do to work through their feelings.
"What do you say to these folks? What do you not say to these folks? How do you respond to questions?" Terry Raines, disaster relief coordinator for the BGAV, cited as some of the topics the resources will address.
"Then at the end, it will have some referral-type resources," he said. "For the version that is sent to the churches in Virginia we will have names and contact numbers of crisis care chaplains that we have trained that are in the areas of those home churches."
The mission board has been working through the BCM staff and students at Virginia Tech to minister to the broader campus community. Raines said BCM staff members have developed relationships over the years with the university administration and other campus organizations and that network will be utilized in distributing the resources developed by BGAV chaplains.
The BGAV’s disaster relief department also is assessing the need for a temporary child-care unit that could be deployed to the university campus to assist people who are volunteering their time to help students.
Immediately following the shootings, a disaster relief kitchen unit from the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia (SBCV) convention provided meals for about 200 officers stationed on campus around the clock and for law enforcement workers connected with President Bush’s appearance at an afternoon convocation April 17. Meals also were served to some of the students attending a candlelight vigil.
SBCV officials also were asked if they could transport grieving parents. Area churches responded with their vans. (BP, ABP)
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