Before the first shot at Columbine High School, area pastors were praying for students. Before the nation focused on Littleton, Colorado, pastors were praying their churches could unite in turning their community to Christ.
The stories of Columbine have been well told: the plot of two young men to bomb their school building and massacre their classmates, the courage of 17-year-old Cassie Bernall, whose simple affirmation of faith earned her a bullet in the temple, the televised memorials of the 15 dead, and, amid the tragedy, clear testimony of healing and redemption in Jesus Christ.
What hasn’t been told is how God prepared ministers in southwest metro Denver to face those wrenching days.
“I don’t think that three years ago we could have handled things as quickly as we did,” said pastor Jerry Nelson of Southern Gables Evangelical Free Church, “nor would we have garnered the same support from as broad a number of churches.”
A small group of pastors began meeting for prayer in 1990. About three years ago, Nelson felt the need to bring more ministers together and to their knees. So he began drawing fellow pastors into the weekly Wednesday morning gathering.
“Jerry took the time to seek us out,” said Ken Summers, pastor of Dakota Ridge Assembly of God. “He just wanted us to get together for prayer. It wasn’t about a crusade or an event. It was about acceptance and unity. For me that has been incredible.”
The prayer focused on the needs of local churches, the community, missions, and the salvation of the lost around the world. Prayer led to discussion of God’s heart for Littleton.
“We began to ask, ‘Could we do better together what we have been doing separately?'” Nelson said. “We knew we needed to trust each other, to develop genuine love, and to appreciate what was happening in each other’s churches.”
Seeking to share the gospel with every person in the community, the pastors shared their churches’ mailing lists and set up neighborhood prayer groups incorporating members from all their churches. The goal: to pray for every person by name in their quadrant of metropolitan Denver, to place a Bible in every home, and to see a church established in every neighborhood.
Some prayer times focused on the area’s youth. The pastors arranged to meet at times at local schools, inviting each school’s principal to join in the one-hour session. The gathering grew to 30 each week.
Ministry in the aftermath
All schools were closed the morning after the shootings. While investigators searched Columbine for answers, pastors gathered in the parking lot of nearby Bear Creek High School, where prayer meeting had been scheduled that day.
“We had a significant time in prayer that morning,” Nelson said. Summers recalled the urgency in that meeting as pastors exchanged news about members who had been killed or injured. This loosely-knit group grew tighter.
Through their informal network, the pastors shared by phone and e-mail the needs of the grief stricken, ways to minister in crisis, and special services and meetings.
“I don’t know how we would have survived and ministered in this tragedy without that sense of connectedness and support,” Summers said.
“God was preparing us for this,” Nelson said. “Having relationships built made all the difference in how we could respond.”
Two pastors were assigned to draft a response. The statement endorsed by 35 churches pointed the community to Christ and offered hope. As a full-page ad, the statement ran free-of-charge in Colorado’s two largest daily newspapers.
Team ministry culminated in a memorial service that was televised nationwide, featuring Franklin Graham and many of the pastors. Not everyone in the religious community was pleased with the overtly Christian emphasis. One rabbi registered a complaint that the grieving were advised to “seek Christ.”
But Nelson sees the response overall as unifying.
An Episcopal church arranged for four pastors from Jonesboro, Arkansas, to come to Littleton to share their experiences following a deadly shooting spree. The pastors welcomed the effort.
A Catholic priest in the area identified lingering anger as a problem for survivors of similar attacks. He plans to bring together victims’ families to work through the forgiveness process, an endeavor supported by the pastors’ group.
“We want to help people come to a point of genuine forgiveness, which we believe can happen only through Jesus Christ,” Nelson said.
Nelson hopes the unity from—and even before—the Columbine shootings will continue to characterize ministry in Littleton. “Our lay people are enthusiastic about what they are seeing among the churches and the pastors. Their response is ‘It’s about time!’ “
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