To this day no one knows what motivated Larry Gene Ashbrook to walk into Wedgwood Baptist Church Sept. 15, 1999, and open fire on adults and children in the building. He had no connection to the congregation that anyone can determine. How he even found the building is a mystery: Pastor Al Meredith says that the church’s location is a lesson in where not to situate a church. Even though it is less than a mile from Interstate 20 as it passes through Fort Worth, Texas, one must drive through a maze of curving residential streets to find it.
Still, shortly after 6:30 p.m. that Wednesday evening, he was there in the church, gunning down adults and teens who had gathered for choir practice, prayer meetings or for a rally celebrating that morning’s “See You at the Pole” prayer rally held at schools around the country.
Yet despite the tragedy, God was at work that night. Witnesses cite many small incidents that they say add up to evidence of God’s provident protection. The killer, after shooting at several adults in the foyer of the church and killing one, first opened a door that would have led him into the front of the church sanctuary, where approximately 400 teens were listening to the band Forty Days. Had he done so, he would have been within feet of those teens and had a solid mass of bodies to shoot into. Instead, for some reason Ashbrook exited and walked to a door leading to the rear of the sanctuary, which meant that most of those listeners had approximately 20 rows of benches between them and the shooter.
Another seemingly bizarre twist also probably helped reduce the casualty count: Many of the people in the church thought they were witnessing a skit meant to dramatize the shootings at Columbine High School only months earlier. (In fact, a few teens jumped up in the darkened sanctuary and shouted, “Shoot me, shoot me!”) Because of this, most of the people huddled down among the pews but did not stampede for the exits. Had they done so, they would have been funneled into a small area that would have provided a dense target for the shooter.
And witnesses say that Ashbrook several times started down the aisle, which would have allowed him an unobstructed shot down the length of pews, but for some reason turned back each time after only a few steps.
Still, many were wounded, and seven were killed: Sydney Browning, 36, the director of the children’s choir; Shawn Brown, 23, a student at nearby Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Kim Jones, 23, also a student at Southwestern. Four teens attending the post-“See You at the Pole” rally also died: Kristi Beckel, Joseph Ennis, Cassie Griffin, all 14, and Justin Ray, 17.
But tragedy is never wasted in God’s economy, and what Larry Gene Ashbrook intended for evil, God has used for good. While it is not possible to tell everyone’s story from that evening, a few anecdotes will suffice to show the truth of that.
Justin Ray: Justin was not a member of Wedgwood Baptist Church, but he had been invited on a summer missions trip to Del Rio, Texas, with the youth group, and afterward was not the same. “When he came back he really seemed to have grown up a lot,” his mom, Judy Stegner, remembers. He asked her, “Mom, what would you think if I became a Baptist?”
Justin, an only child, was interested in video and sound production and was at Wedgwood that evening to help run the soundboard for the band. He apparently believed the shooting was an act and went down from the church’s balcony to videotape the “skit.” Witnesses said that Justin stood as still as a tripod as he filmed Ashbrook shooting from the back of the sanctuary. Once Ashbrook caught sight of Justin, he took several shots at him, all missing; Justin never moved. A final shot caught him, and he died instantly.
Justin had not been able to participate in the See You at the Pole event that morning: the private school he attended, Cassata Learning Center, did not have a flagpole. After Justin’s death, the school principal arranged to have a flagpole donated, Congresswoman Kay Granger sent a flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol, Texas state representative Lon Burnam in Austin donated a Texas flag, and a local headstone company donated a granite marker that reads, “In Memory of Justin Michael Ray.”
And so this September, there will be a See You at the Pole prayer rally at a school that had never had one before.
Cassie Griffin: Cassie loved frogs and collected frog trinkets, artwork and jewelry. In fact, her motto was F.R.O.G.: Fully Rely on God.
Her dad and mom, David and Tralissa, say she had come to know the Lord at an early age, around 7. David says Cassie was a typical 14-year-old. “She was no angel by any stretch of the imagination,” he says, “but she did love God, and she had a boldness for God that we didn’t realize until after her death.”
She had been to the See You at the Pole rally that morning at her school, North Valley High School, but a friend she had been praying for had not come, even after being invited. That morning Cassie wrote a note to that friend, Christina, that read in part: “I was crying this morning for you and every other non-Christian in our school. It’s just that I love you so much that I don’t want you to go to hell. … I love you and I want you to know that.”
“Christina called me Thursday after she’d learned of Cassie’s death,” David says. “She was just distraught, almost hysterical. She had had a fight with Cassie on Wednesday because of this note, and that’s the last time she saw her.”
But as a result of Cassie’s note and her witness, he adds, Christina “made the commitment to let Christ be her Lord.”
Kim Jones: Kim was known for her quick and easy smile. Her mom, Stephanie, says, “Kim just loved Jesus. I’ve never met anybody like her. She was willing to do anything to serve him. She always said, ‘Whatever he wants. Whatever he wants.’ She was the type of person that if she ever did anything, it was usually 100 percent.”
A memorial service for Kim was held at her alma mater, Texas Christian University, and the service was broadcast worldwide by CNN. Because Kim’s father, Stan, is an executive with Aramco, the Arab-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia, portions of the service were broadcast in that country, the keeper of the most important sites in Islam, a country that strictly censors any Christian message.
“The Saudi broadcast of CNN had excerpts from [the memorial service],” Stephanie says, “and they had excerpts from me giving an interview and talking about Jesus.”
Friends also told Stan and Stephanie that the CNN broadcast was aired uncensored in nearby Jordan, which has had a long tie to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam.
So by Kim’s death, people who perhaps never had heard of Jesus or knew nothing about the gospel heard about her love for the Lord and his message of grace.
Chip Gillette: Chip is an officer in the Fort Worth police department. He also lives just across the street from Wedgwood Baptist Church, where his wife, Debbie, is a church secretary.
Chip was trying to catch a short nap before going to a night shift when his dog, Jake, started barking crazily at the front window, which was Chip’s first clue that something was wrong at the church. When several people ran out of the sanctuary and told him that there was a gunman inside, Chip immediately got on his police radio and called for help. Because it came over a police channel, and because Chip knew exactly what information to provide the dispatcher, help arrived within minutes.
Chip donned his bulletproof vest, got his gun and ran over to the church. He entered the darkened sanctuary, gun drawn, just as Ashbrook committed suicide on one of the back benches.
The next day, Chip walked through the bullet-riddled building trying to make sense of the event.
“I said to God, ‘Give me something to take away from here,'” he says. Chip found a hymnal slightly tipped over in its rack. “Something just came up and said, ‘That’s it.’ ”
The spine had been broken where the bullet entered, and it opened to the middle of Hymn 37, “The Hallelujah Chorus.”
“Every page before that was just shredded,” Chip says. “The bullet was still in the book and had stopped right at the chorus where it says, ‘King of Kings, Lord of Lords,’ and ‘He shall live forever and ever.’ It gave me such a chill up my spine to realize that God was in control, and that just gave me a sense of assurance.”
Pastor Al Meredith: Brother Al, as he prefers to be called, had just returned from Michigan, where he had buried his mother. He had been struggling for days with what God’s will would be through his time of grief.
“I distinctly remember praying, ‘God, I don’t know if you have something great or broader for the ministry here at Wedgwood,'” Meredith says. “‘I don’t know what it costs, but if I’m not willing to pay the price, I’m willing to let you make me willing.’ Four or five days later I came home to all this.”
He says he doesn’t regret praying that prayer, but he also admits that he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t wonder what God was up to. “God never uses anyone greatly without first wounding him deeply,” Meredith says. “Very few great men of God have ever lived without having deep fears of doubt and question. I haven’t doubted here yet for this, but the fact is I haven’t begun to get in touch with my feelings yet.”
Still, he was able to use the opportunity to preach the gospel to a worldwide audience, on the “Larry King Live” show, on the CNN broadcast of the memorial for Kim Jones, and especially during the Sunday morning service four days after the shooting where media from around the world were present.
“I have to give God the credit,” he says. “But on the other hand, either Christianity is true or it isn’t. Either we believe what we say we believe, or let’s pack it up and go sell used cars.
“When it comes down to it, if you don’t have that confidence, what do you have? The prospect of not believing, the prospect of turning your back on God when you need him most is more than I could bear.
“God has proven himself faithful over and over again all my life. As Job says, ‘Shall we praise God in good times and not in bad?’ If there’s any hope at all in all of this, it is that God is faithful and true.”
______________________
Neven is editor of Focus on the Family magazine, where this article was first published.
============================================================================
Baptist Press, September 11, 2000
“Seminarians continue to glean lessons from Wedgwood tragedy”
By Cory J. Hailey
FORT WORTH, Texas (BP) — It has been a year since a deranged gunman walked into the sanctuary of Wedgwood Baptist Church and started shooting, and for some students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary the time that has passed has shown them that God has used the horrific act for his purposes.
For Kevin Galey, a Ph.D. student who was one of the seven church members wounded in the gunfire, what happened Sept. 15 expanded his vision of God’s church and underscored that God is in control.
By traveling across the country and corresponding with people from other states and other countries in the wake of the shooting, Galey has seen “the greater connection [Wedgwood Baptist] has with the larger body of Christ.”
“Knowing the church is a dynamic force relieved my fears, relieved my cautions, relieved my concerns that I had” particularly about protecting his family, Galey said.
Not long after the shooting, Galey told the seminary’s Southwestern News journal he wanted God’s grace and peace to deal with the shooting more than answers, and a year later he said that grace is indeed what he has found.
“God’s graciousness is the story of this past year,” Galey said, noting the grace has been expressed in his life in a greater “sense of commitment and urgency” he feels when he reads God’s Word. Promises made by God to protect his servants have more meaning now, and he believes that Christians need not be afraid or disturbed by tragedy or crisis.
“I had a sense of peace and presence,” Galey said of that time a year ago. “I knew the Lord would take care of me and my family.
“His presence will allow me to get through tragedy. You can’t explain it until you’re in the middle of it. It’s the peace that passes all understanding,” he said, quoting Philippians 4:7.
“There’s a power of knowing God’s in control.”
But part of God’s grace is not only bringing healing and peace, but also exposing the truth, Galey said, and one truth he believes the shooting at Wedgwood has exposed is that “God’s church does not know how to deal with tragedy or to minister to people in tragedy.”
Galey said there is a sense in American culture that people should have all the answers whenever a tragedy like Wedgwood hits. But sometimes there is no answer, he said, and we “don’t know how to handle people in pain.”
“We need to be the church that ministers to the extent that it costs us something,” Galey said. Mere words aren’t the way to help, he added, recalling the admonition of James 2:15-16.
One realization that came to Galey from the shooting was “how fast people want to put tragedy behind them and focus on the good things that happened. They push forward, forgetting that people are still hurting, still struggling.
“To them, this isn’t a victorious event in their lives. This isn’t a good thing.”
Though he doesn’t have all the answers, Galey said he does have the answer that matters. And it is an answer that modern society doesn’t like to hear.
“There’s no safe place for your family,” he said, “unless they’re in Christ. You’re totally, completely dependent on God.”
Not even tragedy can change the very secure feeling that comes from being in God’s will, he added.
That sense of peace is shared by Jeff Laster, who was also wounded that night. The Southwestern student was the first one shot that night, but even as he lay on the floor, he felt a sense of peace over the possibility of dying.
“It occurred to me that I could die,” Laster said, “but God spoke to me and said, ‘You’re not going to die.'”
Along with that peace, Laster came to the realization that he, like Wedgwood Baptist Church, could adopt one of two mind-sets: He could let the shooting defeat him spiritually or let God use it. He chose the latter.
One of the lessons Laster, studying toward a master of arts in Christian education, learned from the entire episode was that God does protect his own but not always in the way they expect. He remembered others commenting that God had protected their families in the shooting, and the questions came to his mind, “Did God not protect me? Did he not protect Sydney Browning? Where does protection lie?”
God showed him that God’s definition of protection isn’t necessarily physical protection, Laster said.
“It came with Jesus’ death on the cross,” he said.
His brush with death, while assuring him of God’s peace, has also given Laster a heightened desire to become better equipped to minister to others.
“There’s more of a desire to be prepared to counsel people,” he said. “So many people wanted to say the right thing” in the wake of Wedgwood, “but they didn’t know what to say.”
Laster has also learned better to rely on God. As an organized individual, Laster said he likes to have things planned out, but when he was shot, his tidy schedule was thrown out of kilter.
“God came in and changed my perspective that quick,” he said. “Everything I had planned out got canceled.” At that point, Laster said, he didn’t have any control and that experience has taught him to be dependent on the Lord.
“Ultimately, I’ve got to trust and lean more on him,” he said.
Laster also maintains that the shooting didn’t give him a great new testimony but simply proved that God is never taken by surprise and had been working to prepare him for this trial.
The theme of the Lord’s care in the midst of the tragedy was echoed by Southwestern’s dean of theology, David Crutchley, who said that a year after the shooting, “Our minds still play out the questions that remain unanswered and our faith gropes in trust toward the point of divine reassurance.
“The divine prerogative remains unexplained, but as we share the sense of loss with [the martyrs’] families we know three of our own now ‘dwell in the house of the Lord forever,'” Crutchley said.
The Wedgwood shooting gave Lana Runnels, working toward her master of arts in marriage and family counseling and master of arts in Christian education degrees, a sense of what kinds of trials Christians who are persecuted are facing. That awareness of persecution and the freedoms Christians enjoy was “very humbling. I have a heightened awareness of what it means to live here,” he said.
Like Laster, Runnels said that the shooting did not somehow make Wedgwood better than it was before, but instead confirmed its reliance on the Lord. And the need of a greater dependence on God also resonates with Runnels. The shooting “helped me understand the importance of being willing to trust that when God says he’ll take care of you, he will.”
“Don’t worry about the little things,” she added.
Southwesterner John Roland, a master of divinity with biblical languages student, has run a gamut of emotions that included anger with God to impatience with trivialities to confusion as to why such an event would happen. But among the grief at the loss of his friend Shawn Brown and anger, his walk with God was brought to a new level. The shooting “woke up my seminary experience,” he said. He “realized a desperate need to study the Word and pray,” and more than that, the reality of spiritual warfare was brought home to him. “I’ve been kind of isolated,” he said, but violence “can happen anywhere. Evil’s very prevalent. There is a great need for the gospel.”
Roland said he expects that going through the loss of his friend will help him to be a better pastor and counselor since he can empathize more now and has more of a heart for those who are suffering. The attack on Wedgwood, he believes, is an indication that Christians are “in the last days. We’re really under attack. There’s a super need to put on the armor of God and find out where [God is].”
The necessity to serve God right now personally resonated with Crutchley, who believes “the fragrance of their memories continues to remind us of the fragility of life and the accountability and stewardship of living in the present moment.”