ELCA NEWS SERVICE
April 10, 2008
Lutherans Prepare for First Anniversary of Virginia Tech Shooting
08-043-BMC
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Lutheran Student Movement at Virginia
Tech is providing opportunities for growth while bracing for the
media attention of the first anniversary of the worst campus
shooting in U.S. history.
On April 16, 2007, a lone gunman killed 32 faculty and
students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
in Blacksburg, Va., before killing himself.
The Rev. William H. King said the greatest anxiety he hears
among students as the first anniversary of the shooting
approaches is the media attention. According to King, the feeling
on campus is "Here come the (news) trucks again."
King serves as one of the campus pastors at Luther Memorial
Lutheran Church, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America (ELCA) located across the street from the
Virginia Tech campus.
Mark Meyer, 22, a third-year junior majoring in mechanical
engineering, said the campus became a media headquarters
overnight. "Individually, we talked to several reporters, but
after a few days that became intrusive," said Meyer. He noted
that "the media coverage was not exactly matching what I was
experiencing."
For many students, fresh media attention means revisiting
traumatic memories.
Virginia Tech student Betsy Potter, 22, said that life on
campus immediately after the shooting felt like "a fishbowl" with
all of the media. "There'd be people crying at memorials and
others taking pictures of them," said Potter.
Potter added that Virginia Tech students felt supported by
Lutheran Student Movement (LSM) chapters nationwide. "It was
amazing how many other LSM (groups) sent notes from all over the
country," she said.
When students returned for classes in the fall, they were in
very different places, said the Rev. Joanna Stallings, campus
pastor, Luther Memorial. Many students were "through with (the
shooting) and didn't want to hear another word about it," she
said.
"The most important thing we did as a community was
worship," said Stallings. Students gather weekly on Tuesday
evenings for a meal and worship at the student center, and
participate in Luther Memorial's Sunday services.
King said, "When push came to shove, it was the worship that
provided those words of comfort -- the needful, healing things
that people were yearning for. There were no answers that were
going to explain this."
Meyer said that the campus ministry's programs and spiritual
aspects drew him in. "The big reason I kept coming back was that
I got to know people and we became friends," he said.
In addition to attending to spiritual needs of LSM members
and the local community, the tragedy provided an unexpected
opportunity for public ministry on a national level.
The day after the shooting, King was asked to offer words
from the Christian tradition to comfort a diverse community at
the Virginia Tech Convocation, which included speeches by
Virginia Tech faculty member Nikki Giovanni and U.S. President
George W. Bush.
"I took a lot of heat for not mentioning Jesus in that
convocation," said King of the nationally broadcast event. King
felt it was important to provide pastoral care for the entire
university community at that event, rather than make a
confessional statement.
That evening, King and three other pastors led a joint
worship service for members of the Virginia Tech LSM and two ELCA
congregations in Blacksburg, Luther Memorial and St. Michael
Lutheran Church. "That was the place where we brought the Word
into reality, saying, 'This is horrible, but the Psalmist has
dealt with this in a lament. This is mysterious, but Scripture
does speak to this situation of grief,'" King recounted.
In the months afterward, King said he revisited the theology
of the cross, a paradox from Martin Luther's teachings that
states that God is revealed and God is also hidden in times of
suffering. "Now I'm beginning to get a sense of what it's all
about. In the midst of this, God is faithful, but there are also
lots of loose ends that flop around."
"I would never ever say that God did this to Virginia Tech,"
said King, but, through the experience of pain and suffering at
Virginia Tech, the community has been opened to other people's
pain around the world.
King compared the task to preaching at a funeral: "The
gospel matters in that moment or it doesn't matter at all.
There's a bracing clarity in that moment."
"I sense that our students do not want their Virginia Tech
experience to be dominated by this particular event. People
acknowledge the loss. They're not in denial. They just don't want
to be defined by that event," said King.
---
"Naming the Pain, Speaking of Hope: Considerations
for Religious Address in Time of Crisis" by the Rev.
William H. King, published in the May 2007 issue of
Journal of Lutheran Ethics is at
http://www.ELCA.org/jle/article.asp?k=721 on the Web.
For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or [log in to unmask]
http://www.elca.org/news
ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog
