Blacksburg, Va., is a wounded city. With 26,000 students, Virginia Tech is the dominant presence in the town usually bustling with students crisscrossing the campus and spilling over into the streets of the burg. Not Monday.
Although barraged with requests from news agencies in the United States and even from Canada, Darrell Cook, campus-based minister with the Virginia Baptist Mission Board's empowering leaders team, focused his attention on the needs of students. By mid-afternoon on Monday, the day of the massacre at Virginia Tech, he had invited the intervarsity and campus crusade groups to join the Baptist students to gather with other students for prayer and to simply be together.
Before the gathering, scheduled for 7 p.m., Darrell and ministry associate Mark Appleton counseled with the students who dropped by the Baptist collegiate ministry center to hang out. Members of area churches began stopping by with pizza. In an unusual twist, the manger of the pizzeria didn't want to accept their money. They insisted.
Area pastors were on the scene, too, bringing a sense of calm to a chaotic time. Tommy McDearis, pastor of Blacksburg Baptist Church, who is also chaplain of the local police force, spent much of the day, at the hospital.
At the appointed time students began to drift in two and three at a time, slowly at first and then in a virtual torrent of troubled young men and women. The grouped themselves naturally into fives and sixes throughout the center. The first question on nearly every lip was, “Is anybody missing?”
Most of the students had spent a large part of the day tracking down friends and acquaintances making sure they were OK. When their own groups proved to be still in tact, they then began to expand their circle of concern to include classmates. As the evening progressed, names of people not accounted for began to surface. These they simply called “the missing.”
As the groups dissolved and reformed sharing information and concern, some students openly wept. Many prayed. All hugged. They needed, it seemed, not just be in touch, but to actually, physically hold on to each other as an antidote to their shock and grief.
The most common reason students gave for wanting to attend the gathering was, “I just wanted to be with people I care about.” The power of presence was undeniable. Other students spoke of their need to support other students and be supported by them. One student remarked that he had come to just be quiet. He had spent the day furiously tracking down his friends and answering his cell phone assuring family members, friends from home and campus acquaintances that he was OK. Now at the end of the day, he needed to sit on the floor with two of his friends and just be quiet.
Greg Alexander, collegiate ministry strategist with the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, and Darrell Fletcher, a field strategist with the VBMB, circulated among students along with Cook and Appleton. Two crisis ministry volunteers working through the VBMB were on hand to provide comfort. Members of Northstar Church in Blacksburg, a Baptist General Association of Virginia congregation, applied themselves to various needs. Jennifer Kincaid, director of the church's women's ministries, coordinated the food. Matt Morris, a PhD graduate from Tech and a family therapist, counseled informally while others were simply available to listen to students when they felt like talking.
Some students spoke of how difficult it will be to return to class and how their sense of serenity and security has been destroyed. Not surprisingly on a campus largely populated with engineering students, some shared a perspective expressed by senior Kevin Prussia, who alluded to the statistical odds against something like that ever happening on the campus again. Prussia is scheduled to graduate in a month.
As worship began in the center's chapel those who could get in sat on the floor while others stood in the back filling the aisle and doorways. Many others, unable to get close enough to hear or see, continued their conversations in other parts of the center.
Even after the worship time ended, students continued to talk well into the night. Many stayed at the center while others returned, usually in groups, to dorm rooms, apartments or area restaurants.
Over sandwiches and ice cream, CSM president-elect, Chad Wallace, a junior and member of First Baptist Church of Newport News, strategized with two friends how to answer questions students will inevitably ask. They also wondered how to best share their faith in the aftermath of the campus tragedy. “I've seen Christians take advantage of people's grief and I don't want to do that,” he said. “I want to respect them and what they are going through, but I also want to point them to Christ.”
Cook, Appleton, Wallace and area church ministers are not sure what will happen in the aftermath of what is being called the massacre. But they are ready to respond with the love of Christ.