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BY MELISSA LAUBER
UMCONNECTION STAFF

The deaths of 33 people April 16 on the campus of Virginia Tech University, in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, brought thousands of people to 'a place beyond words, a place beyond tears,' said the Rev. Mark Waddell.

'It turned some people toward God, and it turned some people away from God, and it left everybody shaking their heads, wondering why did this have to happen,' said Waddell, pastor of Catonsville UMC, who the day of the shooting ministered to his parishioner Justin Klein.

Klein was shot three times that day ? twice in his right leg and once in his left elbow. The junior engineering science and mechanics major, who is an honor student and an Eagle Scout, leaned upon his faith to get him through the entire experience, said Waddell.

Klein and his family are reluctant to share their story, preferring instead to wrestle with the events that surrounded the shooting and the aftermath outside of the public spotlight.

However, it was important to Waddell and the congregation of Catonsville UMC to let Klein know that God was present, that he was loved and that grappling with questions to try to bring order out of chaos would be a natural part of the days that followed.

The church sent letters to Klein and three other members of the church who are students at Virginia Tech. Church members also prayed and grieved together the following Sunday at worship.

Waddell cautions against easy affirmations, like statements that some of the students survived because they had a special destiny to pursue. 'God was present that day with all the students ? those who lived and those who died,' said Waddell. 'We shouldn?t head down a path of easy answers, that?s not the way.'

Bishop John R. Schol of the Baltimore-Washington Conference sounded these same themes in a letter to the people of the conference on the day following the shooting.

'This tragedy will increase our fear, raise our doubts and challenge our faith in humanity and even God,' the bishop wrote. 'Rather than resisting these questions, I invite you to center yourself in God and prayerfully consider your emotions and feelings with family, friends and fellow believers.'

The bishop challenged clergy and laity to find safe spaces for conversation and prayer. 'I also encourage you to assure people of God?s love and ultimate plan for our healing and salvation,' he wrote. 'In this season of Easter, we are reminded that Jesus the victim became Jesus the victor, the crucified one was resurrected in an action by God that proclaimed resurrection is the final answer to hatred, violence and death.

'We also have much work to do,' Bishop Schol concluded. 'God does not want us to rely only on a resurrection at the end of life but to live a redeemed life now and through God?s power to be constantly creating a world more like the kingdom of God, free from violence. We must do all we can to be peacemakers, lovers of creation, and protectors of our young people.'

Part of this peacemaking, Waddell said, will be coming to the point that people are able to pray for the perpetrators of such crimes. A police chaplain for nine years, Waddell believes we 'can?t offer grace and God?s love to one person and not another.'

Seung-Hui Cho, the troubled student who went on the shooting spree at Virginia Tech, illuminates human failings in a fallen world, said Bishop Schol in a letter to the people of the Korean community within the Baltimore-Washington Conference.

'This tragedy strikes at the heart of the entire human family?s inability to fully address violence and our failure to reach and heal people with mental disease,' wrote the bishop. 'All people and especially all Christians bear some responsibility for what has occurred this past week.'

Bishop Schol shared his prayer that 'all people and especially those of us who profess Jesus Christ, the prince of peace and the great physician, band together to work toward healing the mentally ill and demonstrate our love for peace by addressing the violence that pervades our world.'

In the weeks that followed the shooting, throughout The United Methodist Church, leaders examined how, in the words of Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, 'Good Friday intruded on our world again.'

Some, like the Rev. Jim Winkler of the General Board of Church and Society, called for enacting more meaningful firearms control.

Others pledged to remember that the body of Christ is 'called to be intercessors on behalf of the whole world. Our highest calling at this time is to pray,' said the Rev. Karen Greenwald of the General Board of Discipleship.

The Rev. Erik Alsgaard, who recently served as director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington Conference, has a son who is a senior at Virginia Tech.

'Last night, just before I hung up from talking with my son, I told him that I loved him, and loved him a lot,' Alsgaard said. And I realized that many, many people were not being given that opportunity because it had been violently taken away from them.'