Monday, November 05, 2007
Ecumenical service seeks healing at Virginia Tech
A minister told members of four churches that true Christians aren't afraid to love the "wrong people."
Photo by Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times
Leigh Anne Taylor, the minister of music at Blacksburg United Methodist Church, prays on her knees Sunday as leaders prepare for an ecumenical All Saints service at Cassell Coliseum at Virginia Tech.
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BLACKSBURG -- More than six months after the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech, prominent evangelical leader the Rev. Tony Campolo challenged area Christians on All Saints Sunday to "look into the eyes of the oppressed as you are looking into the eyes of Jesus."
Campolo, a celebrated and controversial figure who was a spiritual adviser to Bill Clinton during his presidency, didn't mention the name of killer Seung-Hui Cho. But Cho's outsider presence was evoked in Campolo's sermon, a charismatic performance that moved parishioners to both laughter and tears.
Four of Blacksburg's largest congregations canceled services to take part in the ecumenical service at Tech's Cassell Coliseum.
Funded in part by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Mich., the service was designed to help the community take another step toward healing after the shootings. It drew about 2,500 worshippers, including sophomore Heidi Miller, who was shot three times on April 16. She joined three other students on stage in leading a liturgy for healing.
With giant video screens and 100-plus musicians and singers, the coliseum was transformed into a megachurch as one hymn gave way to the next for more than an hour before Campolo spoke.
To evoke the story of the solitary, outcast Cho, the left-leaning Baptist minister and author used the story of Roger, a young gay man with whom Campolo attended high school. Roger was so humiliated by his peers -- who dragged him into the corner of a locker room and urinated on him -- that he hanged himself.
"I knew then that I wasn't a Christian," he recalled. "If Christ had really been in me, then I would've been Roger's friend."
True Christians aren't afraid to love the "wrong people," he said in a sermon that was part inspiration and part call to action.
"Thirty-three innocent people died on this campus," he added.
In an interview after the service, Campolo said he wanted to inspire people "to remember the rejects and the losers," and explained that he had purposely used the number 33 -- including Cho as one of the victims -- instead of 32. "We don't honor him, but as Christians we must weep for him."
The service was one of multiple projects that have brought together the Blacksburg Baptist, Blacksburg Presbyterian, Luther Memorial Lutheran and Blacksburg United Methodist congregations, said project director Samantha Quesenberry.
She added that leaders of the Calvin Institute, some of whom spoke at the service, will be awarding the Blacksburg ecumenical group another grant -- though she didn't yet know the amount. "It's so we can be teachers and leaders to help other communities in crisis," she said.
The offering from Sunday's service will go toward the United in Caring Fund, created by the United Way of Montgomery, Radford and Floyd, to help with counseling for first responders and others affected by the shootings.
On the Net: blacksburgworships.com
