Christianity Today: How Rhode Island Churches Responded to the Brown Shooting, by Harvest Prude & Kara Bettis Carvalho:
Brown graduate student Maddy Wachsmuth’s first notice of an active shooter on campus came from a GroupMe chat with other Christians. Even before students received official alerts, texts streamed in: “Urgent. Take cover. This is not a joke,” she described.
“It was scary getting messages the whole time,” she told CT. Some updates came from a student barricaded in a classroom. Wachsmuth prayed as she monitored the chat of nearly 300 Christian students and alumni. Later, students gathered at campus ministry leaders’ homes to pray, cry, and eventually eat takeout.
Three days after the shooting, the campus is much emptier between canceled finals, winter break, and a gunman still at large. But faith leaders, pastors, and Brown spiritual faculty are showing up, providing care for those who’ve remained after the attack that claimed the lives of two students and injured nine others. …
[T]herapists, pastors, and other Christians prayed with students and handed out hot drinks. Over the weekend, nearby Sanctuary Church put together 100 care packages for social workers and frontline responders. “Christians [shouldn’t] run from a crisis. They run into it,” said Andrew Mook, pastor of Sanctuary. “[We’re] trying to embody that as much as we can.”
Lead pastor Scott Axtmann at Renaissance Church in the Riverside neighborhood is still hearing from members who had to shelter in place, were in the building just minutes prior to the shooting, or personally knew the victims. On Sunday, he went ahead with his prepared message, which focused on how Christ suffers alongside humanity.
“He understands. He sympathizes. He suffers with us in our pain,” Axtmann preached. “It’s easy to feel alone in our pain, but the truth is that we are not alone. God is with us. … He draws near to us in our suffering.”
Though the shooter was still at large and she was running on little sleep, Brown student Wachsmuth felt compelled to go to Sanctuary as usual on Sunday. “It’s weird that we’re in this season of Advent,” she said, “longing for the New Jerusalem and longing for every tear to be wiped away. We’re feeling that even more.”
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