Hello, this is Kingdom Offerings. I’m Dave Scherrer and I’m the President of One Hundred-Fold Ministries. You’ve found our podcast environment.

A friend of mine, who knows me well, asked how I was doing with the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting approaching and they knew that it was my self-confessed worst day of my life. And as they asked it, I could feel the emotion begin to sweep over me.

On Tuesday, April 20th, 25 years ago, I was driving back to Littleton from Colorado Springs. My 17-year-old daughter called me frantic. “Daddy,” she said, “you need to get here”. And I could barely understand her because she was crying so hard and breathing so hard. She said “My friends at Columbine are dying. There is a shooter on the campus. My friends are being killed. You have to get here.”

At that time, I was the president of a small, but I guess successful international youth ministry. I was in Colorado Springs trying to negotiate a book offer and a youth curricula. I was coming home all victorious and suddenly, 20 miles away from Littleton, nothing else mattered.  She called me before it had even hit the news. I began speeding home, wondering why people didn’t get out of my way. When I got there, Columbine was a war zone – the police, the fire service, parents, kids, teachers, administrators – everywhere.

My daughter found me. Heather was a Junior at Chatfield High School – that’s the sister rival school. But our church had a vibrant youth ministry right between Columbine and Chatfield, so there were dozens of Columbine kids that I knew. I think Heather knew hundreds. I think she spent more of her time at Columbine than she did at Chatfield. These kids were coming to me crying and telling me their story. They were saying who they saw got killed, who they saw hurt, who was missing. One young high school girl came up to me and said, “I know the shooters. They’re my friends. What do I do?” We went to go talk to the police, but really there was nothing to do.

Later, as a counselor, I spent the evening and into the night at an elementary school where a kind of a community triage of support for parents was forming. Families were waiting for  school bus loads of kids that had been trapped in the school or had been dispersed across the community and they were being returned to their parents at this elementary school. I waited with the Scott and the Bernall and the Ortwine families, knowing that they may not have their child. We were hoping against hope as the last school bus got there. One of the students got off on that bus, but two did not. And that was a very, very bad day.

Weirdly, my daughter Heather usually spent Tuesdays at Columbine in the cafeteria with her friends and for some reason on that Tuesday she stayed at Chatfield. So, my emotions were ranging from deep thanksgiving to heartbreaking loss.

We all know the Columbine High School shooting had a massive impact on our national conscience and culture, created conversations about gun control and gave us staggering concerns about our country’s moral framework. That shooting wasn’t the first mass shooting in Colorado, but it was the first of that size and scope – not only for our community, but for our nation.  The Columbine massacre changed so much in the soul of our country, I think. Sadly, that tragedy was the start of a long line of mass shootings that have continued to cause pain and sadness throughout our country.

Here in my Colorado community alone, we had the Aurora Chuck E. Cheese shooting in ’93, the Aurora theater shooting in 2012,  the missions agency Youth With A Mission shooting  there in Arvada and the Life Church in Colorado Springs. More recently for us here, ten died in Boulder at a grocery store. And that’s just where I live.

There are stories where you live. In 2012, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in 2022, the Robb Elementary School shooting, and then the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting of 2018. We’ve all been touched by these horrific tragedies and I’m wondering for this podcast is there something that we should be taking to heart on this 25th anniversary? I think so.

First of all, we should be reminded that the world is not safe. So, that seems obvious, and we knew that before Columbine, of course. There have been wars and disasters that have pockmarked the landscape of human existence since Cain killed Abel. And sometimes in unimaginably horrific numbers with indescribable torture and pain. What we’ve discovered is that schools are not safe, shopping malls and grocery stores are not safe, theaters are not safe, bowling alleys – not safe, neighborhood birthday parties – not safe, outdoor concerts, hospitals, churches – not safe. All safe places – no, they are not.

You see, we are living not just in a fallen world but a horrifically fallen world. We should never again think of sin as small or inconsequential. Something always dies when there’s sin. We remember that our enemy is a roaring lion seeking those to devour –  it is not safe anywhere in this world.

But yet, out of this terrible evil that we find ourselves in in this world, God has seen to it that the seeds of redemption are sown. From the unspeakable evil of the cross was released the very blood of God himself – the eternal and yet scarlet blood. And that blood watered the earth below it with life itself. There was a spiritual awakening in our community after the Columbine shooting that frankly defied logic.  

I’m reading now from a website called Pure Flix and they filed some stories of faith and hope about this Columbine event. Their site reads from Rachel Scott’s story to the many examples of people directly impacted by Columbine who’ve been able to persevere and move forward. There are truly inspiring examples of brave individuals who have been able to embrace faith and hope and all that, even in the midst of uncertainty.

Survivor Evan Todd was in the Columbine High School library when the shooters entered on April 20th and they tragically took lives there. He was injured during that event.  He was the last person to speak with the shooters on that day. Since then, Todd has spoken openly about his story of survival and how his Christian faith has guided him since that event.

It’s not difficult to imagine how hard forgiveness would be for victims of mass shootings. The Columbine massacre is no exception to this phenomenon and yet Todd and his fellow students, like Craig Scott, the brother of Rachel Joy Scott, were forced to grapple with forgiveness, forgiving those who had caused so much havoc, so much intense pain.

Scott, like Todd, was in the library that day. In addition to the coping with the loss of his sister, he witnessed the death of close friends. And while forgiveness he says was a struggle, Scott eventually journeyed through it.

Coni Sanders, the daughter of the brave teacher Dave Sanders, is now a therapist who works in our community to help violent offenders get their right path back again.

Scott is a filmmaker and a public speaker who has worked alongside his family to prevent school shootings and to reach out to hurting people. There is redemption breaking out.

The Friday night of that week, we sponsored an area-wide worship service at our church, and I spent dozens of hours helping to shape that service. Hundreds of teens came to a packed house to worship and to remember. The most important, most emotional moment for me – in the midst of all those kids, we had a moment of total silence and 13 bells chimed for the 13 casualties. We said we’d never forget. And so now a permanent, powerful monument to the tragedy of the Columbine shooting is there in Littleton and it’s there where once tens of thousands of flowers were dropped off spontaneously offered by the community in their sorrow.

We said we’d never forget. We’d never forget Corey DePooter, Cassie Bernall and Steven Curnow and Kelly Fleming or Daniel Mauser and Matthew Kechter, Daniel Rohrbough  and Dave Sanders, Rachel Joy Scott, John Tomlin,  Isaiah Shoels and Lauren Townsend, Kyle Velasquez. We won’t forget.

This is Dave Scherrer. The Kingdom of God is in front of you. Peace to you.