It was 2002, and our youth ministry team was preparing our group for the International Youth Convention to be held in Denver, Colorado. A year had gone into the planning, and we could not shake that among the fun of true western barbeques, restaurants with cliff divers and crystal mountain lakes, we could not make such a long trip without taking time to think through the events that had taken place not long before at Columbine High School.
The killings at Columbine were fresh in the memories of our high school students, and most of them already were experiencing many ways in which their high schools were changing due to what happened there. So our team determined to take time out for a visit to Columbine High School and scheduled it into the beginning days of our trip. The students did not understand why we needed to consider something so depressing, and several parents questioned our idea; but the team with a vision didn’t waver in its sense that our group needed to spend some time there before the convention and sightseeing went into full whirlwind mode.
So on a beautiful sunny day (Isn’t it always sunny in Colorado?), at the start of our youth convention, without asking anyone’s permission or under anything official, our youth group gathered at Columbine. We walked the group around to be able to see the images they had viewed repeatedly on the news, and we stopped near the front of the school with the name clear in the background of our group picture. This group, gathered for the convention, did not all know each other well and sat in their clumps of familiar friends or age groups as we asked them to think through what they hoped to experience in the coming week. It was obvious that despite their nervousness and uncertainty, the term holy ground had taken a new meaning in their minds as they filtered through thoughts of students their own age going through a fear and violence beyond imagination.
Our students had been on retreats and youth trips before. They knew their youth leaders were going to pray and would ask them to pray; but on this day, they didn’t squirm, and they didn’t anticipate rote words or blessings. They just prayed. They prayed for the kids they never would meet, for the families living in the Denver area, for themselves to learn from what happened, and for their lives to be changed. That trip to Denver was unlike any other youth trip in all the years of working with students, and many of us on that trip have commented that we never have experienced a trip like it again.
Our schools and churches now have security measures, cameras, written protocol; we’ve practiced drills due to what occurred at Columbine High School. Youth workers and teachers are educated about the signs of troubled students and about how to counsel those who live through tragedy. Still, for our youth group that year it was the actual steps onto what we considered to be sacred ground that opened our hearts to explore life-altering opportunities that week. Walking onto the campus seemed to remove our fears and focused each of us on to every aspect of what God could be revealing during the trip. Where we had walked was carried with us in every subsequent step throughout the event. We had changed.
One more thought…the students from that group are now well into adulthood; but when I hear from them, they inevitably bring up memories from that Denver trip as a life highlight. Such tragedies have happened since then, and my heart is always filled with thoughts of our group’s experience in those moments. So, perhaps it isn’t just what we learn and correct after such violence; but it is how we take the memory and turn it into life, heart and faith changing that can make a difference.
