Wedgwood marks 25th anniversary of deadly shooting while looking ahead

Sadness as well as hope was present throughout the full sanctuary at Wedgwood Baptist Church Sunday as the congregation held a special service Sept. 15 in remembrance of the shooting that happened there 25 years ago on that day, leaving seven of their members injured and seven others killed, including several teenagers and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary students and alumni.

Wedgwood’s previous pastor of almost 30 years and member of the Southwestern Advisory Council Al Meredith was not at the church that evening when the shooting occurred, saying he had just flown home that day after burying his mother. But he hurried over when he got the call of what was happening.

Al Meredith remembers the impact the shooting had on the church 25 years ago.

Meredith described that night as a whirlwind as he tried to “calm screaming, crying kids, screaming, crying parents, trying to round them up, get them downtown so police can take a deposition, trips to the hospitals, trips to the morgue to help people identify their loved ones.”

Following the shooting, Meredith said he was often asked why the shooter came to Wedgwood, since he seemed to have no personal connection with the church and in his drive from his home passed a number of other Baptist churches before stopping at Wedgwood.

“Wedgwood doesn’t have any movers or shakers, no city councilman, no representatives,” Meredith said of how he often answered that question. “But we live next to the largest seminary in the world, and we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of seminary students going all over the world. And I guess if I were the devil, that’s a church I want to stop.”

Alumna Sydney Browning (’91), 36; students Shawn Brown (MACE), 23, and Susan “Kim” Jones, 23, who was about to start her first semester at Southwestern, were among those killed that Wednesday night. Alumni Jeff Laster (’00) and Kevin Galey (’88, ’04) were injured.

Another question Meredith said he often received during interviews was “Where was God in all this?” Meredith said he never got upset with people asking that question because for many people, they genuinely needed to know. And his answer was, “God is exactly where He was when His own dear Son was cruelly tortured and murdered. He’s on the throne of the universe; it is not up for reelection. He is the sovereign God.”

Meredith and current pastor Dale Braswell pointed out that after the shooting, Wedgwood experienced a time of unity and revival in the church, as members encouraged one another to have faith in God, even while some experienced anger or varying levels of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“What a great, awesome, sovereign Lord and Savior and God we have,” Meredith said. “And though we look back and remember with tears, we look forward with expectancy and joy, because no matter what happens, God’s on the throne. He’s faithful.”

Individuals remember and share about what happened beside the Wedgwood shooting memorial.

While growth occurred within the church, Meredith and other church staff and members effected by the shooting also had numerous opportunities to share their testimonies outside the church, with a suddenly much broader audience.

“The assassin’s bullets only drove us to our knees,” Meredith said of that time when he had many opportunities to speak to national audiences such as at the Cotton Bowl that year and on “Larry King Live,” a popular CNN talk show at the time. “We never had a better opportunity to share the Gospel of Christ.”

In addressing the congregation during his sermon Sunday, Braswell said he realized his audience is a mix of those who clearly remember the event and are impacted by it daily and many others who joined the church later or were born after the shooting, only knowing about it as a historical event. But even so, Braswell said the church can still worship and serve together in unity, “reflecting on the past and at the same time, not losing our focus on what’s ahead of us and in the future.”