Responding to tragedy in Oregon's 'Bible belt'

In Roseburg, Ore., everyone is looking for a way to help families of the victims of the Umpqua Community College shooting. Residents are organizing a 5K race to raise funds, local churches are providing grief counseling, and a local coffee shop and pub are donating profits to victims’ families.

“Everyday we learn a little bit more about how we are all connected to someone who was connected directly to the shooting,” said Seth Buechley, a Roseburg native who moved back 10 years ago to raise his family in the town of about 22,000. He called this event a “glimpse into mortality.”

“I call it evil. The whole tragedy is evil,” Randy Scroggins, a Roseburg resident and pastor, told the Roseburg News-Review. “I don’t believe we need to soak as a community or as a family in that evil. We need to find some way to find hope in this so we can get through this.” Scroggins daughter Lacey was in the classroom Thursday with the shooter and was one of a handful of students with no physical injuries. She said she survived because the shooter, mistaking her for dead as she lay next to another bleeding student, stepped over her and shot another student.

Jerry Smart, a pastor at Foursquare Gospel Center in nearby Winston, heard on the radio that authorities would bus students, staff, and faculty to the fairgrounds to meet with loved ones. He immediately drove in that direction.

Smart is on the leadership team of a tight-knit network of evangelical churches in Roseburg, an area some call “the Bible belt of Oregon.” Within minutes of the shooting, those pastors were on a text-message chain planning how to coordinate relief efforts. “There are not 40 churches in the Roseburg area, there is one. We just all happen to pastor at different buildings,” Smart said.

He and dozens of other pastors and community mental health professionals waited at the fairgrounds for the busloads to arrive last Thursday. One woman stepped off the bus and fell into the arms of Smart and another pastor. Sobbing, she told them that half an hour earlier she was holding a friend who died in her arms. She told them the killer, 26-year-old Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer, had yelled, “Watch me! Don’t look away!” threatening to shoot those who covered their eyes as he methodically shot one student after another.

Smart stayed at the fairgrounds for almost five hours, hearing stories, praying with people, and helping people find each other. As the hours passed, he said the crowd at the fairgrounds quickly grew to a few thousand people and then slowly dwindled to a small group. A local official eventually announced only one more bus was coming from UCC. Officials directed those still left waiting after the bus arrived to a building at the fairgrounds. Smart said it was hard to watch the panic and fear on their faces.

This week, local pastors are communicating about the best way to coordinate this many funerals and memorial services in such a short time, Smart said. Churches are sharing the largest facilities so as many people as possible can attend.