Just before lunchtime on April 20, 1999, I was sitting in a room with six youth leaders as another pastor burst into the room and interrupted our meeting with the news that “something bad was going down at Columbine.” He implored us to pray. We did. And then we carried on with our meeting.

We had no idea of the depth or breadth of the tragedy that was unfolding just 20 minutes down the road. Over the next several hours and days we, along with the rest of America, discovered the full extent of the horror that was unleashed at Columbine High School. I knew a lot of the kids on this campus, and my heart was broken.

In the days that followed, I thought a lot about what was to blame for this tragedy. I thought about the way-too-easy-to-access to guns in America. I thought about the lack of security on the average high school campus in America.

Then I started thinking about Jesus.

Following Jesus’ Lead
What would Jesus do to prevent tragedies like Columbine if he were walking the earth today? It’s hard to imagine Jesus proposing gun control or high-tech security as solutions. It seems to me his solution wouldn’t center on the peripherals, but at the real core problem—the angry, alienated human hearts that serve as breeding grounds for evil.

If Jesus were with us in bodily form today, I believe he would unleash his bride, the church, to spread the love and grace he has to offer to everyone, especially the hurting and the lonely. I’m convinced he would turn to the young in the church to lead the charge of reaching out to the Eric Harrises, the Dylan Klebolds and the Seung-Hui Chos with the hope that only a personal relationship with Jesus can offer.

If this is what Jesus would do, then the question remains: Will the church follow his lead? While I hope so, to be honest, I’m not all that confident the church in America has what it takes to be like Jesus anymore. Don’t get me wrong, Christians still respond well to tragedies like the ones at Virginia Tech and Columbine. But we stink at prevention.

Being like Jesus demands getting out of our padded pews and into the streets. It takes a dirt-under-our-fingernails approach where we’re actually hanging out with “the sinners.” And therein lies the rub: The same kind of rub Jesus used on the religious system of his day to get under its skin.

Jesus’ Youth Group
When Jesus walked the earth, he hung out with prostitutes, partiers, and blue-collar fishermen. His audience was packed with the physically, emotionally, and spiritually broken. Most of the priests and preachers of his time thought Jesus a rogue, a self-appointed messiah. Not the Savior of all humanity. Not the Son of God. Their contempt for him solidified into action when Jesus cleared the temple with a whip and insulted the religious leaders with bold accusations of hypocrisy.

In the end, the religious community had him executed.

Maybe that’s why Jesus turned away from the religious system and turned to the young people of his day to start his revolution of love. There is biblical evidence that most of Jesus’ disciples were in their teenage years when they began to follow Jesus. In Matthew 17, only Peter and Jesus have to pay the temple tax (although all the disciples were there), and according to Exodus 30:14, this tax was only for those who were twenty years old or older.

Unless I’m interpreting these passages poorly, Jesus was a youth leader of a small group with only one adult sponsor (and one really troubled kid). Yet with this small group of teenagers who smelled like fish, Jesus changed the world. How? Not through political means, school policies, or gun control (or sword control back then, I guess)—but through unleashing these young disciples with a revolution of love.

Jesus’ Parting Words
Just before he ascended into heaven, Jesus commanded his young followers to be witnesses in Jerusalem (their surrounding area full of their peers), Judea (the broader region), Samaria (a land full of half Jews/half Gentiles that most full-blooded Jews hated intensely), and the outer edges of the world. In other words, Jesus told them to reach out with the good news of hope to their friends and enemies, to the sane and insane, to people of the same color skin and different…to everyone, including the Chos and the Harrises and the Klebolds of their day.

That command still stands. If the church, of all shapes and stripes, can unite and reach out to prevent future school shootings, then we can do more than all the legislation and political preening that has transpired over the last eight years since Columbine. If we can unleash our young people as ambassadors of Christ’s love on campuses and in communities across the country, I’m convinced that less young blood will be spilled in senseless acts of violence. I believe this solution would have infinitely more impact than gun control or campus security measures.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” Jesus taught that ultimately he’s the only one who can strike at the root of evil. Too many times, as his followers, we spend our time hacking at the leaves. Our focus must shift from mere sociopolitical action to the kind of action that truly makes a difference—spiritual transformation. The loving proclamation of the good news that Jesus died for sinners and rose in power to offer eternal hope to all who trust in him alone.

After the Columbine tragedy I resigned from almost two decades of being a teaching pastor and youth worker to pursue ministry at Dare 2 Share full time because I felt called to help train young people to share their faith with a hurting world. When I heard the news reports about the senseless tragedy at Virginia Tech, I recommitted myself to reach out personally to those around me with the love of Jesus. I resolved to train as many Christian young people as I could to reach out to the hurting on their campuses with the good news of Jesus.

I’m asking every person reading this right now to do the same.