YWAM Denver staff, students, and members of the Arvada Police Department also joined the service to remember Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24, who were killed when lone gunman Matthew Murray, also 24, entered the YWAM training centre on 9 December 2007 and opened fire on staff. He later headed to New Life Church in Colorado Springs and shot Stephanie Works, 18, and her sister Rachel, 16, before taking his own life.
“Today we are celebrating a birthday,” said YWAM Denver Director Peter Warren. “It is Philip and Tiffany’s first birthday in heaven with Jesus.”
YWAM said a “palpable joy permeated the gathering”, which began with a three and a half mile march to the centre by members of the Arvada Police Department as their way of “grieving and paying our respects to the lost”.
The evening was for them “about coming to a resolution about what happened”, they said.
Those gathered at the service expressed their forgiveness to Murray and prayed for his family, who were also present.
According to Susan Medina, media director of the Arvada Police Department, the forgiveness shown by YWAM to the killer had greatly impacted the police officers in the force.
“I saw such an overwhelming abundance of forgiveness, even just hours after the shooting,” she said. “I was at Columbine and Platte Canyon when those shootings happened, but this is very different. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Friends and family gave moving testimonies of the impact Tiffany and Philip had made on their lives and at the end of the evening the crowd gathered outside in the snow for a candlelight service in which they passed the flame onto the next person to symbolise their enduring legacy.
“We could (dwell on) the lost potential of their lives, but now we see how God has worked through this for good,” said Warren.
“We look back and see that it was all God. Only He could give us this peace we have now—a peace that surpasses all understanding.”
