Following the fatal fall of a young actress during a Christmas performance at a Cincinnati megachurch, four special services that will focus on helping to process the loss are being held this weekend.
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(Photo: AP Images / The Enquirer, Ernest Coleman)The Crossroads Community Church is seen Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008, in Cincinnati. A performer has been hospitalized in Cincinnati after falling 25 feet during the Christmas pageant at a nondenominational mega-church. Crossroads Community Church says the woman was suspended by a cable over the stage when she fell Wednesday night.
"Our prayers and heartfelt sympathies go out to her family during this incredibly difficult time," Crossroads Community Church said in a statement. "We are shocked and deeply grieved by this tragic accident."
Keri Shryock, 23, fell about 25 feet to a concrete floor during the opening night performance of "Awaited" on Wednesday. She died a few hours later.
The 10,000-member church has canceled the remaining 10 performances of "Awaited" out of respect for all of those involved and to facilitate the grieving and recovery process, the church said.
In a report released Friday, police concluded that the fatal fall was an accident caused by an equipment failure.
"Shryock was performing in a Christmas play at Crossroads Church when an equipment failure occurred and was then released from her D-ring and fell," police wrote, referring to Shryock's safety harness, according to The Associated Press.
Cincinnati police completed their investigation and turned evidence over to the Hamilton County Coroner's Office, as reported by AP.
During Wednesday's performance, Shryock and two other performers were making an ascent on ropes as they played the three wise men on the journey to Bethlehem. They were approaching a star when Shryock fell headfirst to the concrete floor.
"Toward the ending of the song she came loose," Daniel Doepke, 55, of Middletown, told The Cincinnati Enquirer. "I can't describe how heart-wrenching it was, her fall to a hard concrete surface."
Natalie Hastings, a spokeswoman for the church, told AP, "I know the performers wore some kind of harness and they got some professional training especially to do this."
Shryock had some gymnastics training and was excited about performing the rope act, said Melissa Davish, a friend and former gymnastics club teammate at Bowling Green State University, to AP.
"She was really excited about doing something that unique," Davish said. "We always talked about Cirque du Soleil, about being an acrobat."
Crossroads' "Awaited" Christmas show debuted last year and was seen by more than 20,000 people.
While the remaining performances have been canceled, Shryock's parents have encouraged the church to continue with a Christmas experience so that people would hear the message of Jesus and "because that’s the way Keri would have wanted it."
Crossroads will hold three Christmas Eve services featuring traditional Christmas music and a retelling of the Nativity story.
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"A woman DIED while trying to bring the Good News. It is not for you to judge her heart."
A woman died because a megachurch was busy entertaining people. God judges the heart.
Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV) The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The heart?
(by Octavius Winslow)
There exists not upon earth a more vile and
unlovely thing, in the self searching view of
the true believer, than his own heart. From
every other human eye that bosom is deeply,
impenetrably veiled. All that is within is
known only to itself. What those chambers
of abominations are, God will not permit
another creature to know.
Any yet, O wonder of grace! God, by His
renewing Spirit, has made of that heart a
beautiful, costly and precious censer, the
cloud of whose incense ascends and fills
all heaven with its fragrance!
With all its indwelling evil and self loathing,
God sees its struggles, watches its conflict,
and marks its sincerity.
Not a feeling thrills it,
not an emotion agitates it,
not a sorrow shades it,
not a sin wounds it,
not a thought passes through it,
of which He is not cognizant.
Believer, Jesus loves that heart of yours!
He purchased it with His own heart's blood,
agonies, and tears; and He loves it! He
inhabits it by His Spirit, and He loves it!
Jeremiah 17:10 (KJV) I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
KW2: "In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, love." And I would refer you also to Romans 14.
A woman DIED while trying to bring the Good News. It is not for you to judge her heart.
"It is the punctuation that is messing things up."
Thanks Daniel (God is my judge) Paul,
I didn't know that but since I do now I will watch out for that in the future.
nolalady ,
Jesus spoke in stories not to entertain folks but to inform His disciples. Jesus' use of those same stories was to hide the truth, spiritual truth, from others, Jesus did not use the parables to entertain them. In actual fact much of Jesus' teaching and ministry made people raging mad and many turned away from following Him because the way was too hard. The modern church has literally emptied the gospel of its saving power and content. Many make profession of faith but how many actually possess the faith? How many actually sit down and count the true cost of genuine discipleship? Those who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution and it is through much tribulation and trials one enters the kingdom of God. Yet the joy of the LORD is my strength.
Matthew 13:10-15
THE PURPOSE OF PARABLES
http://www.freewebs.com/peters-pearl/thepurposeoftheparables.htm
There is hardly any fear or holiness of God around these days, not many truly tremble at God's holy word. It has become all so flippant and carefree. People are wanting their itching ears scratched. They have tickling ears. People are becoming more lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
2 Timothy 3:1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! 6 For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, 7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Are we living in the last days?
That sort of entertaining going on in that megachurch would not even be remotely considered in the persecuted church throughout the lost world. Preaching the gospel is the method God uses to draw His people, His elect, His chosen ones from the four corners of the earth to Himself. That is the only example God gives us to follow in Scripture everything else is the invention of the mind of sinful mankind.
Hi! It seems some of the posts are getting wacked. My guess is there is some copy & paste froma word processing program. It is the punctuation that is messing things up. This site only responds well to pure ascii.
KoneWone2, your comments seem more appropriate on one of the hate-filled secular news sites. I don't know much about this church but just because a church is presenting the gospel as a play does not mean they are not preaching the gospel. I think Jesus is one who spoke in stories. The crowd probably found them to be somewhat entertaining. Would you have opposed him?
A tragedy.
Appointed unto man once to die then the judgment.
Maybe that church will now put on sack cloth and ashes, repenting in the dust and start preaching the true gospel instead of putting on shows to entertain the people?
Worship or Entertainment
http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Seeker-Sensitive-Churches/Worship-or-Entertainment/
my deepest condolence to Shryock. I pray for her family and for God's grace to comfort them
 
Perhaps not graceful to our "eyes", but she is with God now. Her work here is complete.