JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Gunshots rang out Saturday in a church at a funeral. As family and friends gathered to say goodbye to 16-year-old Devron Crowden over the weekend, that's exactly what people heard at Bethel Baptist Church in downtown Jacksonville.
The gunshots weren't real, but sent a message. As people gathered at the church Saturday, one thing was clear. There's a lot of senseless violence going on around Jacksonville. And the pastor at Bethel, the pastor at St. Paul Baptist and others around the city say: it's time for it to stop.
You'd never imagine hearing gunshots at a funeral.
"Literally started with me pointing the gun -- shooting the shots going off. And it sounded so real," said Bishop Rudolph McKissick Jr. of Bethel Baptist Church.
It's a notion that was recently thought up. Both McKissick and the Rev. John Guns of St. Paul's Baptist were asked to officiate Devron Crowden's funeral. They felt the only way to go was non-traditional.
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No suits, but jeans. No drawn out message -- but straight, to the point, and on time.
"We came up this idea to re-enact the Cain story," Guns said. In the Bible, Adam and Eve's son Cain gets jealous and kills his brother Abel. During the funeral, that very point was driven home with sounds of gun shots. "Had my sound people make up what ended up being very real bullet ... gun sounds," McKissick said.
Some people were startled, but others believe the blunt approach to violence is necessary. Crowden was only 16 years old and simply waiting on his bus to school. It's senseless acts like that McKissick Jr. and Guns want to stop.
"I think the main message was -- there's always an option of possibility, as opposed to the choice of consequence," McKissick said. "It's a football game and you need a whole lot of people on the team to accomplish it," Guns said.
Action News asked both pastors if they thought their message worked on Saturday. They said: absolutely. Dozens of teens at the funeral not only came up to the altar crying, but showed up to church service the next day.
The pastors tell Action News they plan on taking their gun skit on the road. They've already gotten calls to officiate funerals around the country.
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