A Christmas Angel has fallen from the sky. She shall return to the heavens for Christmas.
Our deepest sympathy goes out to the friends and family of 23 year-old Keri Shyrock. (Reported in the media as Keri Shyrock.) Keri was acting in a Christmas pageant, suspended 25 feet in the air by an overhead rope, when she fell headfirst onto a concrete church floor. She died shortly thereafter at the hospital. Keri and two other performers were playing wise men on their way to Bethlehem at Crossroads Community Church when she fell. Approximately 2,000 parishioners were in attendance watching the play according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Keri died at University Hospital on Thursday morning. Police are investigating the cause of the accident. Shyrock graduated from Bowling Green State University. She is a former gymnast at Bowling Green. She worked as an assistant in the Office of Commuter Services and Off Campus Living at Xavier.
Keri died at University Hospital on Thursday morning. Police are investigating the cause of the accident. Shyrock graduated from Bowling Green State University. She is a former gymnast at Bowling Green. She worked as an assistant in the Office of Commuter Services and Off Campus Living at Xavier.
Church spokesman Matt Chandler, described the play as a "figurative and artistic version of the Christmas story found in the book of Luke." The mega-church was founded in 1996. It's membership is around 10,000. Keri will be missed by family and friends.
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11 comments:
Thank you.
Too young to die...
Wow, that photo looks like she was performing a dangerous stunt. I hope the church has losts of insurance!
Dollar Bill
Her harnass apparently came undone and she fell...
Crossroads and its community have suffered a huge loss.
That had to be an awful impact!
Such a shame
What a really sad and tragic story.
Dollar Bill is right. The church better get ready to hand over some serious dough.
Legal, why all the sad stories? Its Christmas time.....surely there has to be some warm fuzzy stories out there ;)
Secrets and Dollar Bill have the smell of money....
$$$$$$$$
1. i attended crossroads for 4 years until i stopped going a month ago for a couple of related reasons, culminating with keri’s death.. keri’s death was very much the result of amateurs trying to do do what only professionals can consistently safely do. brian tome reported in a sermon following keri’s death that awaited high-flying performers had been sent to san francisco for training. to that i say: 1)was keri part of the training group? 2)hello, like a week’s training is supposed to turn amateurs into professionals–were these barely trained performers mentoring keri? 3)it appears that keri was wearing a rock climbing harness without shoulder restraints.
what really did it for me was brian tome’s response, which for me was overly concerned with the show must go on:
-during the night that he spent comforting/praying with her parents, they were reportedly resolute on their desire for awaited to continue in the future to be performed in a manner which keri would have wanted, i.e. continue the death defying(not really)aerobatic part of the performance.
my response: come on, what does keri’s parents desire for how awaited should be conducted in the future have to do with any decision of crossroads for how to proceed? focus should be on the safety of all performers and audience members at possible risk, not on the desires, albeit very heart-felt, of grieving parents.
brian said in the same sermon that the auditorium had been built to accomodate the high flying performances, and that’t what will be continued in the future. further, after all, keri died a dream death, doing what she loved to do and without pain. still further, that his dream death would be on his harley without a helmet, with his wife on the back………naked.
my response. oh, so we built the auditorium for death defying performances, and although we’ve just experienced first-hand a performance minus the defying part, we’re going to nonetheless forge ahead, maybe with 2-weeks’ training this time?
the dream death part is appalling, irreverent, irrelevant, inappropriate, and very demeaning to keri’s memory– like somehow the fact that it was a dream death makes it less tragic? sharing his own dream death(his wife dies with him, is this her dream death?) for me made it much worse–why not go around the audience and share what our dream deaths would be?
bottom-line for me–crossroads is a seeker mega-church which is focused on non belivers and new believers. utilizing presentations which risk the lives of performers and the audience is not necessary to bring God’s message to crossroads’ attenders. if somehow more people are brought to Christ because of the high flyers, it’s definitely not worth the risk. the audience segment that this would make such a difference to are definitely misdirected in their understanding of what is relevant to Christ. the seeming “fall off the horse, get right back on” approach/attidude which brian(crossroads?) seems to have is misdirected/inappropriate/seemingly self-serving. although hiring professiopnals would be much better than “trained”crossroad amateurs, i still am not aware of any place in the Bible where it requires, recommends, or for that matter mentions death defying acts of evangelism. why not focus on His Word, which brian/ crossroads overall does extremely effectively, without the risky pizzazz part?
the other directly related elements which i was concerned with are:
brian’s own death-defying helmet-less antics–gets right back on his own harley sans helmet after totalling a rental bikewhile hitting a deer at 70 mph in wyoming, specifically choen because it doesn’t require helmets.again, like keri’s situation–get right back on the horse, with a wife and 2 kids, and a congregation of 10,000. i believe very self-serving, but in line with the show must go on in keri’s case and just as important disregard of the importance of human life.
wild at heart–crossroads has a 6-week series on this book. about 2 years ago i was looking at attending this seminar and read the book in advance. i was a bit skeptical of john eldredge’s Bible references nd his messages from, God, so i googled the book and found several references which provided critiques of his book which were very direct on how/where eldredge misquoted/ misinterpreted the passages of the Bible he used/misused to make his points. he also portrayed God as less than perfect, which for me is blasphemous.–i.e. my concerns seem to be well-founded. as i understand it, eldredge is saying that God made us males with a wild heart–we were therefore made to accept/seek challenges which utilize this gift. and because most of us, because of societal/matriarchal influences, we never get to this point. so eldredge encourages his readers to discover/rediscover this buried wildness in our hearts, and act on it, from riding a harley without a helmet, to climbing a mountain, to…..when i sent the critiques to brian, he just espoused the merits of john eldredge as a high character Christian author, which he may be. what he recommends probably has some value, but his book appears to reflect his own humanistic viewpoint on how men can be more courageous, with misuse of the Bible to authenticate this viewpoint, which for me is a fatal flaw.
thanks for sharing the insight as to the church!
Thanks for the kind story about Keri. She truly was a fallen angel who now is back in heaven.
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