Gunpoint evangelist

An unlikely instrument of God's grace-off-again, on-again youth group member, with a criminal record, no job, and on the verge of losing an apartment-points a suicidal gunman to Christ, even as he looked down the barrel of a semiautomatic Ruger. Here is the story of Jeremiah Neitz. | Lynn Vincent

More than a hundred gunshots had already ripped through the Wedgwood Baptist Church sanctuary when Jeremiah Neitz faced off with Larry Gene Ashbrook. Ashbrook pointed his hot Ruger 9-mm semiautomatic at Jeremiah. The 19-year-old pointed Ashbrook toward Jesus Christ.

Standing a pew-length away from the man who had just murdered seven people because they were Christians, Jeremiah told Ashbrook: "What you need is Jesus Christ in your life." Ashbrook, a twisted loner, refused God's 11th-hour gospel offer and shot himself in the head. But that night, Jeremiah joined the Christians at Columbine in standing up for God while staring down the barrelof a gun.

A member of South Wayside Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Jeremiah had attended the youth rally at nearby Wedgwood on Sept. 15 to celebrate the national high-school prayer event See You at the Pole. Once at the rally, the South Wayside teens and their youth pastor, Adam Hammond, took seats at the rear center of Wedgwood's huge, balconied sanctuary to hear the Christian rock band Forty Days. "We were inside, listening to music, when we heard these popping noises," says Jeremiah. "Adam and I were going to walk out to see what was going on and the glass just shattered in the [sanctuary] doors. We ran and yelled 'Get down! Get down!' and got down in our seats."