Prior to shooting, NASA supervisor witnessed to troubled employee

League City, Texas ? As David Beverly and William Phillips had lunch together last Friday with another colleague, Beverly told Phillips about his faith in Jesus Christ. Later in the afternoon, back at their office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Phillips fatally shot Beverly, his supervisor, and then killed himself.

With the country still reeling from the mass murders at Virginia Tech University on April 16, Doug Belisle said he was stunned to learn that a similar tragedy had hit home with the news of Beverly’s death.

Listening to news reports last Friday, Belisle, like so many others in the communities that surround the Johnson Space Center near Houston, hoped no one he knew was involved in the reported shooting that occurred in Building 44 on the NASA site.

Then came bad news: Beverly, 62, a NASA employee and faithful member of Bay Area First Baptist Church, had been fatally shot. The shooter was Phillips, who worked for NASA contractor Jacob’s Engineering Group Inc. News reports indicate Phillips was distraught over a poor job performance evaluation and feared getting fired.

The Houston Chronicle quoted colleagues who said Phillips was not in danger of getting fired. The Chronicle described Phillips as an unmarried loner who appeared obsessed with job security.

Belisle, adult ministries pastor at Bay Area First Baptist Church, said he began to question what he should say during Sunday morning services. Belisle knew three weeks prior that the church’s senior pastor, Randall Williams, would be out of town and that he was scheduled to fill the pulpit.

What he did not anticipate was the carnage of the previous week and that it would include a member of his own church.

The 31-year-old pastor knew that at moments such as this a congregation seeks words of peace from God and they expect the pastor to deliver it.

“As I looked over my notes at the pulpit, I thought ‘God put this on my heart three weeks ago.'” And so he preached the sermon he had originally prepared. “It turned out that it spoke perfectly to the situation.”

From Mark 10 ? the story of the rich young ruler ? the pastor told his congregation, many of whom were grieving for the loss of their friend, that the ruler was given an identity check. Jesus’ response to the man’s question of how to attain heaven meant he would have to forsake all he had. Would the rich man’s identity be found in a faith in Christ or in his possessions?

“God does that to us all the time by inserting crisis into our lives. Am I finding my identity in what I do or in who I belong to?” Belisle asked the congregation.

It was clear to the pastor and those who knew Beverly that his identity was found in Christ. Phillips, mistakenly assuming he was going to lose his job and what his relatives told the Houston Chronicle was largely his identity, could not see beyond the moment and lashed out with a deadly reaction.