When he first considered bringing his family to Danville to lead the then Assembly of God Church at 428 North Walnut, Pastor Ryan Harris was educated about the church’s history. And he was handed a DVD that covered everything about that day 25 years ago this past Wednesday; May 24th of 1998.
Late that Sunday morning, a pipe bomb, left on top of an air conditioning register, exploded. And as Pastor Harris recently pointed out to Laura Williams on 1490 WDAN’s Community Connection program, the number one remembrance is that the church received divine protection, and no lives were lost.
AUDIO: How that God was obviously protecting the people of the church, with no one being killed; even though there were some very tough injuries that took place. And so many different stories of people who, if they would have been where they were supposed to be, things would have been a lot different. It was very interesting.
Another interesting item on that DVD was the story of how federal investigators, when they first began looking into the incident, felt they had to at least observe the fact that the entire Decan Board was absent that day. Even though it was the day before Memorial Day.
AUDIO: And they found that highly unusual that the entire Decan Board would miss a service at the same time. It was Memorial Day Weekend. But they were like “We need minutes from your meetings; we need to see if there’s a disgruntled board member.
And another especially interesting item Pastor Harris learned that really caught his attention was how Pastor Dennis Rogers handled the media.
AUDIO: Obviously this drew national attention. And there were news vans here from NBC, ABC, CBS; and it wasn’t the local ones, it was the national ones with the satellite dishes. And he refused interviews with people like Katie Couric, and different ones like that; national names. He said “I will only talk to local reporters, because I want to give them exposure.” I just thought that was a really cool thing to do.
After changing their name this past February, today’s Hope Unlimited Church at 428 North Walnut worships on Sundays at 10 AM. To hear Laura Williams’ entire interview with Pastor Ryan Harris, please go to https://vermilioncountyfirst.com/the-community-connection/
