[Mb-civic] Pastor Electrocuted During Baptism

[Jef Bek]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/31/national/main995829.shtml
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Pastor Electrocuted During Baptism
WACO, Texas, Oct. 31, 2005
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(AP) A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church after
grabbing a microphone while partially submerged, a church employee said.

The Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, was standing in water in a baptismal at University
Baptist Church when he was electrocuted Sunday morning, said Jamie Dudley, a
church business administrator and wife of another pastor there. The water in
a baptismal usually reaches above the waist, said Byron Weathersbee, interim
university chaplain at Baylor University.

Lake was stepping into the baptismal when he reached out to adjust a nearby
microphone, which produced an electric shock, said Ben Dudley, the church's
community pastor. 

Doctors in the congregation rushed to help Lake, who had collapsed, Ben
Dudley said. Lake was taken by ambulance to Hillcrest Baptist Medical
Center, where nursing supervisor Pat Mahl said he was pronounced dead.

The woman Lake was baptizing apparently had not stepped into the water, Ben
Dudley said. She was taken to the hospital as a precaution, but was not
seriously injured, he said.

Pastors at University Baptist Church routinely use a microphone during
baptisms, Jamie Dudley said.

"He was grabbing the microphone so everyone could hear," she said. "It's the
only way you can be loud enough."

About 800 people attended the morning service, which was larger than normal
because it was homecoming weekend at nearby Baylor University, she said.

"At first, there was definitely confusion just because everyone was trying
to figure out what was going on," Ben Dudley said in a story in Monday's
Waco Tribune-Herald. "Everyone just immediately started praying."

Lake, who had a wife and three children, had been at the church for nine
years, the last seven as pastor, she said.

At a remembrance attended by about 1,000 people Sunday night at First
Baptist Church, Ben Dudley told the UBC congregation that they would move
forward as a church.

"I don't know how, when, why, where or what's going to happen, but we will
continue as a church in the community because that is what Kyle would have
wanted," he said.