Thousands gathered Tuesday for a memorial service for three officials of the Seventh-day Adventist Church who were killed last week when a church plane crashed in Tennessee.

"Today is a sad occasion, but their families do not want you to mourn," said Kevin Costello, treasurer of the church's Georgia-Cumberland Conference. "Instead they have asked for us to focus on celebrating the rich, beautiful, and happy lives each man lived as we honor them together."

Conference president David C. Cress, 46, vice president James H. Frost, 53, and Jamie E. Arnall, 29, the director of communications, were among five who died when the plane went down Thursday near Chattanooga. All three lived in Calhoun, where the Georgia-Cumberland Conference is based.

Also killed were Clay Farwell, an assistant to Cress, and the plane's pilot, John Laswell. A memorial service for Farwell will be held on Saturday at Friendship Baptist Church in Rock Island, Tenn. Laswell was honored Sunday with a service at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Collegedale, Tenn., where the crash occurred.

During Tuesday's service at the Northwest Georgia Trade & Convention Center, Costello said Cress, Frost and Arnall "in their own separate way were genuinely happy, warm, friendly, positive, uplifting, and personal Christian men who made you feel better and uplifted just by being in their presence."

Gordon Retzer, president of the Southern Union Conference, which includes the Georgia-Cumberland Conference, said that if the three "were standing here today they would say two words: Get ready."

Retzer told friends and family members that God would help them through their grief.

"I believe that God has somehow chosen to trust us with this tragedy because He knows that we have (Arnall, Cress, and Frost's) example and He knows we will not let Him down in this tragedy," he said.

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