This past Sunday morning may have begun a firestorm of needful conversation within Epiphany. During the formation hour we came together to confront the reality of teenage suicide. It was the largest gathering for adult formation on a Sunday morning in a long time. That alone is telling us something. Because of our needing to process the information and apply it to our lives and the mission of Epiphany, we agreed to come back this Sunday and continue the conversation.

In the past several days I have heard from several people who wanted to alert me about someone who was crying out for help. I have heard about someone cutting herself, someone posting suicide notes on social media, and someone who is talking about suicide with words like, "Everybody hates me."

Sadly I also have heard more about one of the biggest circumstances that cause our kids to think about taking their own lives - bullying. There is a new movie out, Bully, which our Real Time kids are reviewing and which is very thought provoking. Last year 13,000,000 kids in this country were bullied. Bullying is not only about mercilessly picking on somebody on the school bus; it also includes harassment like pulling a kid's pants down in the lunch room and doing hateful things on social media. This is a different age when cruel people can cowardly hide behind screen names and spew out anything they want without any consequences.

The sad thing is that many of our young people are mimicking adults who sign up for message boards with anonymous screen names and personally attack a coach that disappointed them or an athlete who fails to live up to unrealistic expectations for his beloved college or pro team.

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pastorrick@epiphanysuwanee.org