Dear Pastor,

I'm not jealous of you or your church. Yes, I am one of the many little churches in your shadow, but that doesn't bother me. There are many good reasons that your church has grown to the size that it is. I'm glad that you are reaching people. I'm glad that so many people are worshiping there and that people are coming to know Jesus because of your ministry. There are many things you do right and that you do well, and I know there's a lot I could learn from you.

But there's one thing you may not know. You may not even be aware. Your people are coming to me for pastoral care. No, they are not leaving your church. They still attend your church; they are still members at your church; they still give their time, talents, money and loyalty to your church. (Some have even left my church for yours previously because of your superior ministries and programs.)

But they come to me when they need a pastor. When they need a wedding, they call me, or more often they just drop by and ask in person.

When they need a funeral, they call me.

When they need a special service like a baby dedication, or a baptism, or even a quinceañera, they call me.

When their marriage is in crisis, when their children rebel, when they are depressed or just don't know where else to turn, they come see me.

There are two major reasons for this. (I know because I ask, "Why not go to your own pastor and your own church?")

1- Because I am available. They can just drop in and see me. And if I happen to not be available that particular day, they'll be able to see me within a day or two. I know that you may be available too, but at the very least, you are perceived as being unavailable. In most cases, they assume you are too busy and come see me first. Other times, they don't know you, so seeing me is no different than seeing you, since neither one of us knows them personally. Again, the difference, is that I'm available. I also know that you have many pastors on staff that could be available to them. But for whatever reason, your people don't go to them. (I think because the average layperson doesn't see them as "real pastors", though you and I know this is a misconception.) They come to me.

2- Your sanctuary is too big or too modern. They love your church. They attend your church every week and love the services and they love your preaching and they love the music and they love all the programs your church has to offer. But when they need a place for a funeral or a wedding, or a quinceañera, the 100 or less people they are going to have attend would be dwarfed in your sanctuary. They need a small church atmosphere for their service. And yes, rightly or wrongly, they want it to feel like a "church" for those services that are important milestones in their lives.

Pastor, will you please let me offer some suggestions:

1- Be available. I know you are busy. I also know that if you spent all your time doing counseling, weddings and funerals, you wouldn't be able to do all that God has called you to do. Therefore, you need to publish the times you are available. Let people know when they can see you. Say it from the pulpit. Make them feel like you care about them as individuals and then follow through, as much as you are able. (And if you aren't available for such things at all, it's not because your church is too big, it's because you're too big for your church. Grandpa would have said, "You're too big for your britches.")

2- Have a good pastoral staff. Make sure there is a pastor, an actual ordained minister, assigned to every member of the church. (One per every 100 members ought to do it.) That pastor should know who his people are, and they should know who he is. He should contact them regularly, so that when the crisis time comes and they need him, there is already a relationship. This pastor should be available for weddings, funerals, hospital visits and pastoral counseling. In short, he should actually do for them what an actual pastor does.

3- Build a chapel. You have a large building. Probably you have multiple buildings on a campus. On your next building project, include a small chapel that seats 150-200 people. Make it look like a chapel. Let people book it like crazy. Make its use available to your people.

Now, here's where I have to make sure I'm not being too fleshly in my letter to you: I'm tired of pastoring your people for you. Don't get me wrong. I love your people. I love pastoring them. And the pastor in me loves the opportunity. But you are not doing your job and I think its hurting your people. They need to be able to count on you and your church, or what are you doing? If you really have a pastor's heart, and I believe you do, I thought that you would want to know that a lot of your sheep are having to go elsewhere to have their needs met. One of my mentors in ministry, a very wise pastor who did nothing but pastor small, hurting churches that needed him for 40 years, said this, "If you are not there when they need you, they don't need you."

I want you to know that I try the best that I can. I try to redirect them back to you. Sometimes I'll even downright refuse to help them, because I'm not their pastor. But most of the time, I do that wedding or that funeral. Most of the time I do the crisis counseling when someone's spouse cheats, or when someone is in the hospital. I do it because even if they aren't my sheep, they are Jesus' sheep and they asked. I do it because I hope that you would do the same for my sheep if I were somehow unable.

But it's a widespread problem. I have someone come to me for help from your church at least once a month, and I have someone come to me from one of the other megachurches other than yours once a week. I know you are busy, but so am I. You would help me be more effective as a pastor to the sheep God has called me to, if you would be more effective as a pastor to the sheep God has called you to.

I'd send you this note personally via snailmail or email, but I'm pretty sure it would never make it past one of your staff members to your desk. I'll try anyway...

Here's my final request, from one pastor to another. Please pastor the people God has given you. And if you can't or won't, please send some of your sheep to my church. I'd love to have them.

Tragic ends to young "stars". Funny we call them that, perhaps we should call them all "falling stars" - shining bright for a moment, before burning up and burning out.

Corey Haim died today.

Corey Haim, the former teen idol who rose to fame in 1980s classics 'The Lost Boys,' 'Lucas' and 'License to Drive,' died Wednesday morning of an apparent accidental drug overdose in Burbank, Calif., the LAPD has confirmed to several media outlets. He was 38. Local news station KTLA is reporting that Haim was found in an Oakwood apartment believed to belong to his mother, who was at home at the time and called emergency responders. TMZ is reporting that four prescription drug bottles were found nearby, and that he had been gripped by flu-like symptoms in recent days.

Coroner Lt. Cheryl MacWillie told reporters that Haim died at 2:15 a.m. at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. An autopsy to determine the cause of death is pending.

So sad. I always liked Corey. (His performance in "Lucas" was genius. In my opinion, his career path should have gone the way of DiCaprio's or even Jason Patric or Kiefer Sutherland.) But all that doesn't matter now in the face of eternity.

Andrew Koenig died last month. Here's Kirk Cameron's response.

“At a time like this, we are all reminded of the briefness of life and the importance of being ready for our eternal destination,” Cameron said in a statement. “My prayers will continue to be with Andrew’s family.”

The 41-year-old Koenig — most famous for playing the role of “Boner,” Cameron’s best friend on the ’80s sitcom — had been missing since mid-February. After an extensive search, the actor’s body was discovered Feb. 24 in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. His father, Walter Koenig (who played the original Chekov in multiple Star Trek projects) said his son, who had a history of depression, committed suicide.

How many of these current and past "stars" are depressed, lost and hopeless, looking for solace in every empty thing the world has to offer?

What was will be again,
what happened will happen again.
There's nothing new on this earth.
Year after year it's the same old thing.
Does someone call out, "Hey, this is new"?
Don't get excited—it's the same old story.
Nobody remembers what happened yesterday.
And the things that will happen tomorrow?
Nobody'll remember them either.
Don't count on being remembered.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 (The Message)

I "love" that the cover in the ad on this page (right sidebar) for a book on how to help writers get noticed by editors and avoid the slush pile has a typo.

Here's a tip, though: Never trust an anonymous editor who wants to give you advice on how to get published.

I don't know why, but I received an advertisement in the mail from a megachurch about 200 miles away. They're apparently celebrating the "grand opening" of a new facility.

According to the mailer, here's what you'll find at their church:

- Real direction for people on a real journey
- Non-judgmental atmosphere
- Environments that are relevant, enjoyable, and meaningful
- Small groups to develop meaningful friendships

Two upcoming sermon titles are "Realizing My Dreams" and "Lowering My Stress."

Um, ok.

Pat Robertson says the earthquake in Haiti is just one more link on a chain begun when Haiti signed a pact with the devil to be free of the French. And he didn't mean "the devil" figuratively. He meant they literally signed a pact with Satan himself.
Not only is this untrue, it's silly.

But most of us have tuned Robertson out and did so long ago.

But I bet we still have plenty of Rush Limbaugh listeners. I don't mean to knock political radio or talk shows or what-have-you. But I do mean to knock Rush Limbaugh.

On his radio show yesterday Limbaugh said the earthquake in Haiti will play right into Obama's hands by allowing him to play up his "compassionate" and "humanitarian" credentials, and that the President will use this crisis to "boost his credibility with the black community."

As if that weren't enough, Limbaugh also pivoted off a caller who complained about Obama directing the public to the White House website to find charitable organizations operating in Haiti to promote a conspiracy theory that finding these charities via the White House website puts your money at risk of not reaching Haitians.

Limbaugh also seems to feel we've done enough already for Haiti: "We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."

In terms of our attention, can we throw this guy under the bus yet?

From Mark Steyn:

Major Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaeda reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. But the pathologies that drive al-Qaeda beat within Major Hasan too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline — his entire American identity. One might say the same about Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, Ariz., arrested last week after fatally running over his “too Westernized” daughter Noor in the latest American honor killing. Or the two U.S. residents — one American, one Canadian — arrested a few days earlier for plotting to fly to Denmark for the purposes of murdering the editor who commissioned the famous Mohammed cartoons. But Noor Almaleki’s brother shrugs that’s just the way it is. “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another culture,” he says.

Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at that. The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else — even in the Army.

What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that’s the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.

I found out last night that there was yet another mass shooting yesterday. This one close to home...less than three short hours up one highway from me.

My parents live near there and lead a Bible study for some Fort Hood soldiers.

And I don't know how to feel or what to think anymore. I'm shocked, angry, afraid, tired and confused, but mostly...

I'm scared that I'll start getting used to this. How long before this becomes as ordinary as drive-by shootings, convenience store robberies, child abuse and politicians having affairs? That's what scares me the most at the moment.

But my feelings will probably change. A few hours from now, I'll probably just be mad again.

I'll tell you what's got me upset about this one:
1. If our soldiers ought to be safe anywhere, it ought to be on their own army base. This didn't happen on a battlefield in Iraq.
2. This guy was yelling, "Allah Ahkbar" when he was shooting. So it's perhaps more than just the (now) typical angry-loner dude who just snaps. A self-appointed sleeper agent? Creepy.
3. No offense to anyone who was there,I'm not saying I could have done better, but I'm confused about the body count. These are military people. Could no one take him out sooner than a civilian cop? I don't know if they were on a part of the base where arms were allowed. But if they were not allowed, how did this guy have a gun? And if they were allowed, why didn't one of the good guys take him out sooner?

I'm also glad this one's alive. Finally, we get to interrogate one of these evil monsters who do this sort of thing. I'm tired of them killing themselves and depriving society of justice. Perhaps his victim's families will get a chance to confront him in court. Perhaps we will find out what happened.

I say that knowing it's little comfort for families that lost loved ones forever. Please pray for the families of those who died and the very close-knit extended family that is Fort Hood and the surrounding community. The surrounding areas love the soldiers stationed there. I know this first hand. Please know that there are thousands of people (or more) who are personally affected by this.

Forgive the ramble. It's just where I am right now.

Yes, you read that right. He really did. I was surprised. Are you?

Well maybe I shouldn't be. The only Americans to have won the award in the past ten years were Barack Obama, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. Ummmm, OK. Are we seeing a theme?

The Nobel Peace Prize needs to start being taken about as seriously as the Razzies. Notable for curiosity only. I mean, come on. The guy hasn't been president for even a year, and hasn't actually accomplished anything foreign policy wise...except for a bunch of speeches. And yes, I know, speeches can make a difference (Ronald Reagan, MLK Jr. and many more made a difference with words.) But still, how much peace has he accomplished?

Here is the text from the Prize Committee's report:

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

In other words, accomplishment means nothing. Effort and vision mean everything. In that case, someone needs to give a prize to anyone who's been trying to figure out how to fuel automobiles with garbage. Or who's been spending 20 hours a week making youtube videos about world peace.

"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Translation: "We like the stuff you say."

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

Translation:We love Obama. His very presence gives us goosebumps. Every sunrise just seems brighter in every part of the world because Obama is president. And finally, we have a president like us. And more importantly, (chanting like the munchkins in Wizard of Oz), "Ding, Dong, Bush is Gone! Bush is Gone!"

"For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

Translation: We can stop giving out these prizes now. We've finally found "the one" that this prize was created for. I guess, we'll have to keep giving out these silly peace prizes, but now that Obama is president, we probably won't need them anymore since World peace forever is right around the corner. I guess we'll just measure all future recipients based on this one. In fact, let's make a little "Oscar"-type statue that looks like Obama, and we'll give that out to all future winners.

The disconnect between Hollywood culture and normal people grows.

"It wasn't rape rape." -- Whoopi Goldberg

Define Artist. Not so easy to do. Now define pedophiliac child rapist. Pretty simple. If Polanski had been, say, a bus driver in Cleveland who had fed Quaaludes and Champagne to a thirteen-year-old girl and then raped and sodomized her, I doubt Jack Lang would be so quick to tell the rest of us about the privileges that come with driving a bus. Jack Lang doesn’t care about bus drivers. Jack Lang cares about Artists.

Let me tell you a few things about the rape of a child. It happened to me. I was raped by my drunken father at the age of four, before the drunken eyes of my mother, so I know what I’m talking about.

That is from a powerful commentary called Polanski's Victim and Me.

At a Salon article arguing the same thing, one of the more ridiculous commenters suggested those who are calling for Polanski's release must be a bunch of Republicans.

Um. Yeah. Woody Allen, Stephen Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Scorsese, the French minister of the Arts, et. al. All Republicans, I'm sure. ;-)

Kudos, btw, to French director Luc Besson -- the auteur behind stylized action films like the Transporter series, The Professional, The Fifth Element, and one of my favorite movies of the last year, Taken -- for refusing to sign the petition of artists calling for Polanski's release. "Nobody should be above the law," Besson said.

There's an abandoned gas station a couple of doors down from the business I work for. From my desk to the gas station is probably less than a three minute walk. Today local cops recovered a baby (alive, thank God!) that had been kidnapped and then dumped like so much garbage in a trash bin behind that old gas station. Supposedly the child was there, alone in the dumpster, for two hours.

Sometimes I think that the most perverse, evil, God-hating generations of the past, throughout all of history, have nothing on us in the 21st Century. But the reality is I'm sure kidnapping and baby-dumping like that are sins nearly as old as Cain and Abel. It's just hard for me to believe that something so evil happened a stone's throw away from where I was sitting today. I wish I had known that baby was in there.

From Alternet

"Have you guys heard the news?" Maggie (name changed) unwrapped the scarf from around her neck and patted her flat belly. "Preggers." It was around 30 degrees outside, and her cheeks were splashed pink from the Indiana wind.

. . .

My girlfriend Ali and I exchanged a surprised look. Our forks, dotted with pasta sauce, dangled identically, flaccidly, in our hands. She was quicker than me to gain her composure, and turned to address her best friend.

"What are you going to do?" Unnecessary question, really -- a conversational life vest, used when you’re sputtering for something to say. We knew the answer. Maggie, a 22-year-old college senior with no intention of bringing a child into the world yet, was going to have an abortion. She told us that she had already made up her mind; she had even determined the time, date and location. A better question might have been, "How are you going to pay for it?"

She answered that one before we had a chance to ask. "We’re having a party Friday to raise money," Maggie said. "You guys are obviously invited."

An abortion party. For the price of whatever we were willing to donate, she explained, we could partake of baked goods, beer and dancing. It was going to start at 10 p.m. at Maggie’s.

I found the article to be very sad, although for different reasons than the author probably intended. It descends into a bunch of argle-bargle about the roles of men and women when it comes to abortion, feminist anger, a punting of male responsibility (the author is a guy) and stuff about how women's "voices had been excluded from relationships, dialogues and society in general" and etc.

It's hard to read. Made worse by the fact that someone brought their three-year-old to the party.

[H/T The Corner]

Mark Steyn, writing on Palin's resignation, makes some great points. My view of Palin has always been colored by my absolute disgust at the media's treatment of her and her family. Steyn basically nails the issue.

His last sentence is also true (and very depressing).

As a political move for anything other than the 2010 Senate race, today's announcement is a disaster. And I'm not sure it's a plus for the Senate - and, even if it were, the manner and timing suggest it was not a professionally planned event and therefore is unlikely to have any grand strategy behind it.

So Occam's Razor leaves us with: Who needs this?

In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You're a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they're tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who'd never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a "cancer".

Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it'll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You've got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who's given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what's the word? - "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?

National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.

Yep.

From Mona Charen over at The Corner

New York State has decided to use taxpayer funds to pay women to donate their eggs for embryonic stem cell research. That didn't take long. We warned, didn't we, that proponents of this research who claimed that they were only going to use the frozen embryos in fertility clinics slated for destruction anyway were deceiving the public. Welcome to the brave new world of creating human embryos in order to use them as commodities. This is a terrible descent.

A woman is counseled toward terminating her pregnancy online, here, here and here.

Painful read. I titled this post the way I did because the woman seeking counsel, who ultimately had an abortion, calls her unborn child her "baby" throughout.

Hat Tip: K-Lo at the Corner:
It Takes an Online Village to Have an Abortion.

Follow up responses on the Corner: This one from a woman who had an abortion twenty eight years ago.

And an email from a person who was adopted.

If this is intentionally awful, it is brilliant.

This is the first year since such questions have been surveyed that the majority of Americans are identifying as "pro-life" on the question of abortion. It will of course take much more than popular opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, but it is quite remarkable, this shift in opinion, nonetheless.

How idiotic it is, then, to create martyrs for the pro-choice cause. How idiotic it is to risk dissolving popular sentiment for the pro-life cause. One murderous weirdo risks turning any ground gained back against the cause of the right of the unborn to live.

It doesn't advance the cause at all. It sets it back. And adds more doctors to the ranks of the resolute and emboldened abortionist trade, more years to the era of abortion. More babies.

And of course apart from murder being an illogical and impractical strategy, it is also wrong. Which is to say, even if it was a logical strategy and a practical one, it still would be a sinful one.

My wife and I are now the proud owners of two mini-vans. (OK, go back and strike the word "proud.") We traded in my Mazda 626, and bought a second minivan.

OK, now to my point. The Mazda I traded in... was a standard transmission. Yep. You read that right. A stick shift. Every primary car I've ever driven was a stick shift. I learned to drive on a stick shift. I freaked out in driver's ed when I put the car in "drive" and it started moving on it's own because I had never driven an automatic before.(My left foot kept kicking the floor looking for a clutch.)

Anyway, when I traded in this car last week, the salesman told me that 99% of all cars made now are automatics. Whoa. That means I would have a hard time getting a standard if I tried. Nobody drives standard anymore.

It made me kind of sad. Nostalgic maybe. I was thinking, "Wow. I am now the possessor of a dying skill." My kids won't be able to learn standard because there won't be any. I was thinking how sad that was, but hey maybe it's OK, because they'll never need it.

I prefer driving standard. I prefer doing something as a part of driving. I prefer feeling like I'm driving. I like the power and control of deciding when to shift, and how many RPM's I want. I like riding the clutch. I like coasting in, with the clutch pushed in. I like the challenge of having to start going from a stop when I'm on an incline without rolling into the car behind me. I like the fact that I CAN!!!! (And I'm quite good at it by the way.)

And now, it's a skill not valued anymore. So I began to wonder. Maybe this was what it was like when drivers didn't have to get out and crank the handle on the front of model T's anymore. Maybe this is what it was like when women stopped having to teach their daughters how to wash laundry in the tub. Did those people mourn too? Did those people think that society was going to pot because their kids didn't need to learn or even care to learn the skills they had to have to survive?

Is it such a loss when technology changes? I mean, that's just progress right? So maybe I should just get over the fact that I will never drive a standard again, and that with few rare exceptions, no one will.

OK, maybe automatics aren't as fuel efficient as standards. And they break down more than standards, but aren't I forgetting the main thing? Progress! Technology! Ease of use. Driving an automatic is easy.

Maybe I'm just mad that I had to work so hard to learn how to drive. (It is hard learning to get going without stalling.) And now, no one else has to. Maybe I feel like if I had to do it, everybody should. But that's not fair, is it? That's like saying that just because I had to learn to type on an actual manual typewriter that everybody should. Or that just because my grandfather had to build houses without power tools that everybody should.

I guess we should just put standard transmissions in the scrap heap with manual typewriters, human-powered lawnmowers and rotary dial telephones.

What other "skills" are dying out? Tell me under comments.

Still makes me sad though. Farewell, standard transmission. We had some good times together. You will be missed.

I just can't get over this.
It's a book called Have a New Husband by Friday: How to Change His Attitude, Behavior, and Communication in 5 Days. There is more than one way this makes me nauseous.

The idea behind this book is pretty much the antithesis to grace.
It takes what happened in the garden after the fall -- the blame shifting -- and says, "Yeah, let's go with that."

It turns a woman's spouse into a project, a problem, not a person made in the image of God to be loved and given the gospel in word and deed to. It is legalistic, basically.

Did I mention this is from a Christian author and publisher?

And it's gross. It plays on the stereotype of men as children who need wives to make them better, more suitable and acceptable.

There's also a kid version: Have a New Kid by Friday. Ugh.

BUT! I seriously doubt there will be a Have a New Wife by Friday: How to Change Her Attitude, Behavior, and Sex Drive in 5 Days. THAT would be too insensitive, I bet. That title would receive complaints for chauvinism and misogyny.

But everyone knows husbands are stupid creatures and the reason your marriage is not all it should be. Marriages will definitely be strengthened if wives could successfully make their husbands into different people. Blech.

A commenter friend at my solo blog relates the leaders at his church saying this to him about his concerns:

We respect where you're coming from with your focus on the gospel and the cross and all that, but our church is just in a different season right now.

The harvest season, no doubt. Where they'll be scythed up as tares and thrown in the furnace.

(Only slightly exaggerating.)

I don't care what the reason is or what the method is, it's still evil.

An 11 year old boy killed himself because of it.

The Springfield, Mass., football player and Boy Scout was ruthlessly teased, despite his mother's pleas to the New Leadership Charter School to address the problem.

Sirdeaner L. Walker, 43, found Carl hanging by an extension cord on the second floor of the family's home April 6, just minutes before she was going to a meeting to confront school authorities again.

"I am brokenhearted," she told ABCNews.com. "We worry about the economy and about Iraq, but we need to be worried about our schools."

Walker, who works as a director of homeless programs, said Carl -- a slight child who loved his schoolwork -- had endured endless taunts since he started sixth grade in September.

Now it seems that this particular case is getting extra notice that it wouldn't have because the boy was called "gay." Fine. That's apparently what it took in this case to get people to notice. But to borrow (probably unfairly) from the Apostle Paul, I don't much care what the motivation is behind people speaking against bullying, as long as they are doing it. If you go watch the video or read the article linked above they act like using gay slurs is a new bullying tactic. These people were obviously never bullied. Bullys have been calling people gay, and every other mean thing they could think of, for generations. (That was certainly one of many names I was called 25 years ago.) That it had no grounding in reality is irrelevant.

To me it doesn't matter as much what they were calling him. They were bullying him...to death. The little monsters.

When will parents, teachers, administrators and even the kids, learn that bullying hurts worse than hell to the person experiencing it? I mean if the person would prefer death to living with bullying, it must be pretty bad.

Wake up, people. It's not OK. It's not "a part of growing up". It's child abuse and it must be stopped.

I wonder if bullying should be a crime. An arrestable offense. I know, that's a world of headache for administrators and parents. Who would decide what constitutes bullying? It would be rough. But what else can we do?