No More Bullies by Frank Peretti Page A

Bible studies, lectured on Christian world-view, preached the gospel, told wacky stories, delivered sermons, and covered all manner of subjects—all, that is, except the subject of this book.
    I guess it seemed just a little too esoteric, too narrow in scope. After all, to my knowledge, I had never heard anyone stand before an audience and address the matter of boys, girls, men, and women demeaning each other, picking on other people needlessly, and treating each other with abject disrespect. Nobody talked about it in a public forum—not parents, teachers, preachers, or college professors.
    Sure, we’ve all heard the subject of bullying mentioned once in a while, usually treated as an unpleasant nuisance, a rite of passage that happens to everyone, no big deal. But I’d never heard anyone actually preach on it. I’d never heard anyone come out and say that bullying is wrong . I had to wonder, If no one else considers it important enough to talk about, how can I be sure any audience will think it important enough to hear about? Though it was a significant burden I had harbored secretly for most of my life, I never seemed to find the right reason, place, and time to talk about it.
    But then came the Life on the Edge conference for youth and their parents in Ontario, California, on Saturday afternoon, May 22, 1999. Focus on the Family sponsored the event, and I was scheduled to be one of the speakers during that weekend. I’d done LOTE conferences before and had some prepared messages in my files already, but things changed after the killings at Littleton. The more I read and heard about that whole tragedy, the more I felt a quaking and stirring in my spirit, as if God were saying, Frank, here is your reason and your place, and yes, it’s time to talk about it.
    You may have heard the talk broadcast on the Focus on the Family radio program. When I first delivered it in Ontario, I was almost afraid I’d flopped, that I had failed to get my message across to the audience. As I presented the speech, I was way outside my comfort zone and choked with emotion half the time, being completely vulnerable about my experience. I told no jokes. I did no humorous routines as I normally do. I simply stood on the platform and shared from my heart. Nervous, and with little confidence in my memory, I leaned over my notes, even reading aloud from them at times. I rarely strayed from the podium, gesturing and moving around as little as possible while I spoke. I agonized through every word of the talk.
    The audience of fifty-five hundred teens and their parents were respectful and receptive; they even applauded at times, but, for the most part, they remained still, subdued, and strangely quiet during my presentation.
    Afterward, I came to understand why. This wasn’t a talk an audience could enjoy, applaud, and then yak about as they left the auditorium. This was a deep digger, a grave opener that scraped off layers of dirt revealing issues that had been buried long ago but were not really dead. For many in the room, my message was a painful reminder of past hurts and a call for reflection. For others, it was the emotional equivalent of a dentist drilling through a live nerve.
    It’s not a light and simple matter to open up and admit you’re still harboring wounds from your childhood or to admit that, when you were a kid, you were bullied or abused or that you were the bully in someone else’s life, the cause of the hurt. It’s difficult to admit that you are being bullied or that you are the bully right now .
    Heavy stuff. No wonder the audience responded in self-conscious silence.
    Following my speech, the first feedback I received was from the sound technicians backstage. Of all people! These guys were adults, professionals, employees of Focus on the Family. They appeared to have perfectly normal, grown-up exteriors, all decked out with their Life on the Edge T-shirts and walkie-talkies. Nobody