When family pastor George "DB" Antrim III took his own life this May, he left behind a wife of 17 years and two sons, the youth group he had led for two years, and, indeed, the whole community of Waukee, Iowa. His was the first death Westwind Church had faced in its five years. "I had no idea how horrific that day would be," said pastor Brandon Barker, who read aloud Antrim's suicide note one Sunday morning as congregants wept openly.
Antrim's death was the latest in what is being called a "rash" of pastor suicides: the Illinois pastor who shot himself in front of his mother and son last fall; the Georgia pastor who took his life in between worship services; and Isaac Hunter, the Orlando pastor who killed himself last December amid a church resignation and divorce. In a note he wrote two years ago, Hunter epitomized one of the great lies of suicide: "I have become what I never wished to be, a burden on those I love the most."
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