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By Richard Hamilton, May 12, 2010 9:25 pm

Not sure if Northpoint thought it was time to self deprecate, or if they thought joking about it would make it not true, but…

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

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By Richard Hamilton, April 6, 2010 10:32 am

Get more info about New Name Pictures (creators of this video) at socialjusticechristian.com.

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By Richard Hamilton, March 31, 2010 2:14 pm

Rather than keeping you guessing about my lawbreaking exploits, I’ll confess my crime. I feed homeless people. [everyone gasp here] “I can’t believe you Richard…I am so disappointed! Wait. What??” [everyone scratch your head now] You read correctly; my crime is taking food to homeless people.

San Antonio has is home to about 25,000 people each year. At anytime, you can go downtown and encounter a few thousand people living on the streets. Over the past year and a half, I have been privileged to meet and serve some of these people. This past fall, the church I work with launched a college ministry with the expressed purpose of connecting college students with those in need locally (namely the poor, hungry and homeless).

San Antonio has been blessed with a new project providing homeless individuals and families with the training, skills and assistance needed to help them become self-sufficient. This project is Haven for Hope. And it is amazing! I believe it will make a difference in many lives. Haven for Hope is structured in a way that allows (even encourages) community organizations, like churches, to partner with them to help hurting people in San Antonio.

The reality is, that Haven for Hope is not for everyone. There are some (admittedly often by their own choosing) who will not benefit for Haven for Hope. This is compounded by the fact that Haven for Hope’s downtown campus has experiences some delays and is not even fully opened.

Here is where the illegality begins.

The opening of Haven for Hope has given some city officials the opportunity needed to “clean up the streets”. Efforts have already been made to relocate people from areas highly populated by homeless San Antonians (namely and area called “Under the Bridge”). Not sure where exactly they expect them to go. Haven for Hope will only hold about 1,500 when fully opened, which it is not yet. To make matters worse, it seems the city is now restricting the benevolence of individuals and organizations by requiring a permit to give away food, making it effectively illegal to feed homeless in San Antonio. Check out a local news story about the new restrictions.

I understand the complications and liabilities associated with the large homeless population San Antonio has. And, I’m sure that some of these decisions are made by well intentioned people. These new restrictions do however complicate the lives of many benevolent people. Speaking idealistically for a moment, shouldn’t government make it easier for people to help people.

So how should I proceed? What should I do with my new found “criminal” status? For now, I will continue with business as usual. Our college ministry will proceed with its scheduled Serve SA event coming up soon where we will pack lunches for a few hundred of our homeless neighbors. I will look into getting permits to make it all legit and legal and hope the city doesn’t start fining in the mean time.

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By Richard Hamilton, March 25, 2010 11:21 am

Interesting movement in the small city of Abilene, TX. Check them out at wecareabilene.org.

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By Greg Saldi, January 29, 2010 3:21 pm

Recently, there was a movie released called “To Save a Life” (perhaps you heard about it). It has been pushed really big in our area (apparently the movie theater here had the 6th highest gross for the movie of any theater in the country). The movie is basically about a kid who knows a kid who kills himself. This stirs him to want to take a more active role in someone else’s life and chronicles the struggle with peer pressure and what not. The movie is apparently well done and I’ve heard good reviews about it.

Last night a student at one of the local schools committed suicide. It’s a horrible thing, obviously, and the students that go to that school that I know are all sort of shaken up by it. Our youth network, which handles church cooperation and bigger events like bringing the movie here posted this on Facebook today:
Please pray for the family of a Latrobe High School student who committed suicide last night. So incredibly sad. And please take all the students you know to go see To Save A Life this weekend – it’s not just a movie – it’s a challenge to keep this kind of thing from happening again. We can and must make a difference – lives depend on it!

I understand the point in all of this. “See,” they are saying, “this is a huge deal and seeing something like the movie can help.” I just look at this and it just hurts my head. Lives do depend on it, of course, but to boil this down to go see this movie and do what it says just seems like another “strategy”. I dont know about you, but short of relief efforts, I am so tired of ministry strategies. I’m tired of programming the life out of things. I’m tired of running to a curriculum or a famous youth leader, or kirk cameron and looking for “how to do things”.

Another thing that bothers me is what message am I sending to a kid by saying, “hey I know a friend of yours just killed himself, but come watch this movie so you can see the depressed kids and help them not kill themselves. You failed the first time, this time you won’t.” I just can’t see how that message helps at all. You would love to see a student body that pulls together and naturally nurtures each other. Why does the church have to step in and make sure that it gets top billing. The response of the church is love, not do this, this and this and it will never happen again. The church, which places itself at a distance to the distress and downtrodden just jumping in and helping to fix things (so everyone will know it is the church, not God) might be more of an insult than offering support to everyone that needs it.

I don’t know, I guess I’m just sort of upset with the whole thing and upset that we take a tragedy like suicide and spin it in to the Christian Marketplace.

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By Richard Hamilton, December 15, 2009 3:17 am

Brant Russo and Operation Starvation reached the $15,500 goal.

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By Richard Hamilton, December 14, 2009 2:41 am

One Day’s Wage is “A Movement of People, Stories and Actions of Compassionate Justice to Fight Extreme Global Poverty.” Check it out.

The Movement of One Day’s Wages from One Day's Wages on Vimeo.

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By Richard Hamilton, December 11, 2009 9:42 am

March 27, 2007 I wrote the 7th post on epicdialogue called: “Starving For A [Good?] Cause [And A Little Attention]“ highlighting the ridiculous attempts of “J” to get Sanjaya booted from American Idol to restore the shows “dignity” through a hunger strike (which I’m fairly sure she was not really following through with, but whatever). Her hunger strike drew a little attention, but failed to produce immediate results.

Hunger strikes can be powerful tools of attention grabbing, especially if the cause is fitting. I recently became aware of one such cause.

My friend Amanda Hoos introduced me to Brandt Russo and his cause. Here’s what he is setting out to do:

I’m going to go on a hunger strike to raise awareness and the much needed funds for these children. I’ve decided not to eat again starting Sunday, December 6th, until I can raise $15,500 to help Ryan Alexander of Not Fashionable in his quest to end hunger by us helping him provide medicine to deworm 1,000,000 children.

The World Health Organization states that intestinal parasites eat up to 20% of a child’s nutritional intake a day, so deworming is a big deal.

Self Sacrifice + Raised Awareness = A Good Cause

Check out Operation Starvation and consider contributing to the cause.

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By Richard Hamilton, October 30, 2009 11:41 am

I have formulated a new mission statement for epicdialogue.com:

Our mission is to globally facilitate leading-edge collaboration and idea-sharing in order to create ‘outside the box’ thinking with 100% on-time delivery.

Okay…actually I didn’t. I was playing with a free app on my iPhone called “Mission Statement Generator” by A2rt. This app helps get the “creative” ball rolling for those writing organizational mission statements. Here is another one I generated with the app:

We have committed to holistically create alternative catalysts for change and continue to promote ‘outside the box’ thinking while maintaining the highest standards.

I’m sure many of us are involved with organizations (i.e. churches) that have developed a missions statement strangely reminiscent to the ones above. Most I have read (or written for that matter) are are poor copies of the trendy church of the month and shed little light on the actual identity of the organization in question.

This makes sense in some ways. The cards are stacked against the statement writer. It is a daunting, dare I say impossible, task to sum up a community, organization, or movement in a few short phrases. Words are woefully inadequate. Add to this the fact that people’s expectations are so bland and formulaic.

So, why do we do it? Partially, because it was all the rage in businesses 25+ years ago. But also because people want to know what they are getting into. We want to know what to expect of our churches, organizations, employees and the like. And of course, what they expect of us.

This makes the mission statement dangerous territory. If we say we are a community that loves, we sure better love. Or, if we say we exist to serve our community, that should be something we actually do. We are tempted to express our goals and ideals in these type of statements, but they must be tempered with a dose if reality. Unfortunately, many organizations have a skewed self image.

How does your church (or whatever) approach the “all important” mission statement?

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By Richard Hamilton, October 29, 2009 11:17 am

This video was featured on brandedwithlove.com by Jason Bedell the other day and today on CollideMagazine.com today. Tech + Soccer = Good Stuff!!