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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!!

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By Richard Hamilton, October 15, 2009 10:48 pm

I found this through an old post on a site I recently rediscovered, When Religion Meets New Media. Its was created by commoncraft.com last year. Interesting analogy

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By Richard Hamilton, October 14, 2009 2:11 pm

…fortunately, only 14 people go to the Amazing Grace Baptist Church. Unfortunately, they are not the only ignorant people running around making fools of themselves supposedly in the name of God. It is also unfortunate that this is getting noticed because people tend to lump all things named Christian in the same pot. Check out what the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton has planned for this Halloween.

According to their website, they are burning all English bible translations other than the KJV. They call these “Satan’s bibles.” Be warned, if you go to their website you will be inundated with ignorant spew set to hillbilly music. They are also burning Satan’s music, and Satan’s popular books.

Where to start. I could talk about all the mishandling, poor translations, and outright mistakes in the King James Version. Or I could address the way language changes over time and how a lot of the texts not only are hard to read, but don’t mean the same thing in contemporary vernacular. Maybe, it would be good to discuss the process of how the Bible came together in the first place and how if we honestly evaluate the cannon over the years, preservation doctrines become indefensible (especially in regard to the KJV). It might be important to evaluate some of their arguments and show how many of the KJV only claims are distortions at best (like when it is said that modern translations remove the word God).

But, I think there are bigger issues afoot. Namely issues of arrogance and ignorance. Unfortunately, these often go hand in hand.

There is also a touch of irony in the church’s name (although it is only irony if you know nothing about churches). All the talk of saving souls and amazing grace, but there doesn’t seem to be a shred of love in that place. Their actions are the exact type of hyper-religious absurdity Jesus fought to destroy.

Sadly, well-intentioned, good-hearted, followers of Jesus will be lumped in with this nonsense. Not only do these people make Christians look foolish and insecure, but they make the Jesus distasteful to people who desperately need him.

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By Richard Hamilton, October 1, 2009 11:34 pm

The 75+ videos from The Nines are now available for viewing. Check them out here.

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By Richard Hamilton, September 25, 2009 9:50 pm

DreamF – Focus from Adam Joy on Vimeo.