'Hatred Will No More Imprison Me'

by Mark Moring

When 15-year-old Dolly Deeb of Jordan lost friends and neighbors to a terrorist attack, she says she was "filled with hatred. I was thinking of revenge, until I learned the meaning of forgiveness."

Dolly chronicles her journey in a two-and-a-half-minute film, Forgiveness, that won the under 18 age category recently at the Tony Blair Faith Foundations global film competition Faith Shorts.

A Christian, Dolly says that "forgiveness purifies the body and soul. To forgive is to set a prisoner free. Hatred will no longer imprison me."

Shiv Tandan, a 19-year-old university student from Haryana, India, won in the 18-25 category for The Guide, and Esteban Pedraza, a 20-year-old at New York University Film School won the Filmmakers category for his entry People I Know, featuring his mother and best friend who have overcome struggles of single motherhood and drug addiction through their faith.

Watch all three films below:

Dolly Deeb (Jordan), Forgiveness:

Shiv Tandan (India), The Guide:

Esteban Pedraza (USA), People I Know:

How to Write a Great Worship Song

by David Neff

The following originally posted at Ancient Evangelical Future:

Getty collaborates with his wife Kristyn and friend Stuart Townend. “They’re the words and I’m the music,” he says, estimating that somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the words of any of their songs are his. “But we both get involved on both sides.”

Here are ten notable and worthwhile ideas edited and distilled from Getty’s workshop comments:

1. The primary form we use is the story form. The gospel is primarily story. How do you take people who want 4-line worship songs and get them to sing 32 lines? By structuring the song as a story.

2. It is important to look at things that are harrowing and that don’t necessarily make us feel happy. The central core of the Christian faith is not something that makes us happy. We need to acknowledge our need for a redeemer. The reason we worship is that we meet God through the central story of the cross.

3. We need lament. But if you want to write lament, remember that a successful lament resolves. Not into a happily-ever-after ending, but like the psalms of lament, by ultimately acknowledging that God is God.

4. To write strong melodies remember that folk melody has to be passed on orally (aurally). I try to write songs that can be sung with no written music. I imitate Irish folk melody, with a great deal of contour, of rise and fall.

5. Use pastors and theologians as resources for your writing. But keep company with them. Don’t just ask them to fix your text here or there when you’re done with it.

6. Trinitarian worship safeguards us from so many problems our worship can get into: either an overly stern view of god or a casual view of god. Both can lead to problems in our lives.

7. Martin Luther is one of ten people from history I would want to have coffee with. I have looked at a lot of Luther’s hymns and emulated him. First, Luther had a high view of redemption. He also believed we live our lives in the midst of spiritual warfare. Thirdly, he had a high view of the church and a high vision of the church.

8. The congregation is the choir and it is merely the privilege of those of us who are musically gifted to help them sing.

9. Lyrics and great writing are the same thing. Lyricism is poetry. If your write lyrics, read as much poetry as you can. Lyricists are people who love words and do crossword puzzles.

10. Growing up, I never listened to pop music as a child. I was steeped in church music. That could be a blessing because everything I write can be sung by a congregation.

• * *

Christianity Today interviewed the Gettys in 2008.

Learn more about the Gettys’ work at their website.

Why I Can't Boycott Mel Gibson

by Mark Moring

Anna Broadway, a guest blogger at Her.meneutics, CT's women's blog, explains why she won't boycott Mel Gibson's movies despite the recent spate of scandals and less-than-flattering news about the actor/director -- the creator behind The Passion of The Christ.

"Gibson’s rant is not the main issue here," Broadway writes. "The issue is, what do our opinions of him and those like him — and our decisions of whether to support or shun them — say about our beliefs about humanity? If it were the case that The Passion were a praiseworthy film, and that Gibson were a racist, violent man, need acknowledging the one fact entail denial of the other? It shouldn’t."

Click here to read the entire post.

Bully! Pop Culture News Site Gets Makeover

by Mark Moring

Mark Joseph, a pop culture watcher and multi-media producer in LA, has his finger on the pulse of the music, TV, and movies scene. His website, Bully! Pulpit, recently had an extreme makeover and is worth checking out for its extensive coverage.

Bully! Pulpit launched in 1999 as an email listserve before expanding into a multimedia website with original commentary and analysis. Contributors to the site include film veterans Scott Derrickson and Ralph Winter, actress Janine Turner, researcher George Barna, musician Bill Mallonee, entertainment writer Lou Carlozo, and more.

Paying It Forward in a Very Big Way

by Mark Moring

When Hilde Back (at right), a Holocaust survivor who fled to Sweden, where she became a preschool teacher, decided to sponsor a child in Africa, she had no idea how far her money would go. She knew it would probably help one child -- in this case, Chris Mburu of Kenya -- to get better nutrition and education. Turns out that it went a LOT further than that.

A Small Act, premiering at 8 p.m. Eastern on July 12 on HBO, tells the story from Mburu's perspective -- how Back's sponsorship helped him to not only get a good education in Kenya, but to go on to Harvard Law School and later become a human rights advocate for the United Nations, dedicating his life to fighting for "the least of these."

Meanwhile, Back is completely unaware of what has happened to the young boy she once sponsored. So Mburu tracks down the now 80-year-old in Sweden, and brings her to Kenya to see all the good that she has done. It's a wonderful little film that nicely illustrates what our own small acts can accomplish.

Director Jennifer Arnold, who attended the University of Nairobi, says she wanted to tell a story that would "inspire audiences to do their own 'small acts.' There are huge stakes for these kids, who are literally fighting for their lives. . . . These kids may one day impact people across the world as Chris Mburu has, and Hilde Back before him." As Back says, "If you do something good, it can spread in circles, like rings on the water."

Though there's little to no spiritual perspective (the organization through which Back sponsored Mburu wasn't faith-based), it's quite inspiring. And when one thinks of the difference that can be made through such Christian NGOs as World Vision, Compassion, and Food for the Hungry, it's easy to see why child sponsorship can literally change the world.

Learn more about the film here, and see the trailer below:

A SMALL ACT Trailer 2010 from Jennifer Arnold on Vimeo.

Gerard Butler to Play 'Machine Gun Preacher'

by Mark Moring

Gerard Butler, last seen onscreen in The Bounty Hunter) will be hunting a bounty of another kind in an upcoming film that begins shooting this month: Machine Gun Preacher, the true story of Sam Childers. Childers, allegedly a Christian preacher, literally lives up to the film's title by carrying a machine gun into Sudan to rescue young children from that nation's war atrocities -- including rape, murder, and forcing them to become child soldiers.

Childers, author of Another Man’s War: The True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan, told The Christian Post last year, "I don’t condone violence at all . . . but at the same time I don’t believe that children should be raped, murdered, or cut up. I would have to ask the American people that you take a person that cuts up a child, or kill a child, or rape a child, if you catch a person doing that do you think that person would just stop if you just say stop? Or do you think you are going to have to fight that person? You would definitely need to fight that person or else they are going to kill you.

"I look at it as a self-defense and I look at it as I’m helping God’s children. I’m not a person out to murder. But at the same time these people need to be stopped.

"As far as a pastor with a gun, what would you call David? What would you call all the prophets in the Bible that were soldiers?"