Love Always Protects

Every fifth Sunday our church, Westchester Chapel, invites the children to join us for the entire service, which is designed around them. Today, Pastor Randy Solomon preached on I Corinthians 13:7 with illustrations from II Kings, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah. Dramatic performances by Sir Michael Quimby, played by Rich Swingle. Announcements, closing comments and prayer by Pastor Joyce Swingle.



Pastor Randy referred to John Piper's talk on John G. Paton and his work among the Cannibals of what is now Vanuatu, which you can hear in it's entirety: You Will Be Eaten by Cannibals! Lessons from the Life of John G. Paton.

This service is available for download free on iTunes, where you can also subscribe to our podcast. Search for "Westchester Chapel" on the iTunes Store.

Trade of Innocents

MasterWorks Festival MasterClass instructor Bev Holloway invited Joyce and me to join her and her husband, Doug, at the World Premiere of TRADE OF INNOCENTS, a film for which Bev was casting director and also served as a producer.

This phenomenal film stars Academy Award-winner Mira Sorvino and Durmot Mulroney (My Best Friend's Wedding, The Grey, About Schmidt). It's based on real stories the screenwriter heard and experienced in Cambodia.

Visit www.TradeOfInnocentsMovie.com to find out if it will be playing in your area, and then get everyone you can to go on opening weekend, starting October 5. Their tag line is "Justice Needs a Hero. Be One." If you want to do something to stop human trafficking get friends to see this film. That will start a buzz and raise awareness.

Despite the heavy topic, this film is very tactful in how it portrays this evil billion dollar industry.

An International Reach

I'm so encouraged to see how many nations are represented by folks that read my blog:

Pageviews by Countries

Entry	Pageviews
United States	14330
China	1459
Russia	1045
Germany	815
United Kingdom	745
Ukraine	578
South Korea	395
Netherlands	368
Taiwan	326
Slovenia	313

Unconditional

This film is spectacular!

I heard a teenager say, "I thought one Kleenex would be enough. I needed seven!" The ample crowd in our Times Square showing applauded as the credits rolled. 

Support this opening weekend! It's that kind of a show. 

We have a number of friends at Here's Life Inner City, which was thanked in the credits. 

It's rated PG-13 for some violence: not for young kids, but this would be powerful for older teens.

Unconditional (2012)

www.imdb.com

Directed by Brent McCorkle. With Lynn Collins, Michael Ealy, Bruce McGill, Kwesi Boakye. A woman's idyllic life is shattered when her husband is killed in a senseless act of violence. As she prepares to take matters into her own hands, two unexpected encounters begin to change everything.

Africa

We have invitations to perform and teach in Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Rwanda and Nigeria. But none of them can get us to Africa. We need your help to impact them with the love of God through drama.

My grandparents taught at the Rift Valley Academy outside of Nairobi in the '40s, and my mom and aunt attended school there. It would be the fulfilment of a prayer of my heart from when I was old enough to understand their stories.

Donate now at RichDrama.com/Donate. We are not a non-profit organization, so you cannot claim it as a tax deduction.

Thank you so much!

Rich and Joyce

P.S. Make sure you're subscribed to our emailings to find out when the trip is happening: RichDrama.com/Updates.

Missions Through Arts

On September 29 I'm performing and teaching at the English East Coast Joint Mission Day 2012.

View and download the handout from the conference by clicking here.

If you know of other groups that are using the arts in missions, please post their websites as a comment.

Vulnerable

Click here for an outstanding sermon by my former professor from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Some gems: "Charisma without character is catastrophe." "'You're credible with us because you became vulnerable with us.' ...Christ is most credible because He made himself most vulnerable."

Chariots of Fire in the West End

In the run-up to the Olympics we read that Chariots of Fire would be running in cinemas all over the UK. We never saw posters for the movie while we were there with performances of my one-man play on the rest of the story, Beyond the Chariots, but we LOVED the West End production of the newly staged theatrical adaptation. The staging and "choreography" was just brilliant! And the opening and closing sequences had the cast running about in Team Great Britain 2012 athletic uniforms. Great fun.

It follows the four-time Academy Award-winning film from 1981 quite closely, but they give themselves an extra hour to work in subplots for which the film didn't allow.

At the Eric Liddell Awards breakfast, I told Eric's daughters that I only had two quibbles. Patricia, his eldest said she had two also. I told her to go first. She didn't like how her Aunt Jenny was portrayed. When I performed Beyond the Chariots in Milwaukee I was given a note from Jenny by someone who had been in correspondence with her before her death. In the note Jenny wrote about how much she encouraged Eric in his running. Patricia said Jenny was much more fun-loving than she's portrayed in the film, and now in the West End. Her second quibble was that her father was also portrayed as being more dour than she remembers him to have been. He used to sing silly songs with their mother to keep the Sunday school kids interested in God's Word. Then I shared my quibbles: Their mother is portrayed as a blonde, when she had very dark hair (Patricia also said her accent was far too American, and not enough Canadian). My biggest complaint is that they close the play with--and work into the ancillary literature--the phrase "Harold was faster, but Eric was better." They point out that Harold got faster and faster when training with Mussabini, but the fact of the matter is that Eric's 100yd British record of 9.7 held for 35 years. I did the math, and Harold's Olympic record of 10.6 in the 100m, which he equalled in two qualifying heats, is a virtual tie with Liddell. But to say he was faster than Eric is just not true.

Having said all of this, it's a marvelous play, and I highly recommend it to anyone in or heading to London. I'm praying it will be done on Broadway some day. Maybe I'll be young enough to audition for Eric's older brother.

Mostly I was pleased because they stayed true to the bold stance that Eric took not to run on a Sunday. They didn't pull back anything from his conviction.

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See the rest of Olympic champion Eric Liddell's Chariots of Fire story in Beyond the Chariots. Watch it online and book a live performance.