Performances and workshops in almost 40 nations, about 30 films... Invite the Swingles to inspire your audience! Mobile users, our index is on the line below...
I was sitting at the train station when an inebriated man stumbled toward me and threw a punch. Find out what happened below. It's at the 16-minute mark in this morning's service...
Dr. Linda Warren led us through an immersive journey into Psalm 96. Pastor Jim Warren opened the service and closed by giving gifts of some of his artwork he created to illustrate this morning's service.
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.
I wrote this review shortly after the film came out in 2016 but didn't have time to post it. I'm referring to the film in an article I'm writing for www.HeadlinePrayer.org, so I'm posting it now.
I'm Not Ashamed tells the story of Rachel Joy Scott and how her life came to an end during the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 when she was asked if she believed in God by one of the shooters and Rachel Joy replied, "You know I do."
In many cases the fact that everyone knows what happened works against the writer. In this case it played to their advantage! I found myself cherishing every moment of Rachel Joy's life, not knowing when it could all come to an end!
Writing a work of fiction based on someone's life is hard... really hard.
I remember house-sitting for the friends who eventually introduced me to my bride, free of all distractions, staring at a blank page and a flashing cursor for days as I contemplated how to turn the Journal of John Woolman into my first feature-length one-man play.
The four-person writing team with two previous credits between them did a profoundly good job with I'm Not Ashamed.
When you look at someone's life it's very rare that you have natural dramatic tension, an antagonist--or in this case a dyad of evil collaborators, deep, rich subtext and changed lives galore.
I remember being on the set of Polycarp when someone on the crew said Hollywood is running scared because Christians will quite literally lay down their lives to tell eternal Truth well, and as costs go down and talent goes up we're making more and more of an impact on the box office.
At the inaugural Christian Worldview Film Festival producer/director George Escobar (The Screenwriters, Alone Yet Not Alone) said it's only a matter of time before Christian films start doing better than secular ones at the box office because eternal messages reach into our very souls.
I feel like I'm Not Ashamed has brought the Christian genre to another level.
I've heard complaints from secular and Christian critiques that stories about Christians aren't interesting because there's no character arc. I faced that with Beyond the Chariots because every page I read and everyone I met who remembered Eric Liddell had nothing negative to say about the man. When a life is truly seated in Christ, the gods of this world have no sway. I ended up making the protagonist a young man fighting against Eric Liddell. In I'm Not Ashamed we see Rachel Joy's on-again off-again relationship with the Lord. I certainly remember the temptations of attending a secular high school, and I thought the filmmakers did a great job of showing that without titillating.
There's a very powerful moment when Rachel Joy is asked why she won't invite a certain young man to the church's youth group. You see in her whole demeanor that he's become an idol in her life. The nuancing and depths of storytelling that leads up to that scene are profound.
Christians should know: PG-13 for *Thematic elements, though the violence is very creatively minimized. *Teen drinking and smoking. *Implied premarital sex is implied for one of the characters. *Brief teen kissing.
For those of you who already received this in your inbox, I want to apologize for the way the previous version was formatted. I did a bit of research and designed this one so that it should look much better in email form...
By the way, if I'm in a hurry and a future post looks bad or hides some of the text, you can always click the banner or title and it will take you to the blog, where you'll find the post with its proper formatting.... Except for this one, since I'll take it down after the email goes out, but you'll find it at http://blog.richdrama.com dated 9/28/16.
Got to have some prayer on
Times Square with Miss Clara.
I just heard about something that looks to be a fantastic event.
We know two of the presenters, Eric Metaxas, who allowed us to use his testimony as a part of our outreach in Russia during the 2014 Olympics, and I got to have coffee with Karen Abercrombie, who told me how she had been rejected for the role of Miss Clara in War Roombecause she was younger than their idea for the role.
So she aged herself for the audition! My friend Beth Becka coached her in the role, and said, "She is brilliant. We prayed over her and the presence of the Holy Spirit was as palpable as I have ever felt it in that little room that day!"
Here's info on the event...
A Message From Kirk Cameron
When I travel to churches across America I meet thousands who tell me they feel discouraged, concerned, and afraid for the future of America. They often ask, "Where is our hope?” I understand why so many feel that way. The news is filled with a continual stream of darkness: Political scandals; acts of violence; social confusion; people suffering. If you are feeling exhausted by all of this political mudslinging and moral decay--and if you're searching for hope in a world that sometimes seems hopeless--then I encourage you to join me for a special live event on October 18th in movie theaters nationwide.
It's called REVIVE US.
We've assembled an incredible group of people like Dr. Ben Carson, pastors Francis Chan and Dr. James MacDonald, authors Eric Metaxas and Jennifer Rothschild, and the beloved teacher of effective prayer, "Miss Clara," from the inspirational movie War Room, for an empowering and interactive evening of inspiring messages, powerful prayer, beautiful music from the Vertical Church Band and Passion as well as thoughtful conversations.
That's right conversations.
We dedicated part of the night to an interactive Q and A where we will answer your questions, hear your thoughts, and discuss anything else that's been on your mind. And before the night is all over, everyone will have time to gather in their local theater for prayer and discussion with other like-minded attendees from their community.
So please join me, my family, and hundreds of thousands of passionate believers just like you for this very special LIVE event, on October 18th.
I just heard about something that looks to be a fantastic event.
We know two of the presenters, Eric Metaxas, who allowed us to use his testimony as a part of our outreach in Russia during the 2014 Olympics, and I got to have coffee with Karen Abercrombie, who told me how she had been rejected for the role of Miss Clara in War Room because she was younger than their idea for the role, so she aged herself for the audition! My friend Beth Becka coached her in the role, and said, "She is brilliant. We prayed over her and the presence of the Holy Spirit was as palpable as I have ever felt it in that little room that day!"
Here's info on the event...
A Message From Kirk Cameron
When I travel to churches across America I meet thousands who tell me they feel discouraged, concerned, and afraid for the future of America. They often ask, "Where is our hope?” I understand why so many feel that way. The news is filled with a continual stream of darkness: Political scandals; acts of violence; social confusion; people suffering. If you are feeling exhausted by all of this political mudslinging and moral decay--and if you're searching for hope in a world that sometimes seems hopeless--then I encourage you to join me for a special live event on October 18th in movie theaters nationwide.
It's called REVIVE US.
We've assembled an incredible group of people like Dr. Ben Carson, pastors Francis Chan and Dr. James MacDonald, authors Eric Metaxas and Jennifer Rothschild, and the beloved teacher of effective prayer, "Miss Clara," from the inspirational movie War Room, for an empowering and interactive evening of inspiring messages, powerful prayer, beautiful music from the Vertical Church Band and Passion as well as thoughtful conversations.
That's right conversations.
We dedicated part of the night to an interactive Q and A where we will answer your questions, hear your thoughts, and discuss anything else that's been on your mind. And before the night is all over, everyone will have time to gather in their local theater for prayer and discussion with other like-minded attendees from their community.
So please join me, my family, and hundreds of thousands of passionate believers just like you for this very special LIVE event, on October 18th.
Performing Big Fish Little Worm on the lawn.
Photo by Joyce Swingle.
We were SO blessed to be a part of the ministry team at the Salvation Army's Southwest Ohio Northern Kentucky (SWONEKY) Divisional Family Camp this past weekend.
I performed Big Fish Little Worm on the lawn and The Acts indoors. Joyce and I also got to teach enacted prayer, and we were able to do an enacted praise and prayer for Colonel Janet Munn, who needed to leave early. That was very special for our group, and after seeing our recording she wrote, "Thanks very much for this generous act of prayer on our behalf."
In The Acts one of the characters describes how a violent wind entered the room where the followers of Jesus were gathered on Pentecost. Just hours later, Commander Janet Ashcraft was building upon the theme of her husband, Commander Larry Ashcraft, and bringing home the theme of the whole retreat: Bold Action. At that moment a violent wind swept through the open sides and back of the auditorium, designed for summer events. This is the way Colonel Richard Munn described it:
...quite suddenly a violent wind disrupted the scene in Chamberlain Hall, flags crashing, music stands cascading, music sheets swirling around the room. What a visual aid, then again, just maybe, a sign - Swoneky Division: Bold faith. I love it.
The next day Joyce and I got to visit the Ark Encounter, a replica of the ship that carried Noah and his family to safety after the worldwide flood described in Genesis 6-7. The Lord gave the specifications to Noah in cubits, which is the measurement from a man's elbow to the tip of his longest finger. There were twelve possible lengths the creators of the Ark considered, and they went with 20.1 inches per cubit. That makes it 510' long, 85' wide, and 51' tall. That took 3.3 million board feet of wood, making it the largest wooden structure in the world... today. There's a display that mentions many of the flood stories from around the world. The Ark is the only structure that actually could have survived a worldwide flood.
Another display shows photos of Mars. Scientists point to many features of the landscape that indicate Mars had a worldwide flood. They pointed out that if a worldwide flood were not mentioned in the Bible scientists would all conclude that there was one here, too. But that would wash away one of evolution's primary tenets: that the striations we see in places like the Grand Canyon were developed over millions of years. Creation scientists believe those layers were created as the floodwaters rose. It makes a lot more sense to believe striations would come from a catastrophic event rather than over great epochs of time, during which erosion would blend layers together, and in fact we have evidence of this at Mt. St. Helens, where identical striations were created in a matter of hours after its eruption in 1980.
The entire display is very well thought out, down to the number of bats on board! The Lord sent Noah two of each kind, male and female. Creators of the Ark take the word "kind" to indicate any group of animals that can produce offspring with an animal of the opposite sex within that kind. So they only account for two dogs on the Ark, since all varieties of dogs can interbreed. The Lord also sent Noah seven pairs of clean animals and flying creatures. Since there is no scientific proof that all bats can interbreed they have 75 varieties of bats on board. I guess I should add that they're not real, though there's a limited zoo on the premises we didn't have time to see.
Advances in science are making it more and more clear that there had to be a Creator. For more on this watch our friend Eric Metaxas' talk, Science and God. The Ark Encounter opened on July 7, and by the time we visited, less than two months later, there have been over 100,000 visitors discovering these facts secular media would rather ignore.
There we encountered four different friends! As soon as we stepped into the line we ran into Adra Cooper, who was in The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah with us, and Providence with me. Jonathan Ludwig worked on Polycarp with me. I went in knowing two people who had worked on the Ark, and by the time we were done we knew of six, including Adra and Jonathan.
In the living quarters (you can see Noah climbing to retrieve the dove with the olive branch behind us) we ran into Ashley, who used to attend our church, Westchester Chapel.
Then, moments after seeing a wonderful display on the great missionary to China, Hudson Taylor (part of a temporary exhibit, The Voyage of a Book: Personal Stories of Taking the Bible Around the World), we ran into the grandmother of Hudson Taylor ... Graber, the newborn son of Stacie and Joseph Graber, who directed and produced Indescribable, in which Joyce and I played the parents of nine.
Ashley and her friends let us know that we'd missed all the cellphones simultaneously going off with a FLOOD WARNING! We also missed this double rainbow, which appeared beyond the Ark shortly after we left...
In 2008 I was on a plane between Chicago and New York, and I told a gentleman on my row that I was going to be performing in Beijing during the Olympics and I'd like to have Beyond the Chariots translated into as many languages as possible. He said, I think our church could translate it to Korean. They did, and thanks to them there were North Koreans in the audience who were able to understand the play!
In 2010 I brought the play to Seoul, where Korean translations were developed for another of my plays, Big Fish/Little Worm.
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.
In 2001-2002 I played five roles in the musical Judah Ben-Hur in Singapore. So I went into an advance screening of Ben-Hur with a lot of hope.
I saw the film with a friend, and I held back from whispering, "I played that guy," five times during the film, so I'll share my delight here, where it won't interrupt your viewing pleasure...
I'll start with the smallest role I had: There was a character who walked onto stage after blowing a trumpet. The actor couldn't play trumpet, so I played it for him and then handed it to him before he walked on.
That's me and my pipa far right.
I played a galley slave in the shadows behind Judah, and I was a musician in the tent of Sheik Ilderim (played in the current film by Morgan Freeman). I played a pipa like it was a guitar in a grand dance scene.
I played Pontius Pilate, who had a much smaller role in the musical than he does in the current film. I basically sat on a couch eating grapes as I presided over the chariot race from about 15' up in the air.
I'm front row center as Simonides
with our wonderful cast from at
least four continents.
My main role in the musical was Simonides, the slave of Judah Ben-Hur's family and the father of Esther, Judah's love interest. In the film Simonides' only speaking roles are mumbled in passing, but the musical made much more of him, and it was a joy to be some of the comical relief in an otherwise very serious story. Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur, is the basis of the 1959 film starring Charlton Heston, the musical, and the film opening in theaters nationwide this weekend. Simonides dies early in this film, but Wallace puts him at the crucifixion of Jesus, saying "Let us henceforth speak of him as the Christ," and Wallace says that Simonides "lived to be a very old man. The current film uses his early death in a strategic way, and I think it pays off.
One of my favorite elements of the musical was that it opened with a solo by Balthazar, one of the three wise men, singing about traveling to and worshiping Jesus as an infant. Balthazar's presence at the crucifixion is poignant. Joyce captured this 33-year perspective in her one-woman one-act play "The Shepherd's Daughter." You can see her perform it in The Shepherds Cave in Bethlehem at www.RichDrama.com/ShepherdsDaughter. I was sorry Balthazar was left out of this film, but the different opening of the film has a huge payoff, which I'll allude to more in a moment.
As with the 1959 version, no resurrection is shown in the current film. There are indications that the story ends before Easter, and there are miracles when Jesus says, "It is finished." The 1959 film ends on the empty crosses. The novel makes no mention of the resurrection either, but it makes it clear that Judah and his family are Christians, believing that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead without having been first-hand witnesses, as 2.2 billion people believe today. Wallace also shows Judah supporting the brand new Christian movement by giving toward an underground church (literally) meeting in the catacombs. Wallace says "Out of that vast tomb Christianity issued to supersede the Caesars."
I actually feel this current film has the greatest nod to the resurrection of the three versions of the tale I mention here. Judah's time bowing at the foot of the cross inspires an action neither the 1959 version, nor the novel dare to show. A GodTube article reported:
(Timur) Bekmambetov only took the job (of director) after he was certain he could implement his vision for spotlighting a different theme from the 1880 novel than the famous Charlton Heston version of the film did. “The 1959 movie was about revenge, not about forgiveness,” Bekmambetov told the entertainment web site COLLIDER. “For me that was the main problem; I think that the novel is mainly about forgiveness, about the fact that a human being learned how to forgive.”
This film takes forgiveness even further than the novel, which was written by a man who had been a general during our Civil War. He may have felt his readers weren't ready to read what you'll see on the big screen. Though we're a deeply divided nation, we're not as far apart as we were in the mid-1800s, and I was delighted by the resurrected relationship this film shows.
Christians should know: *Four possible misuses of God's name. It's possible they're genuine prayers, but it's unclear. *The PG-13 rating is for violence related to war, chariot racing, and crucifixion. If you're a parent of children and teens I urge you to read the article "Trained to Kill." *Premarital and marital smooching. *A woman's bare back is shown when her garment is ripped. *A married couple in bed with bare shoulders only talking.
For a more detailed description of what's involved read PluggedIn's review. If you do prayerfully decide to take a young teen the film will offer opportunities to talk about choices the characters make before and after the influence of Jesus Christ on their lives.
See the rest of Olympic champion Eric Liddell's Chariots of Fire story by booking Beyond the Chariots.
I thought I might have posted this photo of me running steeplechase in college. I hadn't, but while searching I discovered a site that has posted my times in high school cross country and college track. At some point I'll have to pull out my track journal to update the high school track and college cross country times.
See the rest of Olympic champion Eric Liddell's Chariots of Fire story by booking Beyond the Chariots.
Liddell's time in the 100 yards of 9.7 seconds in 1923 stood as a British record for 35 years. That race is only 91.44m. A 100m preliminary during the 1924 Paris Olympics fell on a Sunday, so Liddell decided to pull out of the race. So we'll never know if he could have held that pace another 8.56m. If he could have that would have given him a time of 10.6 seconds. That was the Olympic record that year, set by his nemesis, Harold Abraham. The current record in the 100m is 9.58 seconds.
When I was in high school we had a cinder track, but there were many rubberized tracks around. We were always thrilled when we got to run on the newer tracks because we always had faster times. It would be interesting to know what Liddell could have done on a rubberized track with solid blocks and the kind of training athletes get today.
See the rest of Olympic champion Eric Liddell's Chariots of Fire story by booking Beyond the Chariots.
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.
We arrived Saturday night with nothing but a parable. I partnered with dancer/choreographer Sarah George. We were assigned Matthew 13:44-46, which actually has two parables paired: The Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price.
After some warm-ups designed to get us thinking and creating together we split into two groups and gave the students a 10-minute time limit to dramatize their respective parables. Monday night we shared our ideas with the entire conservatory. Tuesday morning we took feedback we'd received, along with new ideas on what the Kingdom of God is and re-envisioned the entire piece. We kept adding and fine-tuning, and were adding final touches right up until just a few hours before the finale.
On Sunday night the Creative Arts Service Team (CAST) performed Moses. I saw an eight minute version last summer in London at the Millennium Dome, and now they've fleshed it out to 28 minutes. So many of them have been my students and colleagues here at TAMC, and they all threw themselves into it! I was quite proud. You can see their performance at Hershey Park by clicking here.
In the service which followed, Dr. Linda Warren preached on Matthew 9:14-17. I showed a video of children passionately worshipping Jesus in Indonesia, the nation with the highest Muslim population. Joyce gave the announcements and mentioned the lightning video we posted on July 17.
Before the service, in our Bible study, our series on the garments of the high priest, as described in Exodus, concluded with the putting on of the garments! They're a beautiful picture of the Lord's plan for Salvation in Jesus Christ becoming our High Priest.
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.
Pastor Jim Warren preaches on Matthew 8:1-9:13. Andrew and Natasha K. shared about their ministry opportunities in the three years since they moved away to Tulsa. Pastor Linda Warren prays over the sermon and brings the announcements.
Kara M. shares about the work the Joyful Children's Home is doing to bring
the daughters of temple prostitutes out of shame and into fellowship
with the Lord and his people.
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.
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