Handing out chocolate chip cookies wasn’t enough, Sarah finally decided. The need of the street kids was great, and she had come to love them enough to do whatever it took to help them. So Sarah started a dinner bible study at her home. Several days a week, she would arrive at the square and invite the street kids to come home with her. At first, there were only a few who came, but those who did got hot showers, a home made meal, and a heartfelt devotional about Jesus. Not so long after the time started, many street people wanted to come. Sarah would take several 20 minute shifts to shuttle the homeless people from the square to her house. Somehow, 40 to 50 street people would pack into Sarah’s house, welcoming the time to be loved by this selfless woman.

By this time it wasn’t enough for Sarah to bake cookies and do Bible studies. She wanted to do more. What the street kids needed most was a home, a shelter, a place to be protected from the cold, the rain, the wet, and the predators of the street. So Sarah took a risk. She opened her home to be a shelter for street kids. Sarah prayed that Jesus would send her the hardened kids first. She decided that when He got through to the tough kids, their witness would bring others to Him. So Jesus answered her prayer. Sarah gained the trust of the hardest street kids on the scene. Hardened drug addicts. Prostitutes. Broken runaways. Men. Women. Children. All were accepted in Sarah’s home, so long as they observed the respectful ground rules she set up.

Years went by. Sarah continued to love the street people just as Jesus loved. And she began to see miracles. The same God who did wondrous things in the Bible came alive to Sarah as she saw Him work the same for her. He softened the hearts of the street kids. He gently called them to Himself. And they changed.

Somehow, a banker heard about Sarah’s work. He was taken by her love for the street people. “I want to fund your work” he said. He bought two additional houses to operate as shelters for the street kids. Then he rented out another building so that more people could come to Sarah’s bible study.

“I know that I wasn’t born to this earth just to live” Sarah said. “What is the point of living if you are not going to give as Jesus did?”

Sarah is just another ordinary person who walked downtown and stopped passing the square that was full of needy people. Sarah is simply a servant of the living God who wanted to be His hands and feet to those who need Him most.

Sarah is changing the world.

All her work began with a call of Christ -

- And a few bags of lovingly homemade chocolate chip cookies.

In the book of Acts Peter and John went to the temple to pray. There, sitting at the gates of the temple was a lame beggar seeking alms. Peter didn’t walk past him. He didn’t avert his gaze. Rather, Peter stopped and fixed his eyes on the man. Then he quoted one of the most familiar lines in the New Testament: “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up, and walk.”

And the beggar was lame no longer.

You see, Peter was a poor, uneducated, fisherman turned Jesus follower. Like many of us, he had nothing special or significant to give that would help someone in such desperate need.

But this is the part of the story that should warm and inspire and motivate each of our souls; this is the part of the story that should tear down all our defenses and belittle our excuses and challenge us to do what Peter did:

He gave what He had.

He gave Jesus.

For every believer, we have the same.

We don’t have to be rich. We don’t have to be significant. We don’t have to offer extraordinary talents and abilities. We simply have to have Jesus. And if Jesus is who we say He is, if Jesus is Life, and Love, and Joy, and everything Good, then giving Jesus is enough to fulfill the greatest needs and touch the most needy of hearts.

For every believer, we can change the world if all we give is the most basic of what we have:

Jesus.

And then, the lame and wounded are healed. The street kids are redeemed. The lost are saved. The prisoners are set free.

So, when will you say, “But such as I have, give I thee…"?

written by Christina N Dickson
Director of Revolutionary Media
www.therevmediaproject.com

It’s something only our God could do.

It began with a woman named Sarah who walked past a place she walked past all the time. For some reason though, this time she noticed something different, something she hadn’t noticed before, but something that had been there every time she walked by. Sarah noticed kids. Not just kids. Sarah noticed street kids. In their tattered jeans, baggy sweat shirts, worn out hack y sacks, and dirty back packs. She saw them sitting around on park benches. Saw them talking and jamming. Saw them playing hack y-sack. But Sarah saw more than that.

She saw their need.

There was a problem though. Sarah wasn’t rich. She didn’t have a lot of money. She wasn’t gifted or talented. She didn’t have much to give. She didn’t have anything to identify with them.

But she did have Jesus.

After that day, after walking by that same square, Sarah decided to do something about their need. So she did.

She baked chocolate chip cookies.

No one says no to chocolate chip cookies, she thought. So she baked chocolate chip cookies, packed them in zip lock baggies, and piled them in a box.

When Sarah returned to the square, she didn’t walk past anymore. Instead, she handed out her chocolate chip cookies. What she had thought was true. The kids didn’t say no. They eyed her. They gave her looks. They even asked who she thought she was showing up there. Sarah wasn’t afraid. She just told them, “I’m here to give you cookies.”

Every week Sarah would take several days to give homemade chocolate chip cookies to the street kids. Every week for almost two years. At first, no one wanted to pay any attention to her. They took the cookies and went on their way. But after some time, the street kids started paying attention. They started asking her questions, and she started answering them. Soon, the street kids and Sarah would have conversations. Soon, the street kids asked Sarah why she did what she did. And Sarah explained. “Jesus wants to be here. So He sent me.”

(Sarah is a private citizen Revolutionary Media hopes to profile in their upcoming documentary series, Burnside Underground, addressing the stories of street kids and ways ordinary people can reach out to them. Part II and III of this story coming soon.)

Written by Christina N Dickson
Director of Revolutionary Media

Revolutionary Media is proud to present their first project! We have confirmed the details of the "Burnside Underground" Film that we will be working on in this coming March.

Vision statement:

The goal of Revolutionary Media is to affect the world through artistic media by bringing hope and encouragement abroad while imparting vision at home. We desire to show viewers what it means to “love your neighbor” and inspire them to reach out to people within their own communities.

Summary:

Project: Through the use of photography and video, the Revolutionary Media creative team will produce three documentaries that shed light on the runaway street teen population of the United States. Using Portland, Oregon as their base, they will show how these teenagers are living, what brought them to the streets and how community members are helping get them back on track.

Vision: Everyone has the capacity to reach out to their neighbors. The purpose of these documentaries is for every viewer to catch a glimpse of how they can reach out in their own community.

Objective: With over 2.5 million teenagers running away from home each year, the population of street teens is rising. American teenagers have the opportunity to help their friends who are at risk and prevent them from becoming another statistic.

Project Plans:

Documentary Production will last from March 9^th-April 4^th. During these three weeks, the media team will be split into three smaller sub-teams, each working on their own documentary. The size of these sub-teams will range from 3-5 members.

Each week the teams will hit the streets of Portland, partnering with existing ministries and individuals to meet with runaways where they live. Much of the work will be centered around the Burnside area, Pioneer Courthouse Square and other prime downtown locations. Coverage will include histories of the runaways, profiles of what their life on the street consists of, interviews with people working with them and interviews with former runaways who are now off the street. Viewers will also be encouraged to get involved with helping the runaways in their own town.

The Postproduction of the Portland films will take place from April 5^th-25^th. The documentaries will be submitted to various independent film festivals across North America. During this time, a coffee-table book featuring portraits and stories of the runaway teens will be put together.

Distribution: The Revolutionary Media documentaries and portrait book will be made available for product and online digital purchase through area retailers. Revolutionary Media is pursing a partnership with a national retailer and hopes to secure a partnership with them soon.

The still images will be collected for Revolutionary Media gallery exhibits, gallery prints and purchase online.

Marketing: Revolutionary Media seeks to raise awareness and support of their ventures through media usage and the patronage of local businesses. They are working to secure articles in national magazines as well as local newspapers to highlight the causes they are creating awareness for. A website has been launched to help promote awareness of the documentaries.

Project Details:

Burnside Underground: Home to bums, prostitutes, a skate park and a Saturday market, Burnside is one of the main thoroughfares of Portland. Join us as we travel this road—and a few others—to find out what life is like for a runaway street teen. Viewers will see what life is like for these teens: the ache of an empty belly, the scramble to find a dry place to sleep on a wet Portland night and what “family” means when you’ve left yours miles behind.

Ragamuffin Rescue: What does it take to take someone off the street and into a loving environment? For many of the street teens, the path off the street is long and hard. They have continual struggles to discover what “normal” is and how to relate to the world around them. We’ll show you a few organizations who are reaching past the stereotypes and giving these kids what they need: love.

Runaway Street: What can you do to help runaway street teens? Does your responsibility start when you see them on the street or before they’ve left home and need someone’s shoulder to cry on? In this documentary, we will show you different ways that you can get involved in the life of a street teen. We’ll also challenge you to rethink spending time with your “needy” friends. After all, they just might need you.

PORTLAND, Ore., January 10, 2008—Inside a Jantzen Beach coffee shop, two women bent over their notebooks, scribbling furiously and exchanging notes. Their meeting lasted three hours but it wasn’t the usual gossip fest that most women their age are known for indulging in. Instead, the women were planning the launch of their Christian artistic media firm, Rescue the Beauty.
The group is made up of a small handful of photographers, videographers and journalists scattered across North America. They call themselves Revolutionary Media—not because they want to overthrow governments but because they want to radically change the way people think about their lives. They are putting names and faces to needs and showing how everyone can make a difference. Instead of painting the picture dark, they want to show the rays of light and show the viewer what is being done to change the plights of endangered people all over the world. Through the media projects of Rescue the Beauty, the members of Revolutionary Media want to challenge you to reach out to your neighbors and transform the world that you live in.
Christina Dickson, a photographer from Battle Ground, is the visionary founder of Rescue the Beauty and director of Revolutionary Media. “Our mission isn’t to simply go to Kenya to make a cool and unconventional documentary. Our vision involves both those things, but our ultimate goal is to change the world through artistic media by bringing hope and encouragement abroad, and imparting vision at home,” she said.
Rescue the Beauty is an ambitious project designed to last. They have projects in Africa, Asia and the United States lined up over the next year. Their first endeavor will take place this spring. They are scheduled to film three documentaries in orphanages surrounding Nairobi, Africa. These documentaries will show what life is like for children orphaned by AIDS and tribal killings. Depending on what unfolds in Kenya’s current situation of political unrest, the team might have to postpone the trip until things calm down and start with one of their other projects instead.
“The destination really isn’t the key to this project,” said Caitlin Muir, the team journalist. “We’re about showing the hearts and souls of people all over the world. We want to show God-things happening, not just in Africa but in every country. It’s lives, radically changed and filled with hope that drives us on.”
Once their films are out of post production, they will be entered in independent film festivals throughout North America. Some of the photographers work will be entered in art contests and they are planning on selling gallery quality prints of some of their work.
The artistic media group is just getting started.

Written by Caitlin Muir

I've been watching the political unrest in Kenya very closely. The concern for the situation goes beyond the fact that our media team will be heading out there soon. No, it goes deeper than that.

You see, the violence in Kenya has become tribal. Of all the countries of Africa, tribal warfare is least existent in Kenya. Now, the two factioning government parties of Kenya are at conflict, and with them, the tribes who support them. Rioters have come after those who follow the current president with bloody intentions. Members of the Kikuyu tribe - the party currently in power - are fleeing their homes to escape the bloodshed. This scene took place this past weekend in Kisumu, when the new vice President - a local from Kisumu - took office.

Kisumu. Not just a place anymore. This is the city where one of our partnering orphanages is located. This is the city where hundreds of orphans are living to escape exploitation. This is the city where hundreds of it's villagers have been fleeing. Suddenly, Kisumu became very personal to me as I realize that I have been talking to people who live there; who are being Jesus hands and feet there.

You know, there's always going to be unrest in the heart of the world. Because there is unrest in the hearts of all of us. And, though it may sound cliche'd, it's gonna be that way until Jesus completes His Rescue.

- Christina N Dickson
Director and Coordinator
Revolutionary Media
(Photo courtesy Kimmer B)

Ten dollars. It's really not that much. For many of us it's pocket change that will neither make nor break our bank accounts.

We spend it on small things that don't stand out or make us proud we spent our money. Treating a friend to coffee, a book or CD. One movie ticket, songs from I-Tunes, three lattes, a t-shirt and a picture frame.

Do you believe you can change the world with $10?

We do.

Instead of spending the money to watch a movie, why not spend it on MAKING one?

For $10, you can help support a team of young adults who are bent on changing perspectives on life and what it means to love your neighbor. These are writers, photographers and videographers from all over the United States (and Canada), who are passionate about using media to show what is going on in God’s world.

Revolutionary Media is going to Kenya this spring to make a trilogy of documentaries. They won’t be about superheroes, pirates or elves, but the stories are epic just the same. They tell of children, compassion and people sharing Christ in ways that go beyond what we are used to seeing. You will see people hurting, orphans forgotten and ordinary Kenyans coming to their rescue—even when they might not be much better off.

Not only do you get the change to help make a movie that will aid others, you will also get members only access with exclusive downloads and updates regarding the documentaries.

It'll be the best $10 you've ever spent.

Visit our website to give $10 by credit card and paypal. www.therevmediaproject.com