More Than Stone

The Goal

Empower Teen Girls and Save One, Ten, or Ten Thousand From Rape or Abduction

The Film

In what some describe as The Coolest High School Project Ever, two of Portland’s St. Mary’s Academy high school girls expect to put predators and date rapists out of business nationwide when their new film Just Yell Fire released on September 28th. Just Yell Fire is free to any teen girl either as a DVD or download from the website.

Dallas Jessup (14) and Catherine Wehage (15) saw the actual abduction of a teenage girl caught on a surveillance video camera on the television news. The abducted girl was soon found dead; her killer had a history of violence. Over the next weeks in two separate incidents there were attempted abductions of teen girls in Portland. They did some research on crime statistics and found that 1 in 4 girls presently in middle school or high school will be date-raped before they graduate college. The news is filled with brutal things happening to teenage girls. They knew that none of this had to happen and set out to find a solution.

I have not watched the film yet, as it is a huge download, but I intend to watch it and if appropriate, show it to my 3 girls. It apparently has 10 techniques for defense, has a dating bill of rights and talks about date rape. I happened to see a piece on it today on the news. Anything we can do to educate and empower our girls…

Even when things are not ideal, there sure are little places of grace. I was fortunate enough to travel to Grand Rapids in January to hear Rob Bell speak at the Isn’t She Beautiful conference. It was absolutely magnificent. This week, N. T. Wright is coming to my little town and speaking this weekend. Here is the line-up….

THURSDAY, MARCH 15

6 PM, “Apocalypse and the Beauty of God”

8 PM, “The Gospel and Our Culture”

FRIDAY, MARCH 16TH

7 PM “Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?”

SATURDAY, MARCH 17TH

9 AM “Resurrection and the Future of the World”

11 AM “Resurrection and the Task of the Church”

There will be time for questions after each lecture.

SUNDAY, MARCH 18TH

11 AM “Resurrection and the Calling of the Christian”

Oh, joy joy. I’m so excited. I’ll be taking copious notes to blog by…..

Technorati Tags: Rob Bell, N.T. Wright, Tom Wright

In Chapter 2 of Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, Wright tells a story of a dictator. This dictator ruled his land so that every aspect of life was worked out according to a rational system. One day, this dictator noticed that the water sources were uncontrolled. There were thousands of springs, but they could cause floods, get polluted, sprout up just about anywhere. So, this dictator decided to control the water sources by paving over the whole city and installing an intricate system of pipes that would deliver water to the citizens in a controlled environment. People praised the dictator.

This system worked fine for a while. Until one day, the springs could not be controlled any longer. The water burst violently through the concrete in a huge explosion. Muddy water rolled through the streets, into homes and shops, completely uncontrolled. Roads were torn up and they city was in chaos. Some were happy about this. See, over the years, they had longed for the natural springs that bubbled up. They had been tired of the controlled, anesthetized version of the springs.

Wright maintains that we, in the Western world, are citizens of that city. The dictator is our philosophy of materialism and the water is spirituality. We have tried to controll the hidden, bubbling springs of human spirituality, however, the water is breaking forth and bubbling over, no longer contained by the concrete.