Saturday, July 28, 2007

Praying for Hollywood instead of boycotting

This seems like good idea:

It's around 10 at night and Lewis Payne puts on his pajamas and eases into a chair in his study to say a prayer – for Paris Hilton.

Payne resides in the tiny city of Quincy, Ill., on the banks of the Mississippi, but at this late hour his mind is typically 1,500 miles away in Hollywood.

"Tom Cruise doesn't know he has a lot of prayers being sent up for him," he says.

Payne is among a growing number of people across the country praying for celebrities.

While most of us shake our heads, snicker or secretly gloat over celebrity scandal and misfortune, the Hollywood Prayer Network views the planet's "most influential zip code" as an important, yet written off, "mission field," rife with people just waiting to be introduced to God.

Karen Covell, a producer of documentaries and TV specials ("Headliners and Legends with Matt Lauer"), founded the non-profit ministry partly out of frustration with other members of her own faith.

"Sometimes the Christian church outside Hollywood hates Hollywood," she says. "If I can get the church to pray for the people of Hollywood, they can't hate them or be afraid of them anymore."

In what may be a first, the prayer network is calling for Christians to stop boycotting movies and asking them to turn their TVs back on.

Instead, the network gives away stickers that you can put on your remote control to remind you "to pray for the people involved in the shows on your screen" while you channel surf. You can also buy (on the network website) red rubber wristbands embossed with the Hollywood zip code, 90028, to remind you to pray for "America's culture shapers."

Nearly 5,000 people are on the network's email list; "people who want to create art but keep an ethical and moral code to our lives," Covell says.

(via)

I never boycott movies or TV because it's a waste of time and backfires as it creates a buzz that it wouldn't have had if it had just been ignored. I think I'll pray for Lohan, she really needs it.

Here's the link to their website if you want to join.

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