I'm praying about a TV show. I want to tell the stories of desperate people around the world looking for and finding hope. I see so many of them as they die of AIDS in Swaziland or live in the squalor of slums outside Lima or Nairobi. I see the glazed eyes of the girls sold to the sex trade in Bangkok.

And the question that plagues me and I bring before God now is, "Can their stories be told in a redemptive way that sparks the imagination of a self-absorbed audience all in half an hour?"

All my life I've had a love-hate relationship with the media. Its power to corrupt things is so great that I generally prefer to fly under the radar. But its capacity to tell a redemptive story, if properly harnessed, could change the world.

To be told redemptively, these people struggling with desperate circumstances must find hope. The vehicle for this hope is our World Racers as they travel around the world. Yet to avoid sending the wrong message, they cannot take center stage in the drama. They must work as supporting actors to a "local hero" who just needs a little help.

So the real story is not Americans as "the Great White Hope," but the delicate dance of partnership that allows the Local Hero to play a meaningful support role in bringing hope to people who are desperate. When we leave, they're the ones who are going to continue to minister and keep fanning the flames of hope.

The challenges are:

• Finding the stories where this dance of hope-bringing can be danced with integrity.
• Telling the story in such a way that it isn't intrusive and the media doesn't become a protagonist.
• Capturing the magic of the redemptive process on the film in a way that is not stage-managed.

That's my dream. I believe it could inspire a generation to see alternatives to lives of self-absorption. It could inspire them to live lives where they become a hero to people who could never have voiced their need for help.