How to Start a Church or Christian School Theater Ministry
by William Kritlow
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 William Kritlow
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Further permissions: the plays presented in the Appendix are for reading as part of this book. If you want to perform any of them, either email me for permission or purchase the ebook in which the play is published and take advantage of the permission afforded by the purchase. Additional performances require additional permission. For that permission, or to ask a question, make a comment or suggestion, or just to say, "Hi." billkritlow@gmail.com
Cover art by Sally Truong - visit her website - http://www.inkit-printing.com
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Why start a Church or Christian School Theater Ministry
Chapter 2 - There’s only one reason -
Chapter 3 - Why Has God Brought It All Together?
Chapter 4 - Now I Are One - Or - What Exactly Is a Theater Ministry
Chapter 5 - Okay, How Do You Use A Theater Ministry?
Chapter 6 - Theatrical Flavors - The Largely Technical
Chapter 7 - The Art of the Short Play
Chapter 8 - The Art of the Instructional Christian One Act
Chapter 9 - The Art of the Full Length Christian Play
Chapter 10 - The Imagination Workshop
Chapter 11 - Method Acting - The Christian Version
Chapter 12 - Some Final Thoughts
Appendix - Sample Plays
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Chapter 1 - Why start a Church or Christian School Theater Ministry
About 15 years ago I found myself in a Christmas theater production at Church. I’d done some work on the stage at a teenager, but none since, and here I was in my 50s. I’d just published my first novel and fancied myself a budding literary giant, one who could write anything - novels were just the first conquest. Plays would be my next. Why plays? Because this Christmas effort our church was doing needed some major script doctoring.
So I doctored it. And the play turned out much better for it. One reason was that my part was much larger and far more sympathetic and, as the young shepherd boy led me to Christ, much wiser. I found I loved the stage and I loved writing for it. And so I acted and wrote, and enlisted others to act with me. Fortunately, the church leadership wanted to use us, so over the years, a church theater ministry was developed.
The church also had a Middle, and Jr. High School as a ministry, 250 - 300 kids from K - 8, on campus everyday, kids there to learn the 3 Rs, and all the other letters the state required. And, unlike the state run institution, they also learned about Jesus. Over time, a Christ centered arts ministry, which included a strong dose of theater, was planted, watered and bloomed.
Neither of these ministries threatened Broadway. But they did help a lot of kids and adult, God’s children in His Kingdom, learn about Him, learn about how He works with His people, and develop stage savvy skills they could use to His praise and glory as their particular life journeys progressed.
Just so you know my bias, I’m a firm believer in Christian Theater Ministries. There’s nothing like a live theater experience to capture the attention, the imagination, the minds, and the hearts of the audience. From minutes to hours, an audience can be transported wherever you want them to go - from their own living rooms to the foot of the cross - and every step along the way, they become part of both story and message. There’s no better way to excite and nurture God’s people than a dramatic, theatrical event.
Thankfully, these events don’t have to be EVENTS! They can be as simple as flipping a light switch, or as complex as parting the Red Sea, and they usually lie somewhere inbetween. They are, literally, whatever you have the time, energy and resources to produce - and most of us have very little of any of those. But whatever the input, the output can make a huge impact for our savior and His people.
Now, there are probably more of you out there who have such ministries than anyone, but God, will ever know. My head’s bowed for you and I’d love to hear from you. But there are also a whole slew of places in the Kingdom that don’t have these ministries and would be blessed by them. If only someone would take up the torch and run with it! Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!
That’s why this book.
Okay, what about this book? First, it’s not the definitive work on this subject. Not even close. In fact, even if I could write such a tomb, I wouldn’t. This book is a nudge in the theater ministry direction. It’s an encouragement. That’s all. You and The Lord will go the rest of the way; because you and the Lord have all the creativity that’s needed, and all the energy and insight. He also has all the love and grace to see the ministry through. I hope what I’ve included here is enough to get you started.
Here’s what I mean.
I want to point you in the right direction - to God. This is His field we’re laboring in, His tools, His laborers, His seed, His crops. His ministry. Our job is to become a part of it - take the gifts He’s given us, plug ourselves into the plan He’s made for us, and begin to do the things He’s prepared in advance for us to do.
Next I want you to clearly see that there are others of us out here - others of us walking by faith down this theatrical road. And there’s a place where like minded folk can share their questions, concerns, and ideas. My email is: billkritlow@gmail.com. Use it. I would love to put a support and encouragement group together. Let’s say right here that anyone who emails me about this, unless they request otherwise, will be a member.
Then I want to give you some ideas to start with and some experiences that might add up to guidance.
One of the great things about creativity, it’s out there in abundance. God identifies Himself in the 5th word of the Bible as a Creative God. And just one glimpse at the heavens and the earth confirms it. That same fire of creativity blazes in all of us - to one degree or another. For those of you where that fire burns hot, I hope to provide some ideas that will help get you started - or confirm the path you're on. The idea is to build on them - or discard them altogether and build on your own foundation - but the hope is that turning these pages will at least stir the blood. Christians with their blood stirred are powerful things.
My Braveheart speech - if God’s planted within you the idea of a theater ministry, or if He’s given you the desire, as He’s given me, to act, write your brains out, or do something else stage related, then the time’s come. If you’re in church leadership and someone in your church, or among your Christian friends, is pestering you, or just driving you nuts talking about something like this over and over and over again, as I did to my pastor, then the time’s come. If you just downloaded this book because you wanted some excitement, then in the act of getting a life, the time’s come. I never claimed I was good at Braveheart speeches, but God is very good at seeing you through the entire Theater Ministry process. Call on Him. Read this and other books. And as you do both, lite your furnace, and create some dramatic heat!
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Chapter 2 - There’s only one reason -
Okay, your dramatic thermostat is rising, but even so, there’s only one reason to actually take that first step and start a Church or School Theater Ministry: God wants you to.
And how do you know He wants you to?
Because somewhere handy are the desire, the vision, the venue, and the talent. If He’s given you all four of those - not three, or two, or more likely, just one - but all four, then God’s telling you the time has come to start a theater ministry. Let’s take a sec and look at each of those elements.
The Desire: theater ministries aren’t for the faint of heart. They’re a lot of work. Things get tense. Quick thinking is at times too slow. Failures always preceed success. And success immediately becomes “What’s next?” And through it all, God, the loving potter, is embracing and comforting and, at times, digging his clay-forming thumbs into all involved. All the sins show themselves including anger, envy, and impatience. Eventually a worm or two pops out of every fruit of the spirit in the room, yours included. This is where desire comes in. You, or someone else in the organization, has to possess enough desire, the “want it in the gut (or heart)” kind of desire to keep going and growing through the entire double-edged sword experience. Actually, these are the guys or gals you’ll spot first. They’re the ones pestering you to make something happen. Or, perhaps, you keep pestering yourself. If there’s a show to put on, they’re the ones who’ll do it.
A Vision is sometimes hard to verbalize, yet it’s vital someone in the room have one. I like to formulate mine in terms of goals and objectives. Who do you want to reach? What theater technique would best reach them and can you field that technique? What growth do you hope to see as a result? What Kingdom impact do you want your ministry to make? When you have a strong, Godly vision for your ministry, it's much easier to keep things on track. These ministries take a lot of resources. Even if you’re doing a one actor three minute play, there’s writer time, rehearsal time, scenery, lighting and sound issues, perhaps music and everyone wants to do their best - and the whole church or school can look a little amateurish when things go wrong. So a solid, sharp, clear vision helps assure the ministry accomplishes what God wants for it.
A Venue: if the show is to go on, it has to have a place. But it doesn’t have to be the Radio City Music Hall. We often did our best work in a 6 foot square section of the sanctuary stage. The requirements for a venue are simple - it’s large enough to contain the action, it’s close enough to engage the audience, and the stage is situated so the audience can see and hear. Of course, the larger the production, the more sophisticated the venue required. Remember, the most important element of a venue is it helps the production take the audience emotionally and spiritually where God wants them to go. And God's used to working in small spaces. The human heart is only a few inches square.
The Talent - actors, writiers, lighting, sound, director, producer - they could be all embodied in a single person, or spread over many, but one of the key elements of any theater ministry is there exists theater talent at hand. But, again, like with the venue, the talent need not be Broadway or Hollywood caliber, it merely need be convincing, entertaining, and enjoyable to experience. The acceptable skill levels may change with production size, goals, and venue, so you need to be sensitive to that. A full scale production in a professional grade theater for the whole community will take some pretty heavy gunners at the battle stations while a 3 minute play to the congregation may just need some pleasant, honest folks.
So - if you look over the staff and congregation, and perceive God raising up sunflowers of talent in your dandilion field, and if people, perhaps yourself included, are dancing around waving hands saying, "Choose me, choose me," who possess desire and vision, and there’s a place you can fashion into a stage that an audience can see, it’s time to act. Turn desire into action, formalize vision into a handful of achieveable goals, group the talent into a committed bunch, and herd them toward that stage. For your church or school, a theater ministry is on its way. Any second now it will bud, bloom, and bear fruit, the kind worms can’t get anywhere near - right in front of you.
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Chapter 3: Why Has God Brought It All Together?
God can have many reasons He wants a theater ministry for your church or school. I can’t even pretend to know what they may be. Some of them might even be “God-unique.” For instance, God can start a theater ministry today because in three hundred years, when the entire world has fallen away, He will have someone unearth a performance DVD of a Christian play. He’ll then have someone else reverse engineer a player so the whole world can see it. Next, like when Ezra read the scrolls to the Israelites, the whole world will be so struck by God’s presence in that production that every man, woman, and child will repent and turn to Him to worship, praise, and follow into a warm, embracing future. Even though, three hundred years before when the DVD was actually made, someone in the audience assessed the production as dumb! I actually think this is the very reason He started my ministry.
Or, God could just like a good play like the rest of us. Rumor has it Job was first presented as a stage production.
Or -
Which is more likely, God’s reasons are in close harmony with the other goals you have for your Church or School ministry. So let’s take a look at what a few of them might be.
High among them could be a theater is an efficient way for God to work. It's like Henry J. Ford and the assembly line. God presents the same spiritually stimulating material to an audience as large and diverse as He wants to make it. It’s mass instruction - a classroom that engages both head and heart, that works on audience and production company simultaneously - and, surprisingly, in different ways. Certainly with the production company, the material can saturate the mind and provoke discussion and reaction among those involved sometimes for months, and when actors delve into the character's inner soul and basic motivations, the investigations can go quite deep. These real life illustrations then go on to stimulate heartbeats and brainwaves in the audience. Because the material can be edited and changed as audiences change or updated as better ways to express the ideas are discovered, plays presented on Tuesday can have even greater impact on Wednesday. And let's not forget, they can be taken "on the road," so the impact of the work can be felt over continents and, literally, for centuries, even millennia. Very efficient, indeed.
And these theatrical events can be presented over this broad and varied horizon ON CUE. Christian issues can be brought home and explored through real life experience when we need them to be. That just ain't true of some other illustrative methods. Let's say you want to open up the spiritual issue surrounding domestic violence in such a way that the congregation is really revved up on the subject. Without theater, if you wanted to motivate as only experience can, you'd determine which couple in the congregation is the most likely to suffer this affliction, and, after shoving all worry about lawsuits aside, you gather the congregation secretively around their humble abode and wait for the inevitable explosion inside - hoping the ensuing mess covers all, and just, the points you want with the exact subtleties of nuance you want shading them.
A far healthier and less intrusive way to achieve the necessary focus, is to present a quick play on the subject, and launch from there. This approach can be nicely scheduled and edited to provide the congregation or audience just the impact you want. Which solves one of the most difficult problems Christians have - mapping God’s word onto real life experience. For instance, what does it really mean to be “meek,” especially in the face of aggression? Or how do we honor our parents when our parents aren’t particularly honorable? The congregation can be brought right into sin's living room, see those dishonorable parents at work, see the appropriate reaction to them, and see the Gospel triumph right before their eyes. Even when characters fail, if done instructively, all sorts of varied and important points can be driven home. When we present real characters triumphing over real issues in Godly ways, audience and production crew get the picture at the moment they need to get it and with the efficiency of a power-nailer - a tool we all need more of in our worship experience! (just kidding - or maybe not!)
Here's the one I like, during the theatrical experience, no matter how short and subtle in may be, the audience and production company are emotionally engaged in ways unusual for a sermon or lecture. It is very hard to ignore a play - particularly one that's short, sharp, and entertaining. When we see others engaged in the battles we fight every day our sympathies and empathies awaken and the voyeur in all of us stirs - then really pops when all the radar it triggers is guilt-free. No boredom here. And when the "curtain falls," our spiritual pores are wide open and ready to be showered with God's Word. And a skillful presentation will only plant it deeper - down there in the good soil.
Deep planting is one reason Satan’s message has been so effective in this modern world - Hollywood and Broadway have long been his farming implements. Although continuing to be true, we Christians are beginning to fight back through wonderful Christian films like Fireproof and Courageous. It's time to continue the fight in our churches and Christian schools using those same emotion provoking, yet Biblically based, weapons.
Speaking of weapons, one of the neat things about our army - the Army of God - is that we carry some of those weapons around with us all the time, and the stronger they are and the more experience we have using them on the battlefield, the stronger the Kingdom of God becomes. These weapons are the Godly attributes He planted inside us when He created us in His own image. A Theater Ministry sharpens many of them. Let's take a look at some.
First is creativity, as mentioned before, the first attribute God assigns to Himself. “In the beginning God created . . .” The fifth word in Scripture is “created.” God, in His authoritative, inspired communication to us, defines Himself as creative right out of the gate. What’s more, since we’re created in His image, we, too, have that same creative spirit within us. God didn't put it there because it hurts the Kingdom. Au contrare! God's Kingdom is best served when His people have their creative juices flowing. But like a “muscle,” creativity needs to be nurtured, exercised, and encouraged. Exactly what a theater ministry does.
But all the creativity in the world means nothing if God's people lack the confidence to make those creative steps. Which leads us to make this obvious observation - God's people are more effective when they're confident in the gifts God’s given them. Confidence - not arrogance, not pushiness, not over-bearance (that is a word, isn't it?) - but confidence makes for a bold witness. Which we're called to have. But that's not all, it is, also, key to an abundant life. We need the confidence that faith brings to take the steps God's placed before us that take us there. But confidence in who? Ourselves? The world would have us believe that's exactly who we need confidence in. But confidence in ourselves is futile. Are we always right? Are we never weary? Are our steps always sure? Confidence in any finite human will only lead to disappointment.
Our confidence is in God. We're confident that God's right here with us every step of the way, and when we're following His lead, we're confident He's prepared us for every one of them. Even when we fall, or fail, through our brokenness and repentance, He's there to restore and heal. Theater develops and hones our confidence in God like few other pursuits. Before an audience there are no retakes, we remember lines or we don’t, we get the lighting right or we don’t, the scenery works or it doesn’t, our direction creates the whole out of its parts, or it doesn’t, we’ve chosen the right work to compliments our talents and provide the right balance between drama, entertainment and instruction, or we haven't. There is very little middle ground. When we do, we see God in the process, when we don’t, we see God in His grace and mercy. Either way, we see God. And every time we do, our confidence increases, again, not in ourselves, but in God and our place in His plan. Seeing Him there allows us to stretch, allows us to step outside the comfort zone, allows we baby birds to venture forth and just see how far God wants us to soar.
Let me tell you about some sweet "baby birds" of our own. Our youth theater ministry put on the musical adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, entitled Narnia. We wanted to include 1st and 2nd graders in the production, but the production itself wasn't suited for them. So I wrote an age appropriate preamble for them that introduced Narnia and its animals to the audience. It was in verse and you can Click Here (1) to read it. We performed Narnia two consecutive evenings. On the first night, if any of the 1st and 2nd graders asked, I gave them a script to read while they performed it. Two of the lovely 2nd grade girls took advantage of that offer. But not the second night. That first night they'd seen the older kids working without scripts, and by gum they were going do the same. So, on the second night they declined the offer. Then, with chins held high, those two 2nd graders performed without a net - and also without a mistakes. “We can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” They saw it happen for them that night.
And just as a theater ministry helps the participants develop confidence in the Lord, it also helps develop what I call, stage savvy. When I was just out of college and got my first job, I was asked to speak in front of a room full of colleagues. I did it, but just barely. I stared at my shoes, played with my fingers, stumbled on words, of which, "uh . . ." was my favorite. For a long time my credibility as a professional - as a human being - suffered in that place. I was looked at as weak and ineffectual - which pretty much defined my witness, too. Had I been a part of a theater ministry before those fateful days, I would have done far better. I would have developed confidence, and I'd also helps us develop the next logical step to confidence, what I've already labeled as stage savvy. It's that important ability to relate to, and “play,” an audience. Top tier entertainers and performers excel at this. They captivate an audience, get them pumped with energy, get them laughing, cheering or so intense in their silence you could do the backstroke through it. And in the meantime, they're thinking - before thousands, right there on their feet. And a theater ministry is where Christians get the opportunity to develop these talents and hone these skills. With them, before just about any size crowd, you become relaxed and in charge (as any Christian can be). All those folks out there in the pews and seats become friends, become your brothers and sisters in Christ, as God intended. With that connection, you can share what Christ has done for you from any stage, anywhere. Powerful!
Where confidence and stage savvy helps our witness soar, empathy helps our witness hit home - penetrate right to the heart. Empathy allows us to identify with people and understand what they're going through. It helps us walk in their Reeboks for a while and, thereby, know how best to share Jesus with them. This is the very essence of being a Christian - we become (as close as we can) Jesus with them - like He did with the woman at the well, or for woman who'd been subject to bleeding. Love, through us, then becomes real and has true impact on the person receiving our witness. So, the more theatrical characters we study, the more deeply we study them, the more we know them from the inside out, and the more we understand them when we meet them in real life. Empathy, looking below the surface to understand the real person, becomes what we do.
And as we empathize, as we see life from their perspective, we begin to understand something else, too, how evil infects and destroys the sinner’s life and, conversely, the unfathomable good that comes from a vital, personal relationship with Christ. Theater can tangle us up in lies, and stabbed us to the heart with the sharp tongue of gossip and hate. It can bring us face to face with drug and child abuse, rattle us with the earthquake of adultery, have the tornado of divorce tear us apart. That’s not to say experience doesn’t reveal the same thing, but theater helps these experiences come much faster, more safely, and on cue. Of course, all theater to one extent or another purports to examine good and evil - but Christian Theater tells the truth about it. No, having a baby out of wedlock isn't just another way to have fun. No, sex on a first date doesn't make for a meaningful relationship. No, prostitutes don't have hearts of gold. In fact, in spite of what you've been told, the wages of sin is death, and Christian Theater works hard to show that. It also shows that in spite of our sins, when we humble ourselves and repent before God, His mercy and grace embrace us and He forgives us our sins - because of what Jesus did on the cross for us. In a short few minutes, or a brief few hours, theater gives us experiences that leave powerful impressions. It quickly reveals the danger - in the world, that inhabits our flesh, and is packed in by the devil - and how our hope and protection lie in the salvation God offers through the blood of Christ.
Then, as a result of our salvation, of our becoming one of God's children, the theater experience shows us how we have a definite place in God's plan. It teaches this in spades - that participants each have a place, each place is important, and each place can rely on God and all the other places for support and excellence. As an ensemble effort, theater screams, "The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts." Scenery on an empty stage my be pretty to look at, but when you add the actor and music, all become meaningful. Theater also blares, "Each part must perform, or there is no whole - only pieces." If that beautifully painted scenery falls down and leaves the actor to fend for himself - well, we're back to an actor on a bare stage. Now, I'm sure there are other places we Christians can learn these things, but I'm convinced theater teaches these lessons better than most and as good as any.
But even when that scenery does fall down, or the actor forgets his lines, or someone pulls the lighting plug, theater teaches everyone concerned to rely on, what I've come to call, God’s Editing. I don’t know how many times I’ve studied my lines until I knew them better than I know my own name, Harvey Slapsaddle - no, that's someone else. Anyway, the words came almost without the brain engaged. Yet, on stage, my mind went blank - the audience heard nothing but popping eyes. When I finally recovered, it was like I was suddenly transported to the Improv. Words came out of my mouth no writer had ever thought of before. God’s Editing. The more this happens, the more errors occur in spite of the work the production crew does, the more all begin to rely on God’s editing - rely on the fact that recovery occurs, the show goes on, the audience forgives or doesn’t even know. It’s like life. We make mistakes, we sin, we fall short, we are less than we could be, we are human, at times even less than human, and God’s always there with us, always faithful, always forgiving, always gracious and merciful. We are who we are and God loves who we are, as we are being it, with a love that is absolutely unfathomable.
On that extremely high note, having finished examining why God’s got a stake in the theater ministry at your church or Christian school, let’s take the next step and see what a theater ministry might look like.
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Chapter 4 - Now I Are One - Or - What Exactly Is a Theater Ministry
I like to think broadly - universally - galactically. For me, a Christian Theater Ministry is any bit of drama that accomplishes God’s purpose in church, Christian School, or within any Christian gathering. And drama is anything deliberate that's done to set a mood, and / or elicit an emotional or spiritual response from any size audience. Is that a big enough galaxy for you? Turn the lights off at a specific moment in a sermon for emphasis, or to show the darkness of sin, or to divert attention from the pastor’s bad magic trick, and you got yourself a theater ministry - of course, that ill-fated magic trick established the ministry already.
Now - am I being too broad in my definition? Is something as uncomplicated as someone flipping a light switch really rise to the title of Theater ministry? Yep, it do!
First, the pastor was looking for a dramatic, illustrative way of showing the congregation the blinding effects of sin, how it can play on the moral senses and make it all but impossible to find the exit from it. To say it a bit differently, once caught, it’s very difficult to break free without an infusion of spiritual strength - light.
Next, the pastor speaks with his resident creative consultant, a 15-year old young lady in the congregation who has recently won a county sponsored creative writing contest and whose gold medal is currently on display in the school’s trophy case. He explains his creative requirement. She asks to hear that part of the sermon that needs illustration. After hearing it a second time, she suggests that the instant he says, “infusion of God’s strength, God’s light,” the lights in the sanctuary go out. She also suggests all windows in the sanctuary be covered to enhance the effect - "It'll be like a cave in there. We couldn't rent some bats, could we?" They both agree the darkness will be a startling contrast to God’s light - and an illustration of ". . . how hard it is to find a way out. Then when he says: . . . without an infusion of spiritual light." And voila! on come the lights. And, again, voila! The flip of a finger has become a theater ministry. Drama has been effectively used. Q.E.D.
A few weeks later, before the sermon, the pastor has his 15-year old writer act out a few lines she’s written to show how a teen might be lured into drugs - and voila! (I promise never to use viola! again) The drama ministry has legs - the pastor’s desire and vision, the young lady’s talent, the sanctuary venue.
Of course, this is a simplistic example, but probably not an unusual one. There was a need, the decision was made to try to satisfy the need with a dramatic touch, creative talent was employed, and the production was scheduled and produced. So you see, theater ministries come in all shapes and sizes, so don't limit your thinking in any way. Yours could start out as a planned black out, then morph into a teen ministry composed mostly of short plays read as part of a youth lesson, next slide into a full blown dinner theater format, then become an adult ministry where you teach serious acting techniques using Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg’s Method Acting Techniques. Our children’s theater ministry started out doing a full length play, moved into video and movies, then added small group theater troup organizations we called “Imagination Workshops.” The trajectory of the program generally is governed by the talent and ideas the Lord brings. As God brings them, use your imagination and prayers to figure out the best way to exploit them. And, FYI, the Method Acting information and the “Imagination Workshop” are discussed further in the book.
A Theater Ministry is also Tool. As much as I love theater ministry, I never want to lose sight that it doesn’t exist just for its own sake. Theater Ministry is one of the tools a church and Christian school uses to accomplish its goal - the encouragement, love, and edification of the saints, and to grow the Kingdom.
Because it’s a tool, it needs leadership to help guide its course. In our church, that pastor was intimately involved. He made sure that whatever we did furthered the church’s goal. At the school, we worked closely with the principal, the teachers, and at times we had a parent’s advisory board. We wanted to assure ourselves that we never wondered off the straight and narrow.
All this leads me to a 5th skill that’s good to have, particularly at a church, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have it at the school. It’s a skill that seems to me to fall into the category of “discernment.” The ability to look at a book, a play, a movie, any drama and discern what the author and director are actually saying.
When dealing with drama, the author's and director's message come at you in various ways. Some are easy to discern - the hero comes right out and says: “Courage is important, Sheriff, but love is far more so.” But there are other messages that slip through. They fly on the wings of such things as what the hero starts out believing compared to what he or she ends up believing, or who the villian is and what he or she does for a living, or perhaps what are the characteristics exemplified by various supporting characters, and so forth. In the movie Twister, the farm wives were all overweight and not all that smart - they loved their kids, sure enough, but they weren’t the sharp, crisply dressed ladies who were chasing the storm, or appeared as professionals, or were reporting on the bad weather. It was clear by the stereotypes, the writers and director believe farm wives are simple, overweight folks who probably haven’t had an original idea in their whole lives. These messages are subliminal, but when you’re trying to spread the Gospel, you want to make sure the message remains as pure as you can make it. It’s good to have someone in leadership, or on an advisory committee, who’s good at this. And if you're not, do the best you can to become good at it.
What about Secular Plays: Where this talent really comes in handy is when you, as a Christian Theater Ministry, decide to produce secular plays. There are good reasons to do this. Plays are readily available, for one, and they’re a known quantity, particularly if they're famous. We all know "The Sound of Music," or "The Odd Couple." And since you're trying to teach theater stage skills, you can do that just as easily using a secular work as doing a Christian one, so why not produce a secular effort? And if you choose well, you can even make sure there’s a Christian message in there somewhere - crime is bad, love is good, and so forth. Another reason to do well-known secular works is you have a better chance of filling the seats. Theater ain’t cheap and if there's pressure for good, paying attendance there’s little choice but to tap into the fame accompanying secular plays. Some groups have done Sound of Music, or South Pacific, or even more recent ones, Les Miz, or Cats. The only other alternative is to somehow develop a large, committed Christian following, and that takes real time and patience. So if you're thinking about performing secular plays, to maintain your witness, and perform nothing that offends our Savior, you probably want to choose your plays carefully. For instance, there's very little not to recommend "The Sound of Music," but "Oklahoma" has a song in it that gives many Christian theater groups pause, "I'm Just A Girl Who Can't Say, 'No.'" I know of a prominent Christian Theater ministry that won't perform "Oklahoma" because of it. But what else should you consider when evaluating a secular play for production. I'd like to suggest a selection criteria. Here goes:
The play treats Christianity and Christians with respect
The heroes make sound, moral choices
Any sexual references are made from a moral perspective
There are sound life lessons
Good wins, Evil is vanquished
Even the bad guys behave non-offensively
Moral failings are clearly condemned
If you have any other criterium you’d like to add, let me know. If you are rereading this secton and want to return to the narrative, click here (2). Otherwise, keep on a-readin’.
Just a final thought. If you do decide to produce secular plays, you're writing off the spiritual impact for the audience. Granted your production crew is learning skills they can use for God's glory, but the audience is not hearing the Gospel in any way, shape, or form. They are merely along for the ride - entertaining as it may be.
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Chapter 5 - Okay, How Do You Use A Theater Ministry?
This chapter would probably read faster if I just included a list, and by the end of it, I just might do that. And, even if it does melt down to a list, this is an interesting chapter to write. I get to look at the church and all the goes on there, and the Christian School and all that goes on there, and use my creative spirit to figure out where a theater ministry might make an impact.
Let’s start with the church.
During the Worship Service: The most obvious, and the one I’ve mentioned before, is during the worship service. The ministry can be just about any dramatic touch, but a reasonably mature theater ministry will do a short play. We usually did them just before the sermon and they were specific to the verse being opened up. If you’d like to take a look at one of these three to five minute scripts, Click Here (3). We would use a 6 foot square patch of the sanctuary stage and usually one or two actors. But we’re minimalists by nature. A play only benefits when you use a large space, and more interesting scenery, lighting, and sound - and God’s word deserves whatever you’re able to give it.
During a Sunday School Class or Bible Study: Where the worship service is probably a “memorize your lines” and “scene blocking” gig, I’ve found Sunday School classes and Bible studies are reader theater formats. In a teen class we would hand out the play to the appropriate number of kids and they would read it, acting the parts as the spirit moves - and believe me, it moved in some funny ways - especially when they navigated a twist or turn, or when they finally got the play's point. Good times! Instructive times! The Bible Study, like the worship service, generally focuses on a given passage of scripture. But here, again, the play is read. Often, instead of a three to five minute effort, we’d use something just to start a discussion about the passage. If you’d like to read one of those plays, Click Here (4). These discussion starters are snippets and teasers, but they can be fun.