The theater piece is over. I take my wife Carols hand, and we bow. Almost in unison, the audience members stand to their feet, applauding. Some are crying. The feeling in the room is electric, grateful. We take another bow. And I am thinking to myself, What is this? What has just happened here? The scene I describe was our first performance as Acts of Renewal, a husband and wife theater team. And we were not prepared for the overwhelmingly positive response. We had just performed The Prodigal, a modern adaptation of Christ’s parable. Carol had written it just two weeks prior to the performance. People came up to us afterward, often in tears, trying to express what this 15-minute theater piece had meant to them: It suddenly hit me. I have to forgive my Dad.
I want to let God love me like that. How can God forgive me?
And then there was the speaker who addressed the audience after we performed. He gave a very, warm moving talk. But before the event, he had been distant, even rude to us. His wife later told us that he had been going through a very hard time spiritually. He was emotionally disconnected and angry with God. She had been praying that he would reconnect his heart with God before his talk. During the performance of the theater piece, he did. Six years later, Carol and I are preparing for a phone interview with a Seattle talk show. The woman who conducts the talk show suddenly says to us, You know, I saw you perform The Prodigal at the National Association of Christians in Recovery Conference six years ago, and I need you to know that God used that piece to get me back into counseling. During the performance, I started becoming aware of repressed sexual abuse memories. I was unable to finish the conference. I checked into The Meadows in Wickenburg a few weeks later. And as a result, the core of my healing was accomplished during that period.
Carol and I were floored. On our end, six years ago, it was our first performance at the first conference wed ever done together. We were responding to Gods call for us to use professional theater to communicate light in the darkness. We knew we were doing a theater piece that was very real, risky, and close to the bone. What we did not know was how it would be received. Would the piece even work? How would a Christian audience receive such a rock bottom depiction of brokenness? We simply put our absolute best out there and prayed that God would use it. Judging by the response, God certainly answered our prayers far beyond what we could have imagined. Six years later, I ask myself again, What happened? Why does theater, and the arts in general, work so effectively as a tool for ministry? The answer, I believe, is that the arts speak not just to the head but to the heart. God used the performance that day to circumvent peoples defenses and reach into their hearts.
Just imagine you are an audience member. You could be anybody: poor, well- educated, scarred, naive, numb, hip. But no matter what your story is, the houselights go down and you become the audience. Actors walk out on stage and enact a story that may resonate with your own. If the story is well written and the acting is good, you lower your defenses and begin to identify with the characters. You see characters hoping for things you used to hope for. Experiencing pain you have experienced. And suddenly, you are hoping, you are hurting and longing and laughing. And in the sacred space of being open, God can tiptoe up and say, Open your heart to me. The play ends. The houselights come back up, and all at once you are aware of areas of your heart you have walled off from yourself from the world from God. And maybe, just maybe, you realize you want God present in those walled off places.
ThatS where follow-up comes in. Christian counselors, pastors, and priests are needed to come alongside the hurting persons who have connected with their pain and work with them long term. I do not think the arts as a ministry tool should stand on its own. Nothing else in the body of Christ does. Carol and I never purport to be counselors. Were writers and actors, we tell people. We are continually urging people to seek wise Christian counsel when they come to talk to us after performances. A young man at a Christian college came up to us after our programming on fractured, broken families. He said quietly, You told my story. My pare knots divorced the week after I left for college. Everyone always asks how I manage to stay so happy all the time, like nothing ever bothers me. How? Its because I do not feel. That’s how. But today with that play you did, I could not stop crying. It just kept coming. I guess I am realizing there is a lot of stuff down there that I have not been allowing myself to get near. We often hear stories like this, and our response is to encourage people to take this beyond the event of their experiencing the play and invest in some professional help to address the real issues of their pain.
Carol and I typically perform at national conferences, Christian colleges, and churches. We both have a recovery background (see sidebars). I walked out of the gay lifestyle. Carol recovered from an eating disorder. The plays we write tend to be very issues oriented. We have a passion for addressing areas of emotional healing that point toward healing and hope. As we perform across the country, we bring original material that speaks honestly and frankly about these difficult subjects. Because theater uses stories to talk about its subject matter, the audience does not get defensive. After all, its just a story. Its like listening to a parable. There once was a man who…. You may or may not identify with that mans story, but if you do, you can quietly listen to the story, and no one else knows its actually your story that’s being told. We see over and over again that quality theater works in communicating to the heart. We love what we do. Its hard but very satisfying work. As God continues to open the doors, we will continue creating material to illustrate speakers talks as well as perform for an expanding variety of venues and audiences. But who knows what the future holds? We travel all around the country ministering across cultural and denominational lines. We have two boys we need to raise a two year old and a newborn. We address the hard questions of continuing to tour full time versus focusing on filming and training others to do what we do. Only God knows our future, and we are trusting him to make it clear to us as we continue to do the next thing he puts before us. But for the past six years we have had an incredibly rich time watching God use theater to open peoples hearts to his healing hand. Find a therapist to get solution of your problems.
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