DR. JACK R. VAN ENS, AUTHOR

CREATIVE GROWTH INC.

9745 W. 77 TH DRIVE

ARVADA, CO 80005

TEL. 303-420-7416

E-mail: vanensfam@juno.com

Web Site: www.thelivinghistory.com

DRAMATICALLY USE YOUR IMAGINATION

A pastor saw my presentation as Thomas Jefferson at his Rotary Club. He invited me in 18 th century costume to visit the church he serves. Evidently, parishioners considered it a big deal to host the 3 rd president of the United States. On a Sunday morning they packed the hall with an overflow crowd where Jefferson appeared. Afterwards, this pastor reflected on dramatic dynamics that unfolded between parishioners and Jefferson. "Sometimes I wonder if God's Spirit really touches His people, or do preachers merely parrot such holy chatter?" he mused. "Then I experience drama like this, with people swept up in it. They forget you're an actor impersonating Jefferson. Judging by glowing faces, my people felt God's presence."

Starting in ministry, I preached from full manuscripts behind a pulpit. It felt as if I were another talking head peering over a pulpit, like a TV anchor who seems to exist only from the shoulders up. Poet and novelist Maya Angelou, on her 70 th birthday interview with Oprah Winfrey, pointed me towards using drama, rather than a lecture, when engaged in public speaking. Maya told Oprah, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Drama strikes deep into the human heart where we feel what's true.

Jesus didn't spout religious precepts. He spoke to the heart, painting glowing verbal pictures that reflected God's presence among them. "With many parables Jesus spoke the word to his disciples," ( Mark 4:33). At heart Jesus sounded poetical. Dramatic intensity spiced his speech. He opened minds and moved hearts by sketching verbal pictures. He hung portraits in his audience's mental galleries. Jesus burned into memory what he had mastered in synagogue school. He didn't merely rely on words written on parchment. The Bible bills Jesus's verbal dramas as "parables."

Early in ministry, David H.C. Read, then preacher at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, served as a preaching mentor. Summing up the wisdom of what he had learned in the pulpit, Read gave the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale in 1973. This Scotsman's voice painted portraits of life with God. His Scottish reserve didn't allow him to don costumes and move beyond the pulpit to electrify listeners.

Perhaps David Read harbored a longing, a quest deep within his soul to be an actor, using God's word as his script. He shared in the Beecher Lectures why Jesus made an impact when so many well-meaning preachers put worshippers to sleep. "The preaching of Jesus seldom resembled the structured discourses with which we try to convey the gospel," Read admitted. "They consisted more of pictures flashed on the inward eye, or poetic lines to linger in the mind and spark the imagination."

Read concluded where I begin-using imaginative power drama exudes. "The evangelist in the pulpit today must be aware of the power of the picture, the image, the symbol, the gesture, the unexpected interruption, to bring to life the gospel and free the Spirit for his liberating work."

Newspapers heralded Mark Twain for his spellbinding oratorical skills. Twain crafted a dramatic persona with his gleaming white suit, prominent cigar, and frizzy hair shooting out of control. Twain created vignettes. He spun stories. He embellished tales. He imagined. He made dramatic impact.

Social snobbery irked Twain. The Reverend William T. Sabine, a snooty New York Episcopal rector, declined to officiate at the funeral of George Holland, an elderly comic actor. The Rector pontificated that he "did not care to get mixed up" in this funeral. Acting attracted tramps on stage. Rector Holland judged the theater crowd to be thespians who staged few "moral lessons." He condescendingly told another clergy about a "little church around the corner where they do that sort of thing," offering last rites to Holland.

Twain exploded when he heard such puffery. For starters, he branded Rector Sabine "a crawling, slimy, sanctimonious, self-righteous reptile." He fumed in print, "It is almost fair and just to aver ... that nine-tenths of all kindness and forbearance and Christian charity and generosity in the hearts of American people today, got there by being filtered down from their fountain-head, the gospel of Christ, through dramas and tragedies and comedies on stage, and through the despised novel and the Christmas story ...and NOT from the drowsy pulpit ." Twain regarded Jesus as a dramatist who didn't measure up to lofty pious expectations. Unctuous Rector Sabine wouldn't relish having Christ as a church member.

What creates contagious enthusiasm linking an audience to drama?

Drama excites the imagination. It stirs the heart. It excites the will to bold action. Playwright Noel Coward caught the magnetic elixir drama stirs within us. "The theater must be treated with respect," he wrote in 1961. "It is a house of strange enchantments, a temple of dreams. What it is not and never will be is a scruffy, illiterate drill-hall serving as a temporary soap-box for propaganda."

Coaching rookie preachers, I urge them not to convince me with their logic in sermons. Make me feel gospel truths to which they testify. Our minds are more than mental capacities. Our hearts yearn to be lifted up. We live by hope.