No bathrobes.

That had to be a basic principle of church drama, my pastor and I agreed. We had both seen too many bad Christian plays, preachy pageants, and silly skits. As we planned the dramatic offerings of our newly planted church, we wanted none of that.

This was about more than production quality. Indeed, bathrobes have long been cheap substitutes for Bible-era garb, and embarrassingly so, but we were trying to avoid Bible-era settings entirely. “Let’s not pull our people into the world of the Bible,” my pastor said. “Let’s show how the Bible impacts their world.” This opened up some great possibilities in scriptwriting—and plenty of challenges.

For the next fifteen years or so, I explored these possibilities and challenges in short sketches written for regular church services, and especially in each year’s Christmas play. We would set the scene in an office Christmas party, a family reunion, a deserted cabin in the woods, a science lab, or a roadside diner. On a few occasions we tried to mirror the nativity story in modern times. The diner play, for instance, featured “Joe” and a very pregnant “Maria” along with an assortment of magi- and shepherd-like visitors. But mostly we dealt with modern characters and their modern needs.

Bring It

Any Bible engagement ministry faces the same question. Do you bring people to the Bible or the Bible to people? In much of our Bible teaching we explain Bible customs and history. We help people feel at home in the biblical world. But we can also go the other direction, bringing the Bible into the world of our listeners.

This is what the “no bathrobes” style of church drama does. Costuming budget aside, this is a directional shift in Bible engagement. Through the natural creativity of theater, we imagine how the nativity events might take place in modern times. What’s more, we explore how the Christmas story changes the offices, malls, and apartments of the twenty-first century.

The ministry of Bible engagement can certainly include both education in the culture of Bible times and application of Scripture content to modern lives. But it might be helpful in this Christmas season to consider which side you generally lean on. Are you telling the old, old story or making new, new connections for it? Or both?

How Much Redemption?

In the process of telling modern stories about the Christmas event, I’ve encountered another crucial question. How much redemption should you put in one play?

In my case, I was working in a moderate time frame. Our format generally had three scenes of 10-15 minutes each (interwoven with presentations by the church’s musicians). That schedule allowed for some character development, but not a lot. A full arc from skepticism to conversion was unrealistic. We had to be satisfied with incremental progress.

Fortunately, this constraint matched a major ministry strategy of the church. We were developing what we called the Steps Approach. “We accept you where you are,” we would say, “and we encourage you to take the next step.”

Most of the people coming to our church, especially in those early years, had little or no Bible background. Many had left church as teenagers and were just finding their way back. They needed a safe place to discover, or rediscover, the goodness of God. We accepted but didn’t coddle. We welcomed them into an arena of constant movement. We all were taking steps to know God better, and we invited newcomers—skeptics as well as the faithful—to journey with us.

This principle played out in most of our dramatic presentations, and especially the Christmas plays. Our characters seldom reached an all-out conversion moment, but steps were taken. They would become curious about faith, open up to a possibility, give voice to a nagging question, find a helpful truth in Scripture, or commit to a relationship. In this we were modeling steps that many of our viewers might take.

Machinery

The ancient Greeks sometimes brought a god-character out at the climax of a play to sort things out and make everything right. (God’s arrival at the end of Job is like that, making me think the story was originally a play.) The Romans called this deus ex machina—literally “a god from a machine.” Often there was actually a primitive machine lifting the actor to a high point on stage or conveying him on and off.

That literary device is a machine in itself, creating a too-easy ending. Instant resolution. Characters don’t need to struggle anymore, because the deity provides a happy ending.

This is a temptation for the Christian dramatist. We believe in a God who works miracles, a Savior who redeems us, a glorious future with our Lord. Why shouldn’t we close every play with that beatific vision? Cue the angel chorus.

Scripture includes all of those elements, but it also has the groaning of creation, lamenting over a fallen city, wrestling with angels, and working out our salvation with fear and trembling. This is the stuff of drama, and it’s where our people live.

Perhaps the most powerful redemption we can put on stage is in a character’s creeping realization that, in the incremental steps of our life-journey, God is with us.