By Jeremy Barnes

This is part two of a series on how to use drama at your church. Last month, I started talking about how to use drama as a part of the worship service. By far, the most common way that drama gets used is as “sermon support” – using drama to illustrate, introduce, conclude, or augment the sermon (see last month’s article for more on “sermon support” dramas).

This month, we’re going to talk about what I like to call “worship support.” Far less common than sermon support, worship support can be an incredibly rewarding and particularly effective use of your ministry. However, as often happens, with greater rewards comes greater risk.

As the name implies, sermon support drama exists primarily as a part of the sermon. While it usually has all of the elements of a stand-alone piece, it really isn’t intended to exist on its own. The purpose of sermon support drama is to augment the sermon itself, and add to the message.

In contrast, worship support drama doesn’t directly aim to augment the sermon. Worship support looks to tie into and augment the entire worship service. While sermon support needs tight integration with the sermon and coordination with the speaker to work, worship support needs to integrate with the entire worship service and requires coordination with the worship leader.

Worship support dramas are used to help create a mood or attitude in the audience. They might touch on the general topic, but it’s not required, or even necessary. They are usually placed somewhere within the normal “worship” portion of the service, but they could be anywhere as long as their placement is deliberate and adds to the overall experience. They run the gamut in style from dramatic to comedic; melodramatic to intellectual; dripping with emotion to sterile and thought provoking. The style you use really depends on several key factors:

1. The style your congregation is used to/comfortable seeing. Throwing something completely foreign at an audience probably won’t create anything but confusion (see 1 Corinthians 14:33 KJV). That’s not to say you can’t/shouldn’t try anything new, but you need to approach “new” items or styles with caution. Paul has a bit to say about orderly worship in 1 Corinthians 14:26-40. The problem is that people sometimes have trouble separating the message from the medium. When the medium is completely foreign, oftentimes the message is lost on the audience.

2. The overall mood/message that your worship leader and speaker are trying to create. A serious and “downer” monologue about pain won’t really fit in if the rest of the service’s songs, sermon, etc. are light in nature.

3. The overall style your ministry is comfortable with performing. While it’s always important to try new things and grow creatively, be careful putting those new things on stage until you are very comfortable with the piece/style.

There are as many different ways to use worship support drama as there are churches, worship leaders, and drama ministries. Here are just a few ways that you can try incorporating it into your services:

1. A mood-setting sketch at the beginning of the service that acts as a “call to worship” encouraging people to consider/ponder the rest of the service. The sketch could be a dialogue with two people where one person is helping to lead the other person to worship, or it could be a monologue where the speaker is considering their own approach to worship.

2. A sketch in place of a song or special music that touches on the topic in a general way, encouraging thought about the idea, but not necessarily pointing toward any answers.

3. If your worship services normally have several congregational prayers, consider replacing one with a monologue about prayer, or about prayerful attitudes, or how to remain in prayer throughout the week.

4. If your worship service normally has a designated reading of Scripture, try having an actor do an interpretive read of the Scripture, either in the character of the author or as a person interpreting the Scripture today.

5. Instead of an offertory song, have a sketch about giving or stewardship.

The options are only limited by our own creativity, and our willingness to listen to the creator of the universe.

At the top of the article, I mentioned that worship support dramas have a greater element of risk than sermon support. When performing a sermon support piece, you’re never “alone.” The sketch is always connected to the sermon, which means if the sketch doesn’t quite fire the way it should, the sermon itself can absorb some of that and help to even out the experience for the audience. Since worship support pieces are not always connected directly to another piece, if they don’t work, they tend to just hang there onstage.

However, as I also mentioned above, there is a greater reward for a worship support piece that works well. Because it’s not connected to the sermon it can stand on its own, and it can do things that it would not normally be able to do if it had to be 100 percent in support of the speaker.

Next month, we’ll be talking about times where drama is not in a support role, but can take the center stage.

Jeremy Bryan Barnes is the lay-leader of the Saddleback Church Ensemble Theater and is actively involved as a writer, director, and performer.