Last night the summer drama ministry team from Bob Jones University came to my church for the Wednesday evening service. They presented a play called Journey to Gehenna. The performance was very good, as one would expect from a BJU team. However, the skill with which the drama was written and its clear, pointed message were really what stood out to me. This leads me to consider how drama can be an effective tool for communicating the gospel.

• Drama tells a story. People like stories. It’s a fact that if you tell a story well people will listen. Stories (parables) were one of the primary ways that Jesus taught, and his teaching was astonishing.
• Drama makes one imagine. The idea of Gehenna or of hell is one that people do not imagine and probably cannot imagine without help. Seeing a drama where the sights, sounds, and stench of a dump in the valley of Gehinnom are made vivid for you helps.
• Drama allows individual application of its message. A play can have well-drawn characters who come to life for the audience. Since there are many kinds of people in even a small audience, each person can identify with the character whose needs are their own. That individual identification leads to a message–an application–that is individual and personal. For example, last night a person who was unsaved saw in two of the characters a person who needed to accept Christ. Someone who considered himself powerful or influential could identify his perception of himself with one of the characters; a person who considered himself to be just a regular person could identify with another. At the same time, a person who was saved saw in a character the urgency of the need to share the gospel with others. The message was not different–it was the same message of the gospel for everyone there–but the application was unique to each person’s situation.
• Drama is subtle. Any message that is to be proclaimed ought to be proclaimed forthrightly and openly, but forthrightness does not require tactlessness or unnecessary alienation. The gospel itself should cause the offense, not its presentation nor its presenter. Proclamation is often explicit, of the “you need to . . .” variety. This is not wrong, and is often the only right way to proclaim, but sometimes a subtler approach is better. No one likes to be told he is wrong and only rarely will admit that he is wrong if confronted explicitly, even if he is himself convinced that he is wrong. But sometimes a person will admit that he is wrong and seek to change if he comes to the conclusion that he is wrong on his own. Drama can help lead someone to that conclusion on his own. Because drama presents fictitious characters as the ones who are wrong, a person does not instantly become defensive or stubborn and so can hear the whole message. Then, from those characters a person can understand the application of the truth to himself. He may still reject the truth, but at least he has heard the whole truth and will be less likely to reject it.
• Drama makes crises evident. One of the most powerful moments in last night’s play was a scene in which one character gave a simple, wooden cup (a symbol of life) to another, at the same time that another character was giving a silver cup (a symbol of death) to a fourth. The difference was plain and vivid and unmistakable. Because any good drama must have a literary crisis (turning point in the action of the play), any good drama can also have an applicational crisis (turning point for the audience of the play). To often preaching can be veil the choice in ambiguity or caveat or even leave out the choice at all. Drama, by the very requirements of its genre, demands that there be a choice; good drama presents that choice clearly.
• Drama shows results. Just as there are different characters in each play, so their are different results for those characters. Those who choose correctly receive blessings; those who choose wrongly receive punishment or death. You can tell people the same truth, but it is easies for them to understand and easier for them to follow when they can see those results.
• Drama requires thought. Drama requires thought to be understood, which may be one of its difficulties but which is also one of its strengths. If people are not willing to think enough to understand a drama they will never hear its message, but if they are not willing to think about drama they’re probably not willing to think at all. But if they willing to think a drama through, they have appropriated its truth for themselves.
• Drama is novel. Novelty should never be one’s goal; novelty should not be pursued for the sake of novelty. Nor should novelty ever be a primary motivating factor in choosing a medium of communication. But neither should novelty be shunned, and the novelty of a drama may catch some people’s attention who would otherwise never listen. Even those who would listen anyway can be stimulated by the unusual genre to freshness of thought and appreciation.

Of course, these are not characteristics that are unique to drama. They are characteristics of all good communication. Perhaps considering how drama can be an effective means of communication can help make more effective all of one’s communication of God’s truth, but especially one’s communication of the gospel.