Jo Bower's Blog

 I have the good job of working with the kids of our neighborhood.  Some of  them whose parents don’t go to church. Some  of them wonder if their family will be together next week. One of these children came to know God this year. and I long to spend the summer with her, showing her how to grow in her new faith.  Instead, I hope and  pray she will be here for vacation Bible school and be with us next year so we can continue her journey together.  So, I write the curriculum for next year with her in mind, hoping others will join us on this journey.

As a writer, I find this is an excellent use for this God-given skill.  The dramas I write can be specifically tailored to the scripture being studied. We had studied the sower who scattered the seeds and the type of ground they fell on from Matthew 13 the last few weeks before the end of the Wednesday evening kids time this year. For the final week we always have a church service in the sanctuary. I’d written a drama for two people: a leader and a farmer. The pastor read the introduction of the scripture and asked what a sower was. The Louisana accent makes things interesting, and the best answer was a sower was a big old cut on the arm (in Louisiana sore is two syllables that’s sor-ah).  I love it.

 Eventually these dramas get put into anthologies. The Why Chronicles,which is a series of these short, funny, scripture based, two person dramas is the first of such anthologies. The teacher and William Harrison Yellington (nicknamed Why) both ask and answer questions in these humorous, contemporary dramas. They were written as lessons for my Wednesday evening upper elementary class, but can be used for teens and church services to illustrate the scripture if the sermon is based on the same scripture.  You can find it on Amazon.com.

I hope other teachers can use this tool. Kids love drama. I never even considered i’d be writing this stuff, but God put us in small churches with budgets to match, and said, “Use your gifts.”  When God is that specific, one either rebels or walks through the door. I’m glad I started writing drama. The kids love it.