"His Story"
Last week, my 3rd and 4th Graders starting working on their Spring musical. In past years, the Elementary students at ICS didn't have a spring/closing performance of any kind and I found that a little anti-climatic last year, so I requested that we put one on the calendar (which, in a sense, was adding more work to my own plate, but it's making my spring a lot more exciting! I'll probably be ready to shot myself in a few weeks though...) So, on May 15th, we'll perform this musical.I told my students that the special thing about this musical was that it has never been performed before the way we're doing it - because another teacher and I are the ones that are putting it together! This has been a long process that's been on my heart and mind since last summer - and it's still not completed! But I'm really excited to see what God is going to do through and with it!
It all came about last summer when I was searching for the "perfect" musical for my ICS students. This is such a unique school filled with some MKs who know the Bible very well, but with most of the students being raised in homes that are not only not Christian but are actually practicing other religions. And yet the freedom is there at our school to "preach" the gospel, and I want to take every opportunity to do it! I've been praying for a long time about what musical to do because I believe that the music in it and the story, and experience of practicing and performing it, will stick in the children's minds for many years to come.
Well, I didn't find the "perfect" musical. And I think the reason is because I had something very specific in mind already that I felt they needed to hear: the story of the entire Bible. God has been teaching me a lot this past year about the unity of the Scriptures and has been showing me how they all fit together in the framework of "Creation-Fall-Redemption-Fulfillment". Seeing them from the lenses of that whole framework has made everything (the gospel and all of life) make so much more sense to me. And it's changing the way I teach and present the gospel. I'm seeing that these students don't only need to hear about the cross and resurrection, or even just the about birth and life of Jesus Christ. They need to know Who God is, why He created us, what happened at the Fall and what the cross and resurrection of Christ did to repair that. And especially for my students, who don't have any sort of foundational knowledge of the God of the Bible within their culture - they need to hear this story from beginning to end.
I didn't find anything like that. So I prayed for a while about writing my own musical, but felt tremendously inadequate in the area of script-writing. Long story short, God brought another teacher into my life who has had more experience with writing scripts and he found a script online and has edited it to fit our school. I am now editing it further and have chosen (and in some cases, arranged) songs to fit within that script (actually, I chose the songs first, and he fit the script around them). The result: "His Story"! I'm excited about what it's becoming and the chance it has given me to "create"! Again, I didn't really write it, but maybe this is one of the first baby steps in the direction of being a composer of children's music and musicals one day (something I think I'd enjoy being/doing).
Please pray for this project, though. Pray for me as I continue to edit this week. There are several doctrinal things in the original script that I didn't quite agree with and so I'm trying to figure out how to make it more true to what I believe Scripture says. Please pray for clear guidance from the Spirit and Word of God in that. This whole thing is revealing my need to know the Word so much better and because I will soon (already am!) teaching it to my students, the feeling of urgency to know exactly what the Bible says now is very strong. In fact, more than once in the last month, I haven't been able to fall asleep at night because of the weight of the desire or "need" to know!
Please also pray for my students - for their understanding of the Bible as a whole to grow and for them to come to know the God who offers this redemption and salvation! Pray that the songs and words in this script will get stuck in their heads and will instruct, convict and comfort their hearts, leading them to Christ (even if it's not until many years from now that they put their trust in Him)!
posted by Catherine Rogers @ 1:28 AM
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