Christmas Plays Past

This is the first year in many that I decided not to do a Christmas play. Over the last couple weeks, via Facebook, I have seen all my Kidmin friends posting about their Christmas plays. I did miss it (a little). It did give me a few moments to actually reminisce about some of our previous productions. We have had some very cool moments and some moments that well... they are kids. I have been blessed to do some very cool productions. We did one on the Riverwalk in SanAntonio. We did one on the front lawn of our church. I have had full on set changes and massive costumes made for different plays. I will always remember our first Christmas play as a kid's pastor.

The first year I was a kids pastor at Christmas was in Arlington. We had a small group of kids because it was a small church. We spent the entire fall working with our 16 kids to do this program. I told those kids, "This may be someone in this audience one chance to hear about Jesus." You got to love the "putting extra pressure" on kids (young kid's pastor mistake). It worked for the most part. The kids were taking a play about a rebellious angel serious because they wanted to be a witness. It was smooth right up until... we added the 2 preschoolers playing Mary and Joseph. They were supposed to walk out and stand at the manger and really just look longingly at the baby doll in the manger. The little girl playing Mary decided she wanted to hold they baby, of course that made our little Joseph want to hold the baby, too. These two wonderful little ones, they began playing tug of war as we are singing this grand finale. Of course, the idea was no longer on this great ministry moment like I had been building up with the kids. It is now a crowd of people laughing at our Mary and Joseph now fighting over the sweet baby Jesus. I am just trying to get the rest of the kids through the song. It was great. I went up to the microphone to tell people the great news of our savior coming. I found a crowd that was still laughing their butts off because these two precious little ones fighting during this great finale. I then returned to the backstage with steaming older kids that were extremely mad at our poor parents of Jesus, "You messed up people getting saved!" It was quickly something I never thought I would have heard an older kid yelling that but I did. 

I messed up and told the kids the message was the key. The key was actually them. The key was them standing up in front of a group of people and being the light themselves. They were the ones that could show family members what they were becoming, young men and women of God. Their lives were so much bigger than any song they sang and any words I shared. They were the gospel that night and any time they do anything. Who those kids are what matters.