Karen Dickson is a long time friend and contributor to DramaShare, a person with great skills in all areas of creative arts. Some time ago I asked her to consider doing some work for DramaShare members. The following was her response. What I found extremely interesting was her comments about spending time away from ministry for a time.
NOTE: Karen’s comments about a “Super idea” are outlined in an excellent script idea, “Men’s Retreat Promo” which can be found in the DramaShare scripts archive.
Funny how it was 13 years ago (I remember because it was when my last daughter was about 6 months old; she’ll be 14 in June), I first contacted you about sharing my Christmas script, and you told me DramaShare had been in prayer about a directing person. Perhaps my absence in the last several years has ended with a note to you, when you had yet another need in mind.
While I’m not exactly sure what I can offer, you may consider me as a ‘key person’, if you like. For me, I find that my drama work is cyclical. There are times when I feel I could scream if someone asked me one more time “When are we doing another drama?”, when I’ve been ‘retired’ from leading the ministry for 5 years. Just yesterday when a young man at church asked about the drama ministry, I had to admit to him that it had pretty much gone down the drain. My former co-leader literally had a devastating stroke (at the age of 45) which affected her speech — hard to do drama without that function. The two people who tried to keep the ministry going over the next years finally just gave up.
About a month ago, I let my pastor and arts and worship ministry leader know that I would be willing to be the go-to person for drama when needed. Last night, a sister from our church called asking for help creating a promo piece for the upcoming men’s retreat. I just told her I’d pray about it overnight –she agreed she’d be praying — and God gave me a SUPER idea. Then, I see “Litany for Good Friday” today….is God trying to tell me something? Is my cycle coming back around maybe? I know that my feelings about drama ministry are very different from the way I felt when I started leading the group 12 years ago. And that’s intriguing…God hasn’t ever taken the ‘drama’ out of me, but He allowed me a lot of growing experiences I needed away from the leadership position. Has our church survived without much drama the last few years? Of course. Yes, folks miss it, but better none at all than a poorly done attempt by people who aren’t really passionate about it.
So, all that being said, I guess I don’t think we should see people leaving the drama ministry as necessarily a bad thing. God is in our lives for eternity, and thanks to Him, several of us are given a large chunk of time here on earth. It is to our advantage to listen to His will for us, so that we can bring Him exactly what He wants for His people.
