At the beginning of the year, I went to both the org fair and the ministry fair to look for clubs on campus to join. Of all of the ministry organizations I saw, most of them were structured around who they helped, be it youth or prisoners or people oversees. A few were structured based on what they did as a club, such as choir or sports. But one stood out in what they did and how when it was explained to me, so I went to the first meeting of the year for this club. That was a day I am going to remember for the rest of my life.

Everyone slowly trickled in to the Rathburn great room, and while this was happening, the best possible description that I can give about the impression I got was a calmer, Christian version of the guild hall from a tv show called Fairy Tail. It was somehow more lively that my Boy Scout Troop was, and felt like an even closer group of people. It was honestly a scene out of a movie or something of the like.

At around the time everyone arrived, we started the meeting with Bible Study. The mood instantly went from happy and rowdy to reverent, and we had a much more meaningful conversation about a bible verse than I ever had anything close to at the Youth Group I used to be a part of.

Once Bible Study had ended the demonstrators/trainers went up while everyone else sat down to watch. What DRIVE, or Dramas Reaching Inner-cities through Visual Evangelism does, is preform non-verbal dramas to different songs in order to show the ideas of the gospel to everyone who watches. We go to Pittsburgh, Youngstown, New Castle and other areas to preform these dramas and have conversations with whoever is watching.

That first meeting was powerful to me. They preformed a series of the dramas, including the more emotionally intense ones like Please and Everything. I was almost overwhelmed and crying.

The drama Everything, in particular, is one that stands out to me as an incredible way of spreading the gospel. It, like many of the dramas, doesn’t focus on living with sparkles and rainbows if you live with Jesus in your life. It focuses on what happens if you don’t. And it doesn’t censor, doesn’t paint a generic bad scene to make you want to be happy like what so much of what my Church in Maryland did. Many of the dramas show experiences the audience is supposed to relate to from their own lives, and show the Christian life before and hopefully after that as the solution. And they do so without words, by showing things everyone can understand. Its intense. I’m learning the Jesus part in that drama right now, and just about the easiest part of the role is to physically hold back five demons all at once from attacking the main character. The other DRIVEr’s playing the demons aren’t actually trying to get over you, but I have to brace myself with my knees and constantly move to keep balance. Knowing what the scene looks like for the audience, as Jesus holding his arms out like on the cross but doing so to hold back demons from attacking the main girl, who is just sobbing in front of him on the ground and that Jesus is focusing his attention on and smiling at the whole time, its powerful. If that drama doesn’t at least plant the seed of the gospel in a non-believer, it would take an act of God to do so. If groups like this existed around the country and everyone talked about something like this, I honestly believe people might be converting to Christianity faster than they are leaving it.

And its a great group to be a part of. Its honestly a family, which you have to be and end up being because of preforming the dramas. If anyone is remotely interested in ministry clubs, of theater, or is just a person willing to leave their comfort zone then ask me or someone you know is in it when the meetings are. Because a lot of people in DRIVE are graduating this year, we would really like some freshman to join, and we need more new guys because all Jesus roles and some other roles need to be males and the girls currently outnumber the guys by more than 2:1. If you are a freshman guy, then

Sadly, we and other groups would normally do a chapel but the powers that be, whoever they are, want outside speakers and so all of the groups on campus that would do a chapel, as far as I’m aware, aren’t. As such, we’re organizing a performance sometime in mid-late march that we hope many professors will offer their students extra credit to attend. There should be advertisement for that once a date is set.