Honoring Christ In Improv, Acting, And Presenting ScriptureSample

Over at MakeJesusCulture.com we had Eric Epperson talking about the Improvisational God. He took a good chunk of time at the start to specify what we do not mean: we don’t mean that God changes, for there is no shadow in him due to change and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So when we say that God’s improvisational, we don’t mean that he’s making it up as he goes along.

What we do mean is that there’s a series of virtues within the practice and community of improv comedy that derive directly from the character and person of God in Christ Jesus.

For instance, there’s this spirit of “Yes, And” in the improv community, which simply means that everyone in the troupe agrees to the same base reality – what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “poetic faith” and what Tolkien called “secondary belief.” And of course that faith, that belief in the cocreated world of improv points men back to prime faith in God almighty and his revelation of Jesus the son. We agree upon the shared reality of God and participate either willingly or unwillingly in his world, faithfully or unfaithfully: and whether or not we join in cocreating ourselves and others, the collaborative effort that is the life of faith, really determines whether or not we end up in health and virtue with the life God desires for us.

Another principle of improv is support: that we have one another’s back. That everyone on stage knows the deep trust of the team will catch them if they fall or stand behind them if they say something stupid. They have each other’s back. And this principle stands rooted in the deferential perichoresis (face-to-face dance) of the Holy Trinity.  

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