My husband, team-mates, and I gathered around our Muslim friends’ table. It was covered in giant pots and platters: Piles of lamb with rice, more meat with rice, hummus, salad, bread… Middle Eastern flavors all multilayered and wonderful. We stood around this bountiful table while the wife filled our plates. Then we all found our designated places to sit and eat, surprised that we were all sitting together, men, women, and children. That was uncommon in this cultural context.
It was the Eid-al-Adha celebration in the predominantly Muslim nation we had recently moved to, and it was an incredible honor (and highly unusual) to be invited as guests. After the meal, the husband gestured to me, “Please, please, come over here, and let’s have some coffee and dessert together. I want to speak to you about musical theater.”
It was completely unexpected. I was about to witness what significant doors to spiritual conversation my vocation of musical theater could open up, during one of the biggest religious holidays in the Muslim world...
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Let me back up a minute. In my former life, musical theater was a second career for me; I loved it! I quickly discovered that working with students in theater was actually a form of discipleship. Even though I worked in a public-school setting, I found ways to quote scripture (“a famous man once said…”) as I taught my students about teamwork, choosing joy, and loving in all circumstances. Seeing the growth in my Jr. High and High School kids from the beginning to the end of each production was amazing!
During my years in theater, many people have asked me, “Would you ever consider doing this (musical theater) somewhere else?” Since I have a heart for cross-cultural ministry, I always respond, “Yes! Call me!” but I never get that call. Then one day in 2017 a Novo missionary working in a Muslim context called: “I’ve found something!” she excitedly told me. “A school here is doing Cinderella, and the directors have never done musical theater. One’s a band teacher and one’s an art teacher. I talked to the principal and I told her about you, and they said, ‘Yeah, if she could come the last two weeks and help them that would be great.’ Will you come?” Would I take time off from my day job to go to a Muslim country? Yes!
I packed up 60 pounds of costumes, boarded a plane, and worked with these Middle Eastern students for 2½ weeks. And God made it unmistakably clear during that time that he was calling me to continue this long-term—not just through short trips, which was my plan, but through my husband and I uprooting our lives in California and moving full-time to the other side of the world.
And long story short, that’s how we came to be here in 2020, just before the Covid lockdowns hit all over the world. Talk about a crazy transition period.
Originally, I thought the only way God would use musical theater for ministry here was through actually doing musical theater. But the Covid restrictions made it impossible to direct large-scale productions as originally planned, and as a result I’ve learned that the opportunities to connect with people around theater here are much broader than I had expected.
Visual and Performing Arts are just starting to catch on in this part of the world, so lots of people are interested and want to talk to me when they find out what I do. Whether it’s an invitation to a prominent leader’s home because his wife is interested in theater as an actress, a friendship/mentorship with young women who love to sing, or connecting with kids and teens (and through them, entire families) via mini theater workshops, the opportunities for relational connections have been surprisingly constant, even during a pandemic.
However, nothing captures the opportunity for connection more than what happened that evening with our Muslim friends at their Eid celebration.
Eid-al-Adha is one of the most important festivals of the Islamic calendar, marking the height of the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca every year. Eid is kind of like our American Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled into one. It was a big deal to be invited to join because Eid is a holiday people here don’t usually celebrate with friends; it’s a family affair. So we were shocked and very excited when we were invited to come.
I was also shocked when the dad asked to speak with me about musical theater. He’d always been friendly but had never gone beyond basic greetings. At his invitation, my husband, our teammate, and I joined him in another seating area with fruit, nuts and sweets. His 16-year-old daughter, who is interested in pursuing a technical theater degree and who I am consequently closest to in the family, sat next to him. Their house helper brought us different kinds of Arabic coffee and tea in tiny little glasses as we sat to visit.
Then he began. “Can I ask you some questions?”
“Sure.”
“Have you heard of Jesus Christ Superstar?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact your daughter and I talked about that the last time we were together.”
“It’s brilliant! I absolutely love it,” he exclaimed. “The director is brilliant. What do you think about it?”
What happened next had to be the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ Superstar came out when I was in elementary school, and my older sister was in a youth group that listened to it song by song and analyzed it through the lens of scripture. At our family dinner table, my parents would ask her what she was learning. I listened to those conversations all those years ago. I wasn’t even a participant in them. But when our host asked that question it all came flooding back immediately—whoosh!—every single detail my family had discussed. It was a crazy experience.
“Well,” I said, “I haven’t seen it but I’ve heard a lot about it.”
“What have you heard?”
“There were some controversial things for the Christian community in America when it came out. And then it became a Broadway show, and I know the Broadway show was a little more conservative than the movie.”
“What’s wrong with the movie?” he asked a little defensively.
“It’s just, for my filter... My worldview is a biblical worldview from the Bible. So, there are some things I believe about Mary Magdalene and Judas and Jesus that were portrayed differently.”
I knew that our host was a deep philosopher from overhearing previous conversations. “Well, I believe we all have good and evil within,” he shared. “We have to find what’s in us and we decide what to do with our evil and good, and we have to make the good overcome the evil. And that’s what this director was doing.” He went on and on about many different details of the movie.
At one point the discussion turned to the resurrection, and I commented, “That’s what bothers me about Jesus Christ Superstar. Jesus doesn’t rise from the dead, and that’s really important to us as believers.”
“Why is that important?” he asked. The door was open and I was able to share freely.
The conversation went on for a solid hour, and each of us—myself, my husband, and our teammate—had a chance to share the good news very clearly, each from a different angle. I shared what the Bible says, my teammate shared her personal testimony, and my husband talked about witnessing the good news change one of his coworkers. And every time we were able to explain the gospel completely: We are sinners. We are separated from God. We need God. He is our hope.
I was so excited. Here we were, invited into a Muslim home for their biggest religious holiday, trying to be culturally sensitive and respectful in the way we ate and interacted, and we were openly sharing the good news! The whole family, minus the youngest son, were sitting there, silent. They were all listening intently. You could tell it was such a significant moment in time. And it was so easy.
At the end of the discussion our host said, “OK this is what we must do. We must watch the movie all together. All of us here—all of your children, all of my children. And then we will take notes, and then we will discuss.” And so we did. We came back to his house on a different day to watch Jesus Christ Superstar on a screen in his backyard and talk more about it.
And it didn’t end there. One of the next times I saw our Muslim host, he called me over again. “I have something else to talk to you about! Fiddler on the Roof. It’s my new favorite. I’ve watched it three times! I want to discuss it with you…”
The opportunities for spiritual conversations continue: with this man, with his teenage daughter, and with many other people in this community. Despite our first year of ministry here coinciding with Covid, we’ve had amazing open doors and crazy favor with the people. I’ve received invitations into peoples’ homes—including highly influential ones—even though I was told by other missionaries who’ve been here much longer that it would probably never happen. It’s wonderful to see what the Lord is doing as we’re simply obedient to walk through the doors he’s opening. I never would have imagined where this second career would take me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This story comes to us from a staff person who recently joined Novo and is working creatively to engage with people in the Middle East.