The Tipp City United Methodist Church performed their Children’s Christmas Play, “An Extraordinary Christmas” on Sunday, December 16, 2012. This original work was written by our very own Children’s Ministry Director, Jack Spoerner. The play is about a troublemaker boy who gets sent to his room after knocking down the tree on Christmas eve and has a dream where he enters the nativity scene. This musical includes contemporary songs plus some traditional favorites like Silent Night and it was a big hit at its only performance for the entire church last weekend.
As the director of the play, I had the opportunity to spend time with the Children’s Ministry Director, Jack, the last few months and wanted to share with you what I discovered:
- Jack is creative and talented. Not only did he write this entire play (the idea hit him while listening to “This is Home” by Switchfoot as he was driving in his car!) he wrote two original songs, he plays the guitar, runs the sound/lights control board, writes and records Mr. Pig skits weekly for Sunday School, plus he edits these videos and publishes them on the church website! Not a bad list of talents for a children’s ministry director.
- He is hard-working. Jack lives near the Dayton Mall, so after a full day of work at the church, it just didn’t make sense to go home for dinner and return for play practice – so he stayed in Tipp and maintained his same high energy throughout play practices that lasted til 8pm every week starting in September and ending just last week!
- He loves kids. A self-described goofball, Jack embraces the craziness that only children create. He’s right at home with noise and dancing and silliness – and he makes it easy for every child to fit in. I’ve watched the kids chase him down to share ideas and suggestions, “Mister Jack, what if we did ____ in the play?” – and he almost always says yes!
- He loves God. Try as we may, we couldn’t get Jack to step into the limelight with this play. Everything he does is about glorifying God. Every week we prayed to start play practice and Jack praised God in that prayer every week – using kid-friendly language that makes loving Jesus fun! Especially these last few practices (yes, there were 3 the last week!), Jack made sure to connect the dots for the kids to understand that the whole point of the play was to show Jesus’ love to our audience and we all felt privileged to take part.
- He is non-stop positive and a problem-solver. I think I heard him say ‘no’ twice in the three months we worked together. “Yes, you can have an accent in the play!” “Yes, can stand on the bed.” “Yes, you can add that line!” In fact, Jack rewrote the play several times. At first, we planned to have a choir of angels – just for singing, not for speaking parts. That was the first change – he rewrote it with lines for every single child. Next, when 2 more girls joined the play, he added lines for them so no one would be left out. Later on, after realizing how quiet our small cast sounded while singing, he had the brilliant idea to record all the songs in advance to make sure our audience heard every word. Amazing.
Tipp City United Methodist Church is blessed to have Jack as the Children’s Ministry Director. If you’re looking for a contemporary and God-centered children’s program for your family, I encourage you to visit and meet Jack. If you’re lucky, he will invite you to join in the fun of the children’s ministry – and you’ll have the opportunity to meet this wonderful, amazing person who can have a positive, Godly influence on your life – just like he has in mine.
Jack Spoerner rocking out with Marshall at play practice!
