Leaving our Little House On The Prairie

Five years ago when we were looking at moving to Three Hills, we started reading the “Little House” books with the girls, imagining what it would be like living in a little Prairie town with long cold winters. Well, it was even better than we imagined. We had long cold winters, good neighbors, and even got a dog named “Jack” just like the Ingalls dog. And to top it all off my good friend Royal Sproule, who also directs my Mark show ended up playing the shop owner in the made-for- TV mini-series of Little House on the Prairie! We sat eagerly in front of the TV each week waiting to see our friend Royal help our “friends” the Ingalls whenever they came to the town of Independence for supplies. Our journey to New Jersey began last summer when we toured the east performing for Compassion Canada. We scheduled a performance at Zarephath Christian Church and after our short time there we started a conversation with Pastor Rob about coming to New Jersey to work with the Church. I had been looking for an opportunity to work more directly with the local Church, and for a way to expand what I am doing with Mark, and this seemed to be a good fit for our family. So we made our decision this Spring and are now in the last stages of getting things packed up and ready. Soon we will be heading out with our Uhaul moving truck to New Jersey, to work with Pastor Rob Cruver and his team, as creative arts director. This is familiar territory for Heather, she grew up in this little community and Church, in fact we were married there 14 years ago!

Book Coming Soon!

Last week my good friend, fellow parishioner and colleague at the college, Myron Penner and I signed a contract with Authentic Media & Paternoster Press to write a book! For Myron this is no surprise, in fact he just published a book with Brazos entitled “Christianity and the Postmodern Turn”. But for me this is something new altogether. Fears aside, we have started work on a unique writing project that will see the authoring of a book taking place on a blog site, then eventually moving into a print form. On August 1st you can be a part of this project yourself by going and contributing to the conversation at www.anewkindofconversation.com & www.pomofaith.com. We have teamed up with five of the brightest minds discussing Christianity and Postmodernism. Our contributors include Brian McLaren, author of “A New Kind of Conversation”, Bruce Ellis Benson, Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton, Ellen Haroutunian, writer & speaker, Mabiala Kenzo, Professor of Theology at Canadian Theological Seminary, and Myron B. Penner, Professor of Philosophy at Prairie College.
These five will be our main contributors to the blog, and any online reader can add their thoughts to the conversation and possibly be published in the book!
What am I doing in this auspicious crowd, you ask? Well, I’ve asked that myself and still haven't figured it out. The best I’ve come up with, or what I tell everyone, is that I am kind of the “idea guy”, and they believed me. The plan to do this book sprang from some of my ideas, shared in conversation with my good friend Myron. I’ll be co-author/editor with Myron, a project manager of sorts, and occasional blogger on the site too.
Be sure to check out the site. This is a brand new kind of book publishing project. We’ve received a lot of attention from our publisher, and have some big hopes for the quality of the conversation that lies ahead. Would love for you to be a part of it.

Small House Photos

Mark His Word
The Canadian Badland Passion Play began today, this is the start of their 11th season. I performed in their little black box theatre, which has been staging shows for two years now. Interesting that I performed the role of Jesus for their first two seasons 11 years ago, and now with the advent of this new stage, I have performed the gospel of Mark for the first two years of their black box season. These are some photo's of the house. My technical assistant, was a former student of mine, Eric Forbes. Eric has been working as the technical director of the passion play for the last two years.

Year end review?

Strange to have a year end summary/review in July, but it was in July three years ago that I had my first performance of Mark's gospel for the Prairie Bible College homecoming celebration. So summer becomes a marker for us (excuse the pun)ever since. Hard to believe we have performed this on both coasts over 100 times since that first attempt at Prairie. Lots has been learned, it's been fun looking back at how the show has and continues to evolove from those early performances. And the involvment from my directr and friend Royal Sproule continues to inspire me. This has been a really full and amazing year for Mark His Word. There have been over 50 performances since this time last year, with travels from Three Hills to Virginia and stops along the way in Ontario, New Jersey and California. And we finally got into the recording studio to produce a dramatic audio version of Mark. Our website has been redone and I’ve included a blog site which will allow me to keep in better touch with supporters and friends, as well as allow folks who have been to our shows to continue conversations that started at our performances. check things out at www.markhisword.org and click on the blog link.

Country Roads

One week from today we will be trading these country roads for the New Jersey Turnpike!

Alberta's big skies have a few words of their own

Small Houses

I've just wrapped up my last performance at the Canadian Badlands Passion Playand all but two of the shows had fewer than 15 people in attendance, and it was what you might call an "intimate" performance. The two shows that exceeded this were sold out to the Society of Saint Vincent DePaul, for their annual convention being held in Calgary. These were great folks, and they are doing a great work helping the poor.

The previous photo is of the Canadian Badlands Passion Plays outdoor natural amphitheater in the Red Deer river valley in the town of Drumheller, Alberta. The geography in this beautiful part of Alberta is truly amazing. These Badlands are full of Dinosaur bones and audiences are surrounded by a Palestinian like landscape that transports you to a first century Israel. This is a cultural gem, and it has a team of artists that have been working together to produce powerful theatrical events for over ten years now. The costumes are exceptional, they are designed and constructed by Daniel Van Hyeist from Kings University in Edmonton. My show is NOT in the Amphitheater, it is in the adjacent black box space, an intimate little space that seats around 65 people. So for this run I have parked my Charlton Heston voice and am enjoying the nearness of a small house

I am performing the passion narrative of Mark's Gospel for the next three weeks (chapters 9-16). This is a great place, my association with the Passion play started 11 years ago, when I performed the role of Jesus in their inaugural season. I was 29 at the time and it was an incredible experience for me. Little did I know that it would in some ways be a precursor to the work that I do now with Mark's Gospel. I remember how satisfying (spiritually and artistically) the performance was and thinking that I was content as an actor and would not have to perform any other work again, that anything beyond that point was just gravy. Well, that was naive of me, but it did reflect what was and continues to be the most satisfying material I could ever imagine working with. This is my gig. I have done and will continue to do other kinds of work, but I believe that this is the core of my creative efforts. What a privilege to have been given these opportunities, to be a part of telling the most important story imaginable.

Mark In the studio!

Mark is in the Studio! last week I began working with Mark Koop and Craig Learmont at MuzikHaus Studio here in Three Hills to record an audio version of the Gospel of Mark.

This project has been a long time in coming. We have had designs on doing an audio version of my Gospel of Mark performance for a couple of years now. Finally things have come together for me to work with Craig Learmont, a friend of mine here in Three Hills to produce this project. There will be two versions of the recording, one that will simply be the recorded voice and the other that will have the same music from my show soundscaped into the project. I owe the sound composition and design to my very talented director and friend, Royal Sproule . Royal has done so much in the creation of this ministry. His sound design has elevated the quality of the work in some very important ways. Most of the work was done using Garage Band software from Mac, that and some ingenious recording of he and my wife Heather's voice in a grain bin made for some very creative work.