A couple of years ago, I was reading a Christian magazine that spoke about the Goth subculture and how many Goths were Christians and were misunderstood because of the way they dressed. I taught high school kids in Sunday School at that time. I brought the magazine to church and came up with a cool idea. What if we were to dress in Goth and just walk right into the church building during a service on Sunday morning?
The kids agreed that this would be a good idea. I got permission from the pastor and the parents and we went for it. We came up with the name Ex Nihilo for our group and we spent one Sunday School class period putting on makeup and black clothing to fit the look.
We really wanted to go for shock value, so we even had one boy being led on a chain by one of the girls. Another girl brought a small poodle with her. How would the church react to these scary looking people?
One of my co-workers was in on the skit, and he was up in the choir that day. We walked in during one of the songs and made our way to the front pew. People stared at us, but kept on singing. Our accomplice in the choir approached us and told us that we were not dressed appropriately to be in God's house and asked us to leave. I proceeded to tell him that we had heard the music outside and just wanted to see what was going on.
He threatened to call the police on us, so we finally agreed to leave. We had another accomplice, one of the senior ladies. As we prepared to leave, she approached us with her Bible and asked us if we really wanted to know about God's love. We responded and she took us to the back of the church to "witness" to us.
The responses were mixed. One lady actually took off her jewelry and put it in her purse. Then she went outside and dialed 911 on her cell phone. Another man who was a policeman later admited that he instinctively reached for his gun, which he had left at home.
In order not to disturb the rest of the service, I took the Sunday School class to our local Wal-Mart. This was to be an object lesson to show how people are often judged based soley on appearance.
We bothered no one, but just walked around shopping. One of the clerks was going to ask us to leave. Luckily, the father of one of the girls in my class was on duty that day and knew about the skit. He explained the situation to his co-workers.
Afterwards, we went to McDonald's for lunch. When the cashiers asked why we were dressed this way, the kids took the opportunity to tell them about our Sunday School class and the skit we performed. They told the cashiers that God doesn't judge people based on their appearance and we shouldn't either. The kids were able to share God' love to the cashiers and I was extremely proud of them.
That night when we went back to church, we actually had people who thanked us for doing the skit. They told us that their eyes had been opened to how we often judge others. I felt that it was a great success and taught a valuable lesson.
