Covenant

  When I graduated from seminary, I was the first person to basically have a major in Religious Drama.  At that time, there were only four of us in the Southern Baptist Convention that did religious drama as monologists exclusively.  We were all very good at what we did.  That is not an ego thing.  That is just the truth.  The word was out around the convention that we were marketable.  People wanted us.

 One day, I got a call from a drama group called the Covenant Players.  They were a travelling Christian drama group, and they wanted me to join.  They did their own scripts, and I had been writing scripts for some time.  The problem was how would one get paid?  Their answer was that the group would take up an offering in a church to pay for their motel and food.  However, if they didn't get enough money for the essentials, they would sleep in their van.  That didn't sound very appealing to me.  After all, I was this great religious dramatist.  It sounded to me like a hippie commune sort of thing.  I knew about hippie communes, because I used to be a hippie.  If there wasn't going to be a guaranteed salary, I didn't want to do it.

 I was nice and thanked them for thinking of me.  The Covenant Players are still around, although their main work is on the West Coast.  If you get a chance to see them, you should.  And, give them a couple of dollars to buy food and maybe a motel room or two.