[ssba]
Stealing From the Collection Plate
By William Salyers
Recently, in a social media group reserved for members of Actors Equity, the Stage Actors’ Union, someone asked the question “Can you describe in four individual words, not a sentence, what theatre is?” The responses were varied, but some words were repeated, and telling.
“Magical”
“Passion”
“Transformative”
“Inspiring”
These weren’t audience members commenting. They were actors. Professionals. I can’t recall my father, a lifelong welder and pipe-fitter, ever describing his work that way. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a stevedore say his or her work held any of the aforementioned qualities; nor a transit worker, carpenter, or cop.
In fact, when I think of those words, there’s really only one other place I can recall hearing them regularly used to describe an experience: the First Baptist Church in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I was a member and weekly (if not always enthusiastic) attendee throughout my teenage years. Every Sunday, I heard the reverend and various other “witnesses” describe the magical, transformative love of the Lord Jesus Christ and how passionate and inspired it left them. I, too, tried to get passionate and inspired by the magical Word Of the Lord, but somehow, the fire never caught. That is, until I stood on a stage.
Don’t worry – if you think you’re about to read my version of how theater saved my life and redeemed my soul, you’re not. You’ve already heard it, or lived it, like countless others, and I’m sure my tale of redemption would sound much the same. It’s a common one among actors, even those of us who get paid for what we do.
But I digress.
The Bartlesville First Baptist Church seemed to have a lot of money. It was a beautiful house for The Lord, with wide walls, tall ceilings, and impressive lighting and sound systems. The minister drove a nice car and wore good suits, at least by my boyhood standards, for that place and time. Even so, at every service, the offering plate was passed. It was a simple metal bowl used to collect the donations of parishioners, usually in envelopes, sometimes in damp handfuls of bills and coins. Knowing that small community as it was then, I’m guessing the range of offerings, coming from all kinds of people, the wealthy and the wretched, was pretty wide.
Nevertheless, there were some people – usually children – who would pass the plate a little lighter than it was when it was handed to them. They would pretend to put something in, while in reality, taking something out. They stole from the collection plate.
I noticed this, on occasion, but would never rat out the offender. I wasn’t a snitch. I wasn’t superstitious; apparently not even enough to be a “good Christian,” but on the other hand, even I thought there was something pathetic about stealing from a church.
Here was a place where almost everyone thought – even passionately believed – that they were participating in something special, something worthy of reverence. They were coming together in a communal act to sit as an audience, sing and listen to music, and watch a man deliver a monologue about the ephemeral, the eternal and the sacred.
And there was some turd-in-a-punchbowl stealing from them.
Yes, them; because, if you asked them about it, they were that church.
First Baptist Church was not, ultimately, my tabernacle. When I found my faith, it was a different kind; and although my churches’ resources are nowhere near those of FBC, the services still often involve an audience, singing and listening to music, and speeches about the ephemeral, eternal and sacred.
And there are still turds in the punchbowl.
There are still those who want to steal from the collection plate. They even go so far as to volunteer their labor to the church to speak or sing, and then claim, after the fact, that their services were not sacred, not an offering, but just another job; one for which they have now decided they are owed the minimum wage. They betray their congregation for, in modern terms, much less than thirty pieces of silver.
I’m sure that some of those First Baptist Church members were paid, on occasion, to sing. I remember their beautiful voices, and I’d be surprised if they weren’t sometimes hired to bring their talents to weddings and other such gatherings, just as I’d be shocked to hear that any of them presented a bill to the church for their Sunday services.
The sacred is sacred, and the mundane, mundane. It takes both to sustain life, and I pity the person who can’t tell them apart, who confuses one for the other.
Because that person, ultimately, is just a — well… you know what they are. We all do.
Ezra Buzzington
June 13, 2017 @ 12:45 am
And we also know “who”.
Shelagh McFadden
June 14, 2017 @ 1:12 am
Beautifully written.
Bert van Aalsburg
July 20, 2017 @ 3:41 am
Let’s be clear on one thing.
The pastor, who stands before you, speaking words of wisdom and comfort and inspiration, is paid to be there.
Given your stance on performers being paid to perform, as stealing from the collection plate, you must surely believe the pastor, and other church workers, are doing the same.
Perry Lambert
July 26, 2017 @ 8:41 pm
Sir, your essay gets a F!
You’ve barely scratched at the idea the differences or similarities of church and theatre.
As a son of a Greek Orthodox Priest and having been brought up knowing the difference between a faith that is grounded in scripture, doctrine, and a history of it’s blessed prophets, or one that one author put it as a “kingdom of the cults,” and having studied theatre history in college from the ancients to modern. There are many things that “look” the same, but are not.
Dig deeper next time!
Knowing all this, you can not compare a church to theatre! You may try, but ultimately you failed in your essay. They are not the same in structure or for “purpose” and a host of many other good reasons…too many to go over on this post!
However, there is one exception as it stands that they have in common, at least at my church, they both “pay” their facilitators a salary that conforms with prevailing wages.
Our Priests, our groundskeeper and maintenance, secretaries, cooks, organist, and church custodian all receive a salary for their services. I find it such a puzzlement and with gobsmacked astonishment that you and others keep wanting and insisting to make the case that theatre should not be a commercial enterprise…I’m here to tell you that it is!
Even since the times of the ancients Greeks, who created theatre, it has been a commercial enterprise in which the citizens would come and pay to see a performance of a story of the Gods. The state paid for the playwrights and the actors who had speaking roles and a Choregus, an ancient Greek theatrical sponsor, would finance production costs not covered by the state.
As a added note, my dad was also a carpenter by trade and helped build the bridges on the Ohio Turnpike…he was also a union member!
Even as a Priest he continued to work at his craft and take jobs to feed his family. And was paid handsomely for it. He taught me his “artistry” of working with wood, and the tools of his trade…just like my drama and theatre teachers taught me my trade as a “Journeyman Actor.”
So please don’t diminish the works of others. All works are artistic by nature when they come from your hands and mind.
So no matter what you try to say to convince us of your “cult”, the bottom line is everyone deserves to be compensated for their services with a legal wage…even Actors and Priests!