Plays for All Year

28 pages

4 m, 5 w, 1 flexible

An evil banker, Char Cole, wants the land the church sits on to build a casino. He sends a bogus mortgage bill demanding the church pay a $10,000 balloon payment to scare the congregation in to selling him the property for a fraction of what it is worth. Church members hurriedly decides to submit a secret barbecue recipe to a contest in hopes of winning the huge cash prize. They even open a barbecue restaurant in the church to raise money. Meanwhile, Miss Phit, the bumbling church secretary, is constantly getting the bulletins and newsletters wrong, sending m...

40 pages

22 flexible characters, 12 with doubling.

This is a somewhat zany retelling of the traditional story of Jonah. Although enhanced with some extra characters and scenes, the theme and overall message hold true to the Old Testament Scriptures. Included in the story is Herald, the angel who acts as God’s voice and has the ability to turn up at unusual places and in unusual ways. In the opening scene a handful of fun-loving woodland creatures discover Jonah asleep, and bring in the right blend of seriousness when they realize he must be the prophet. Along the way Jonah interacts with some sailors who even...

0 pages

14 m, 8 w, 1 boy, 1 girl, and 8 to 15 flexible roles with doubling possible.

Have you ever wondered about the people who wrote the hymns that you sing in church every Sunday? What events in their lives led them to sit down and write these songs - songs that would eventually became "hymnal classics" in the Christian church? This musical uncovers the true, behind-the-scenes stories of seven people and how they were prompted by tragedy or triumph to write such treasured favorites as "Just As I Am" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers." In addition, a beautiful, original song "Bringing a Hymn to Life," is also included. Told in a series of vig...

31 pages

7 m, 5 w, 1 boy.

Alarm bells sound when Pastor Larry Bowman and his wife, Janet, find out the leader of their denomination, Rev. Grisham, wants to visit and use their three children as role models for his newest book. As loveable as they are, young Eric, Cherie and Cody are famous for their outrageous ideas and rambunctious behavior. Their antics especially seems to grate on the nerves of one of the church's more conservative deacons. To impress Rev. Grisham, the kids build an altar to use the youngest child as their sacrifice - following the example of Abraham and Isaac, of course! Hapless, hilarious, a...

51 pages

14 m, 1 w, 1 child (can be doubled to 10 actors)

The play tells the true story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor who led the resistance to Hitler in the German church. Narrated by his friend Eberhard Bethge, the play follows Bonhoeffer from his early years as a seminary professor, to leading his students to organize an underground seminary and distribute clandestine anti-Nazi literature, and finally to his joining the secret unit of German military intelligence plotting the death of Hitler. Arrested by the Gestapo, Bonhoeffer is sent to prison, where he is visited by relatives and his fiancée in a poignant scene. In a poetic chorus, his...

48 pages

Large, flexible cast including several children's roles. Doubling possible.

He first started preaching at age 16 in small English countryside cottages, carrying a lamp to light his way over fields. Soon the teenage preacher was invited to give a sermon in London. He was asked to "stay on" and for the next thirty years he preached to hundreds of thousands and built one of London's largest tabernacles even to this day. Now, more than a century later, the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon continue to be spirtually meaningful. The life of this preaching giant is recreated here and even portions of several of his sermons are included.

47 pages

8 m, 4 w, optional children's roles, extras as desired.

Just before dawn, Jan. 18, 1981, Chet Bitterman was kidnapped at gunpoint in Bogota, Colombia, and held hostage for 48 days. Rebels demanded all Wycliffe Bible translators leave Colombia or Chet would be killed. Abducted from his wife and two toddlers, the 29-year-old man had recently come to Colombia to live with a remote tribe and to develop for them their own language in written form, then to translate the Scriptures into that language. Chet's is a valiant story of courage and witness under vicious pressure, a story of caring for his kidnappers, concern fo...

26 pages

5 m, 4 w, and optional 1 flexible

A small church is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new and as yet unseen pastor. But he’s arrived too early and instead of meeting the welcoming committee, Rev. Goode encounters a seemingly homeless man. The pastor immediately offers to help him, surprising the stranger who says he never before received that kind of consideration from the church members. Since the pastor is more interested in finding out what type of church he inherited than in making a good first impression, he switches place with the other man so he can observe firsthand how the church t...

72 pages

6 m, 5 w

Early morning July 1, 1863. Gettysburg, Pa. As thousands of troops from both North and South amass for what will become one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, five teenagers from several local farms escape to the safety of the surrounding hills. There's the level-headed Eliza and her little sister, Justine, who's strong-willed; Georgina, whose mother has sheared her hair to make her look like a boy; and Rachel and Jeremiah, a brother and sister from a wealthier family. As they witness the horrors of battle over the next three days, the teens are force...