Starting on Monday, November 4, I will be posting a new weekly feature here on my blog — Monday Muse — with book reviews, musical inspiration, and creative resources for your worship planning!
But I can’t resist an early preview posting of Monday Muse, because this fabulously hilarious book came in the mail:
You have a section on your bookshelf for devotionals and prayer books. You have shelf space filled with inspirational spiritual memoirs. If you’re a preacher, you have a bookshelf dedicated to biblical commentaries. And if you have children in your household or extended family, you have gentle pastel-illustrated books on the shelf to encourage children’s faith.
Now, clear space on your God-gives-me-giggles bookshelf for this entertaining gem: Dancing with Jesus: Featuring a Host of Miraculous Moves.
The book’s cover is pure joy all by itself! A lenticular illustration of Jesus, standing on water, grooves and swings from side to side with his fingers snapping and his heel twisting as you tilt the book back and forth! No joke. Hours of fun, even before turning a page!
And then — oh! — the pages! Each one provides instruction for a unique dance move inspired by a gospel story. The Water Walk. The Carpenter Clog. The Temptation Tango. The Lazarus Lurch. The Cheek Turn.
And the last dance of the book, with a lenticular line-up of hip-swinging disciples, the Apostolic Conga. I expect to hear your reports after teaching and performing the Apostolic Conga at your next congregational meeting!
No matter that this book was written tongue-in-cheek (and I’m choosing to see the eternally-White-will-we-ever-draw-Jesus-as-a-Middle-Eastern-man illustrations as part of the author’s joke), Dancing with Jesus has fabulous possibilities for ministry! Take the Water Walk to church camp and invite your campers to work some moves near the lake. (Try to ignore author Sam Stall’s error in describing Paul‘s attempt to walk on the water with Jesus — yikes!) Invite congregants to warm up with the Carpenter Clog before a mission trip or a church clean-up day. Instead of nailing paper “sins” to a cross for Good Friday, break the mold and add the Pilate Shuffle to worship.
Or maybe not on that last one. Most of all, let Dancing with Jesus make you laugh and laugh and laugh when your spirit needs joy, when your muse needs inspiration, when your Christology needs a little humor!
Dancing with Jesus: Featuring a Host of Miraculous Moves by Sam Stall (Running Press 2012)
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