The Presbyterian Church of Jamesburg use clown ministry to spread the message of Christianity.
By: Leon Tovey
JAMESBURG It certainly wasn’t your typical Christmas vacation.
Traveling on a religious-worker visa, the Rev. Gary Filson of the PresbyterianChurch of Jamesburg, his wife, Ella, their 19-year-old daughter, Sarah, and four other members of the church boarded a plane at Newark’s Liberty International Airport on Christmas Day.
Their destination: Cuba.
Their purpose: clowning.
For Christ.
The Rev. Filson is a founding member Fools for Christ, a cadre of congregants who use their skills in the clowning arts to spread the message of Christ. The members of the group who went to Cuba the Filsons, Terri Katona, Janet Curtis, Diana Chase and Sara Arboleda were there to demonstrate and teach the technique to members of the Cuban Presbytery.
"It was an extremely successful trip," the Rev. Filson said Tuesday. "We knew before we left that we were going to have to change our material; puns don’t translate and we were a little worried that most of us don’t speak Spanish, but it went over extremely well."
The basis for clown ministry, which the Rev. Filson has practiced since 1986, is in what’s known in the secular clowning world as "caring clowning," wherein clowns ply their craft solo or in small groups to entertain or educate.
Clown ministry is especially effective in illustrating biblical parables, the Rev. Filson said. His personal favorite is the parable of the sower, from the Gospel of Luke, which uses images of men being cast about like seeds, or scorched by the sun and choked to death by thorns like young plants, and which a single clown or group can act out with both hilarious and profound results, he said.
The Rev. Filson said planning for the group’s visit to Cuba began in May 2004, during a visit his second to Cuba with the Rev. Pedro Mininez, the pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in the central-Cuban city of Sancti Spiritus.
During the trip he and other Presbyterian officials were discussing ways of re-establishing long-severed ties between the Cuban and U.S. Presbyterian churches.
The concept of clown ministry at first bewildered the Cubans, but through a series of conversations during the trip and subsequent e-mail exchanges, the Rev. Filson said he was able to interest the Cubans in the idea and got them to agree to a demonstration and teaching session.
When the Americans arrived at a Presbyterian church camp near Santa Clara on Dec. 27 a day late due to a luggage mishap they found a group of pupils very willing to learn.
"They were some of the best students I’ve ever had," he said. "Not only were they great students, but they were very quickly good at teaching what they had learned."
Part of the reason for the success of their workshop is the fact that the new generation of pastors in the Cuban Presbytery is steering the church in a country where the concept of religious tolerance is not what it is in America. The government of Fidel Castro still makes open religious affiliation an uncomfortable thing for many people, the Rev. Filson said, so pastors in Cuba have to be more creative in their approach.
"The Sancti Spiritus Church has a tradition of fellowship rather than formal worship services," he said. "So the fit was very natural."
One of the biggest hits during the week was a take on the old David Copperfield trick, wherein the magician "changes" a $10 bill into a $100 bill. In Cuba, the Rev. Filson changed a 1-peso note into a 10-peso note.
"The response was both a lot of applause and a lot of women reaching into their purses for 1-peso notes," he recalled with a laugh, before adding somberly: "The sad truth is nobody there really had a 10-peso note."
The Rev. Filson said the poverty of the Cuban people was something that struck all seven members of the group, as was the generosity of those impoverished people.
"Church people in Cuba have a different concept of what that entails," he said. "Members of the church are like family."
One example of this sense of family hit the group on Dec. 30, when the Rev. Mininez took them to the home of an elderly couple in his congregation who live in the countryside near Sancti Spiritus.
"These people were very, very poor; they had a small plot of land, a couple chicken and a couple pigs and that was all," the Rev. Filson said. "And the day we were to go visit them, they got up at four in the morning and slaughtered one of their pigs so they could give us lunch.
"We were just overwhelmed by that generosity," he continued. "I don’t know that you find that kind of hospitality in other places."
Another example of that kind of hospitality was waiting for the group in the nation’s capital, Havana, when they returned for their flight home on Dec. 2. The Rev. Filson said the group’s reputation had spread out from the countryside, and when they arrived in Havana, a Presbyterian Church in Havana’s Luyano district invited the group back for another demonstration.
So when do they leave?
"We just got back," the Rev. Filson said with a tired laugh. "We’d obviously love to go back, but it’s going to take a year or two to plan. Let us get our pictures developed first."