I really want to keep this blog focused on Gospel magic and other creative means of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, but especially in the realm of magic (maybe not the best choice of words), we have to start somewhere to get the vehicle for our message; so it makes sense sometimes to start with a secular trick, and apply our message to it.

I was listening to Go Magic Go podcast (which is done by Andrew Payne and Keith Barber... it's great by the way, I highly recommend listening to it.) and heard the guys talking about a trick on the GMG forum called "The Russian Roulette Firing Squad of Death". Just the name alone made me want to check it out, and when I did, I thought "Wow!!! this is great." So then I had to get the stuff to do the trick. As it happened, we were teaching a unit in the Children's Church where we were concentrating on Eph. 6:13-17, and as I thought about it, I thought, "This really fits."

So this is how "The Russian Roulette Firing Squad of Death" became

      (however I still call it "The Russian Roulette Firing Squad of Death" because I love the name)         {but the audience has to say "Ooooo..." every time I say it...and I say it often}

I'll supply a brief description of the trick, but to understand it, you'll have to go here:

http://www.gomagicgo.com/forums/index.php/topic,2026.0.html

In order to see this page you'll need to become a member of Go Magic Go (it's free), then go to the forums, then to "Shanty O' Mystery" (don't you just love that?), then to "The Russian Roulette Firing Squad of Death" {everyone say "Ooooooo..."}.  There you will find Chris Henderson's (a fellow Hoosier) most wonderful trick.

OK, here's a quick synopsis of the trick, as I perform it:

To start with, you will need six of these (all six need to be identical in color)

in order to perform The Russian Roulette Firing Squad of Death {Ooooo.....}

BTW, the more that you build up and hype the name, the bigger the laugh when you pull out the plastic dart guns.

You demonstrate that five of the guns won't fire, but that the sixth one will. Then by placing them on a turntable, and spinning it very quickly, the guns are all mixed up, and no one can tell one from another.

You then invite an audience member to the stage to freely choose any of the guns, and any of the darts; and once loaded and cocked, they are to fire it at you. None of the guns chosen by the audience members will fire. After five audience members have done this, you are left with the last gun, which you load, rack, and fire.

Now here's where I adapted the original presentation by Chris Henderson, to a Gospel presentation. (As it worked out, it was perfect that Paul chose five defensive pieces of armor and one weapon, but if it had been four or even seven, it wouldn't matter, you would just adjust the number of guns you use.)

When the first person comes up to shoot me, I tell them "Wait... you see I'm protected by the Belt of Truth. (And their gun doesn't fire.)

When the second person comes up to shoot me, I tell them "Wait... you see I'm protected by the Breastplate of Righteousness. (And their gun doesn't fire.)

When the third person comes up to shoot me, I tell them "Wait... you see I'm protected by the Shoes of the Gospel of Peace. (And their gun doesn't fire.)

When the fourth person comes up to shoot me, I tell them "Wait... you see I'm protected by the Shield of Faith. (And their gun doesn't fire.)

When the fifth person comes up to shoot me, I tell them "Wait... you see I'm protected by the Helmet of Salvation. (And their gun doesn't fire.)

Finally, it's my turn to shoot, and I tell them that I have the Sword of the Spirit.

To which I turn and fire my dart gun at a picture of the devil. ( I try to make it stick right between the eyes.)

(Sort of poetic justice, don't you think, since God gave us this armor to withstand "the fiery darts of the devil.")  

I like this because the storyline integrates into the magic, and the magic illustrates the passage of scripture. There is a danger in following this method, however, you must be very careful that the trick does not change the meaning of the passage. In my opinion the magician must be very clear, in the first place, about the meaning of the scripture being used (if you are using a particular passage). The danger is this: Be careful that you don't allow the trick to change your message. For instance, if the trick folds here and it slips into a slot there, the temptation for the magician might be to say "Oh, I can make the fold mean this and the slot mean that." where in reality the Bible doesn't teach that. The Gospel Magician must always be on guard against this, I believe that this is the biggest danger to performing Gospel Magic.

Let your theology inform your magic; don't let your magic change your theology.

A Gospel Magician is a teacher of Biblical truth and the Bible tells us that a teacher will be held to a higher level of accountability when we are finally judged. There are two ways to err in handling the Word of God; blasphemy and heresy. Blasphemy is when we say that Scripture means less than it does, and heresy is when we say that Scripture means more than it does. God isn't very fond of blasphemers or heretics. Speaking for myself, I don't want to be found guilty of either of these.

Just so it doesn't seem as though I'm straying too far from magic here, I'd like to point out that the use of chroma-key is very similar to a very small niche of magic, namely trick photography; which I have always been fascinated by.

This actually does several things, first it puts the puppets in front of a dynamic background which makes it more visually appealing. It also gives me the ability to insert images that provide symbols that speak deeply to the soul, and allow me to interpret the song with the Gospel message that I found "in" the song in the first place. Then, from a pedagogical point of view, kids today are the products of a video age, and they definitely "lock in" when the video projector fires up. I have several more "layers" to add to this, but if I tried to explain those at this time, it would all get very confusing. Let me just tease with this, the audience that I'm dealing with at this point (kids), have the capacity to take in far more at one sitting than we usually throw at them. My thought is to bombard their senses with a light show and other media in such a way as to give them (what we called in educational psychology) "memory hooks" to hang these images of the Nature of God on.

So my big problem now is to learn to use the video editor that I've chosen, which is Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate. What I tend to do most of right now is to find still images, and use them in sort of a slide show fashion to illustrate the song that's playing. One of the features that I'm looking forward to learning is the pan and zoom feature. It allows you to "move the camera" over the picture, which gives you even more control on emphasising the symbolic elements within the picture. In other words, you guide the focus of the viewer. I know that eventually I will mix moving pictures into this background, but still images speak so loudly to my mind, they always have.

 What I tell the puppeteers is: "You had better be strong in your performance, because I guarantee you, the background behind you is VERY strong, and if you're not bringing your "A" game, the video is going to bury you.

 The most important part to all of this business is that: God has to get all of the glory!