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Furthermore, it is not about me spreading the good word, but I am interested in those who do

Madelon Hoedt wrote:Furthermore, it is not about me spreading the good word, but I am interested in those who do

I suspected from your wording but had to address the other person's idea.

I've been choking down bits of gospel magic on youtube and websites for a while to get a sense of what it's like. Frankly, I've been disappointed so far. The tricks are usually okay-- "classics" done with moderate technical proficiency-- but they just don't give a damn about the magic. And the result are cheesy tricks that feel patronizing and at times just plain wrong. The intention is the message, not the magic, and that degrades the whole thing, even if the TT vanish is justified with a praying position.

That depends on your standpoint. I've done work on Hell Houses, the evangelical version of our scare attractions. The message is key, and with that, the delivery can be as cheesy as they want it to be. to me, gospel magic is this strange moment of adopting an ... dare I say, alien form, and making it their own. One continuously wonders whether this will have any effect or whether it is simply preaching to the choir. The churches themselves don't count in numbers: the transformation is in God's hands and can happen weeks, even years, after the person has been witnessed.

There is nothing quite like gross Jesus shaped cookies other than misapplied boring Gospel magic. When presenting yourself to an audience, make sure you accurately portray yourself. If your giving the Gospel message and are just using magic as a Trojan horse then be honest about it. Call yourself an evangelist and just throw in a couple of cool tricks to keep peoples attention. If your trying to be a magician then you need to put the magic first and naturally fit the gospel into the routine the same way that you would any subject.

Also I have found most Gospel magicians try to tell Bible stories with tricks. This does two very bad things, it detracts from the magic (yucky Jesus cookies) and it detracts from the Bible which is rude to God. Try instead to use morality found in the bible in your routine. Force a "guilt card to one of many participants and then find the person who's guilty. Do a King of hearts ambitious card routine and talk about how when you have the king of hearts the world can't hold you down. Remember your probably can't save a whole lot of souls with magic, but I'd bet more people would show up to church if they knew that there was a good chance that something was likely to lite on fire, God Bless.

Barry and Stuart have some tricks based around miracles in the bible.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... opensearch

Tricks from the Bible, Raising the Dead, Walking on Water, Catching the Many Fish.

These arent really resources but they could help give you ideas. Im sure as other people have suggested that many things could be adapted.