Puppets With A Purpose

Who are those guys?

Puppets With A Purpose is a Christian puppet ministry based near State College in central Pennsylvania. The puppet team is currently made up of junior and senior high school aged young people along with four adult directors. The puppets used for the programs are predominantly rod arm style (like Grover on "Sesame Street").

The purpose of this fifteen-year-old ministry is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to non-Christians and to encourage fellow believers in their Christian walk. To fulfill this purpose, the puppeteers and directors work hard not only to learn and expand their puppetry skills, but also to grow as Christians themselves and learn to better communicate the message of salvation by grace through faith. The team employs the "Puppet Bracelet" that uses colors (patterned after the Wordless Book) and associated verses from the Bible as a guide for organizing their own understanding of the Gospel of Christ and for communicating that Good News to others. This purpose is kept central to the focus of the ministry and is even illustrated in the team's logo in the form of similarly colored hearts in an arc over the mascot's head.

The ministry has offered programs employing a variety of commercially available resources as well as original material. Past presentations have included live, prerecorded and self-recorded formats.

We have done several Christmas programs over the years. The 2006 Christmas program, "Three Wise Men and A Baby," is written and recorded by Jungle Jam the Radio Show of Everland Entertainment and uses skit and song in an amusing and poignant retelling of the nativity of Christ. The 1999 and 2000 Christmas program is called "Angels Aware," and is a discussion of the meaning of Christ's birth as told by the angels. This light-hearted, but true gospel message presents a different perspective to the most amazing event to ever take place! The 2003 Christmas program is entitled, "Meet Me at the Manger," and is a story that is centered around Herod's Department Store and an earthly group of kids trying to convey the true meaning of Christ's birth to the store executive. There are plenty of laughs and beautiful songs in this wonderful story by Celeste Clydesdale.

We even have an evangelistic program in Spanish patterned after the Wordless Book that uses colors to convey the Gospel message. This is the program that we took, taught, and gave to the puppet teams in Peru.

Programs typically last 45-50 minutes. Programs often can be modified or created to fit special time considerations or specific needs of the host if sufficient time for advanced preparation is available.

The puppet team's travels thus far have taken us throughout Pennsylvania, Trujillo, Peru, The Dominican Republic, and Poland to train and plant new puppet ministries. The team has performed for resident church camps, Sunday schools, church services, retirement homes, malls, picnics, vacation Bible school, tent meetings, and festivals. The team typically performs 1-2 full programs per month with spring, summer, early fall and Christmas being the busiest seasons. It is recommended that potential hosts try to make requests of the team at least 4 to 6 months in advance in order to have a better chance of scheduling a performance on the date of their choice. In addition, the team has held small workshops on puppetry. We are always looking for new opportunities to realize their stated purpose and, recently, to encourage others in developing puppet ministries.

Puppets With A Purpose does not set a fee for presentations, but does encourage organizations who host us to meet travel expenses if they can. If the presentation requires an overnight stay, the team typically will request to spend the night at the host facility and often the host will provide a supper and/or breakfast. Usually, hosts are able to provide donations or free-will offerings to the ministry team which is used for the purpose of continuing the puppet ministry. The ministry goes where the Lord sends them, and He has blessed them through His people with the financial means with which to continue in service to Him.