Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Judgement House

Judgement House at PGBC 2010
What's it All About? -An Overview of This Years Event

For the last four years, Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, has put on a walk-through drama called Judgement House. Please don't confuse "Judgement House" with "Hell House©" They are not at all the same. The only thing they share in common is that they are both walk-through dramas. The mission of "Judgement House", as stated on their website is as follows:

Our Mission:

At Judgement House our mission is to provide as many people as possible with an opportunity to choose a saving, and personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We believe the basis for this mission can be found in Matthew 28:19-20. "Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: "Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (New Living Translation)


Our goal in the presentation of the Judgement House drama is to provide as many people as possible with an opportunity to choose a saving, and personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We perform the drama over the course of two weekends (Thursday through Saturday). Each night we have 16 to 20 groups of approximately 30 people. The groups begin the journey through the scenes at 15 minute intervals, lead from scene to scene by a guide who narrates the entire story. So we see on average about 3,000 guests during the course of this ministry.


The Judgement House Organization has various scripts to choose from. This year our script was "Words: A Prescription for Tragedy". The story line deals with the plight of a young man, Russ, whose parents have made many bad decisions and end up in prison for drug related charges. With nowhere else to go, Russ ends up living with his Grandmother who is a Christian trying to share the love of Jesus with her Grandson. Russ, who is very bitter, wants nothing to do with it and rejects the call of Jesus at every opportunity. To further complicate this situation, the youth group at Grandmother's church is less than welcoming and very harshly belittles and berates Russ as a "loser who is probably on drugs just like his Mom and Dad". While Russ is at Youth Camp with the church youth group, he is informed by the Youth Pastor that his Grandmother has died. Stricken with grief and despair, Russ chooses to end his own life in hopes to finally end the pain.

The rest of the scenes portray Judgement, Hell and finally a beautiful glimpse of what we that HAVE accepted Jesus can look forward to in the Heaven scene. At the completion of the drama the groups are then taken into a counsleing room where an overview is presented and an invitation is given to those who wish to choose to accept salvation. Encouragers are available for individual prayer and counseling.

Many lives are touched and blessed through this ministry. Many visitors receive salvation, many lives are re-dedicated to the Lord Jesus Christ, and many seeds are sown that we pray will bloom into the salvation of a lost soul one day. Not only are the visitors blessed, but we as participants - whether acting, directing, sound, scheduling, parking or any of the many other tasks that it takes to put on a ministry of this magnitude are blessed beyond measure. We are blessed in the fellowship, the delight in seeing the gospel presented in a powerful way and often amazing miracles in seeing lives transformed never again to be the same.

As we prepared for this ministry, I promoted the event on Twitter, Facebook and other web services. Many responded and enquired, wanting to know if I knew of a JH Event near their locality. If your ministry has never heard or done this type of presentation I would encourage you to pray about it and look into it. You can find the information you need at
http://www.judgementhouse.org//.

What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know how effective you think ministries like this can be.

Hebrews 9:27 (King James Version)
27And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: