By Zach Maready

Visitors shuffle into the gymnasium of Triad Baptist Church by the hundreds. Their hands grasp dixie cups of steaming cider and shortbread biscuits from those round metal tins. The entrants are bathed in a blue-purple light as they find their seats. Behind a small black curtain to the left of the room, cast members check mics, adjust costumes, and pace anxiously. Christmas music floats through the air. Another year, another December, another Christmas play.

Bobbing and weaving through the crowd is a man on a mission, Jeremy Chandler walks at a sprint. From the first tech rehearsal to the last closing curtain, a bulky headset stays glued to his ears. The show starts in minutes, and still, there are fires to put out and problems to solve. “It is lights, it is stage sets, it is acting,” says Linsey Huffman, a troupe member and longtime friend of Jeremy’s. “It is really cool how Jeremy pulls all of that together in the stories that he tells.”

Blink, and you would miss him, but without Jeremy, this place would be unrecognizable. Not a cast member, volunteer, or member of the audience will have left without being reached by his efforts in some small way. Jeremy’s yearly Christmas productions are just that- productions. Each show is more than 90 minutes long and contains elaborate sets, costumes, songs, and choreography. For each, Jeremy writes a script from scratch. In addition to writer and producer, he is also the director. It takes a unique person to hold together such a team. Jeremy’s approach to directing is designed to meet the unique challenges of volunteer theater. “There is nothing Jeremy cannot do when it comes to media talent, directing a play, organizing an event for church, redecorating the church, whatever it is,” says Eric Sauls, a former student and friend. “If it has to do with the ministry, he is the man. He is the ministry man.”

Eric would know. He was a part of Jeremy’s student plays at Gospel Light Baptist Church. His own experience in the show perfectly shows Jeremy’s secret sauce for directing. He knows how to empower his volunteers based on their individual gifts. At the time, Gospel Light’s theater did not have a backstage, which meant performers who were not onstage had to walk down onto the floor and exit through an auditorium door. While not an urgent issue for an amateur show, Jeremy saw an opportunity for Eric to contribute. “So it just hit me one day,” Jeremy recounts. “I said, Eric, can you figure out a way to barricade the audience from seeing the actors when they enter and exit the stage?” That is exactly what Eric did. He designed, cut, and painted two wings from plywood and affixed them to either side of the stage. Actors now could exit discretely. As far as Jeremy is aware, they are still in use for school productions today.

For the rest of his high school career, Eric helped construct props, sets, and scenery for the productions. From motel facades to hot air balloon baskets, if Jeremy needed it, Eric built it. “I did not have the vision like he did,” says Eric. “He already knew what he wanted and what the set was going to look like. I just started cutting stuff out in the shape that I thought he wanted.”

After 15 years teaching at Gospel Light, Jeremy took a leap. He took a job as Director of Creative Communications at Triad Baptist Church. Though still in Kernersville, his life and career would look very different. Before Jeremy Chandler, TBC’s drama team was a small ministry of a dozen or so members. This troupe, known then as Script’d, would act out skits for small audiences and work with scripts they had purchased to produce visual interpretations of the Bible. As co-founder of Script’d, Linsey Huffman had been at TBC as an actress for years before Jeremy. She witnessed the shakeup his arrival brought to the tiny drama department. “He made it bigger than we ever could have,” says Linsey. “He took it further than we could have ever dreamed it would have gone, honestly. It was just sort of a small outreach in the beginning and his writing and everything just took it to another level.”

This year, Jeremy and his team are presenting his tenth production at TBC. This ministry has blessed countless people who have seen the love and dedication poured into the shows. Maybe none have been so impacted, though, as the ones who are a part of the team who put them on. The tight-knit community that has grown around a ministry of service and creative expression has changed the lives of all involved. This December, the gymnasium at TBC will fill again with visitors. The smells of Christmas cookies and cider will mingle in the air with holiday music. The cast will once again unite to bring a moving story to a wide audience.

Try to spot the man in a flannel with a bulky headset zooming around the room. He probably does not want to be thanked but know that without him, there would not be a show.

“It is neat to have a group of people like-minded not only in their faith but in their talents and the way they want to express themselves,” says Linsey. “It is neat to have a place that Jeremy’s created for us to showcase that. It is a safe place where we can be ourselves for the Lord. Without Jeremy, we would not have a production.”

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