Tomorrow night, March 24, at 8:00 p.m., Global Christian Fellowship (GCF) will host the annual Faculty and Staff Talent Show in the Center for the Arts Recital Hall. Tickets for the event cost $5 per person ($7 at the door), and baked goods homemade by community members will also be available for purchase.
The funds raised by the show will support Houghton students who are embarking on mission trips this summer. The event will showcase the impressive—and perhaps surprising—abilities of various faculty and staff from the college, including Dean Jordan, Meic Pearse, Ransom Poythress, Amanda Cox, Casey Conklin, Connie Finney, Jon Arensen, and Brandon Bate.
This year, biology professor Ransom Poythress will be performing an act with the intriguing title “Using Punctuation for Communicative Clarity.” He described the talent show as “a little like a mini SPOT, just with faculty and staff participants.” As the event approaches, Poythress hopes that “attendees will be able to enjoy themselves, learn a little more about the quirkier side of some of us, and that enough money will be raised to substantially fund some Houghton students’ mission trips.”
The 2018 Faculty and Staff Talent Show will also feature history professor Meic Pearse. For this show, Pearse will be exchanging his signature parody tales for different stories, which he describes as being “at least equally silly, made famous 60 years ago by the eccentric Gerard Hoffnung.” Pearse, who considers himself “born just naturally silly,” explained that his primary hope for the event is “that I get out alive. Followed by the vague notion that it will raise lots of money towards sending some of our students as far away as possible.”
The Faculty and Staff Talent Show is brought to campus by Houghton’s GCF organization. As described by the college website, GCF is an organization designed “to meet students where they are and be a place where they can be informed about global missions and worship with others.” As Ashley Carroll ’18, one of the talent show’s organizers, explained, “GCF is important because it gives students on campus the chance to hear what’s going on around the world.” She described this opportunity to hear about missions as a blessing made possible by the “retired missionaries and…many alumni who are out and about, serving the Lord, who come back and share their experiences.” GCF provides students and community members with the chance to listen to these missionaries every Wednesday from 8-9 p.m. in the Alumni Dining Room.
In addition to GCF’s weekly meetings, the group has traditionally hosted the Faculty and Staff Talent Show. The event’s performers volunteer to showcase their remarkable abilities, and past hits have included songs from Hamilton sung by Ransom and Lisbeth Poythress, Meic Pearse’s tales about Vaigly Methodistic College in Dagnabbit’s Snowhole, and the storytelling of Beth Phifer and Benjamin Lipscomb.
With a strong lineup of faculty and staff prepared to exhibit their humorous and hidden abilities, the GCF Faculty and Staff Talent Show promises to be a thoroughly entertaining evening in support of important causes. As Ashley Carroll observed, “This event is fun because it’s getting to see our professors in a new setting and seeing what special talents and unique gifts they have. It helps you gain a new perspective of a professor on campus and feel more connected with them.” All students and community members ready to view faculty and staff in this new light are encouraged to come out tomorrow and enjoy the show because, in Carroll’s words, “It’s super fun!”