Holy Fools ministry marks 50 years at Mac reunion
By Ben Cox
Photos/Submitted to The Source
“We are fools for Christ’s sake.” (1 Corinthians 4:10, KJV)
The portion of the above verse from the Holy Bible was the central mission of a group of a dozen or more students for 35 years at MacMurray College.
The Holy Fools, the school’s clown ministry, was formed in 1975 at the behest of the Rev. Bill Peckham, a United Methodist minister. Peckham worked with the students and later with Dr. Jim Goulding, the college’s chaplain, to form a clown ministry. Goulding would later go on to be dean of the college.
The Holy Fools was one aspect of what scholars have called the Fourth Great Awakening in the American Christian churches in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Younger Christians were turning away from more traditional forms of worship and messaging the gospels of the Holy
Bible toward a more contemporary, non-traditional setting.
Rev. Peckham had experimented with the idea of clown ministry some years earlier as Joey the Clown in Elkhart, Illinois, which later grew into a regional phenomenon. Within just a few years of wearing the greasepaint, Peckham had gathered nearly 1,200 clowns for ministry in the upper Midwest.
MacMurray’s Holy Fools didn’t preach — they led people to the message of Jesus Christ through laughter, smiles, music, comedy and pure joy. With some rehearsal time, the Fools performed songs, skits and a selected story each year in which they handed out handmade items known as “warm fuzzies” to audiences on campus and sometimes ventured forth into the community to long-term care facilities, hospitals and other churches.
Many of the Holy Fools are still active in their local churches and are familiar names to some in the Jacksonville area. The last class of Holy Fools graduated from MacMurray College in 2010 and the group officially disbanded.
Since then, the Holy Fools last congregated on the campus in 2015 to celebrate their fortieth anniversary. This year, the Fools will descend upon MacMurray one more time to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary and hopefully share a few laughs and smiles in Jacksonville once more. “Once a Fool, always a Fool,” is one of the group’s mottos.
The MacMurray College Foundation and Alumni Association reunion will be held in Jacksonville from September 12-13. For more information or to register for attendance, visit macalumfoundation.org.
