SOUL FOOD:Church plays pack the pews, thanks to creative couple

Fact: Some of this is fiction.

Had Cindy Woods and Frank Rood written “The Da Vinci Code,” I might have been able to read the book to its very end. The couple can sift details from a complicated history and thread them into an enticing account without forcing their audience to swim or drown in a swamp of factoids.

Given the age span of their audience Â? which runs from preschoolers to adults Â? their talent is all the more remarkable.

Each summer, more than a dozen publishers of vacation bible school curriculums make a tidy profit from prefabricated weeklong programs sold to church youth ministries that hope to educate while entertaining their young and restless members who are on break from school.

Names like “Jungle Jaunt” and “Game Day Central” can leave one wondering what they have to do with Christianity. Group Publishing’s online promotion for its “Fiesta! Where Kids Are Fired Up About Jesus” left me rubbing my chin and shaking my head. It features a brown-eyed, brown-skinned boy and girl bear-hugging a mule (maybe a donkey), children peeking from behind a Saguro cactus, and cartoons of coyote wearing a blue sombrero and a jack (jill?) rabbit wearing what I think is meant to be a Flamenco dancer’s dress.

In the right hands, the programs are very inspirational, I’m sure. You won’t find one at St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church, though.

That’s where you’ll find Woods and Rood, with a penchant for the original and no end of moxie to pull it off. With an all-volunteer, in-house creative team, they build three-dimensional, interactive sets to support story lines unfolded by a cast of unique characters often played out by clergy and occasionally puppets.

This year, Professor Clarence C. Fesselbinder, his friend and colleague Penelope Jones (yes, she’s the daughter of Indiana Jones) and an as-yet unidentified puppet in a pulpit (no commentary on clergy, real or fictional, intended) will chronicle a tale of church history.

The program, this year called “Treasure Seekers,” will, I promise you, pack the house. It always does.

Fesselbinder is the curator of a recently established museum. Housed in what was once a church built during the American Revolutionary War, it is dedicated to the history of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

Chiseled-stone walls still bear the ornate, symbolic carvings of the church’s artisans. The roof, resting on massive wood beams tied to the walls, has sheltered the interior for nearly 200 years. In the center of the church’s great hall is a magnificent compass rose.

The compass, its points thought in ages past to resemble a rose, has been rendered on maps for hundreds of years. It was for a time called a wind rose because its main points indicate the earth’s eight winds.

On early maps, the letter “T,” which stood for the wind known as tramontana, marked the rose’s north point.

By the time Columbus set sail toward what would later be known as the New World, the “T” on many maps had been transformed into a fleur-de-lys, a sign commonly used for the Christian concept of one God in three persons, known as the Trinity.

A Maltese cross also began to replace the letter “L,” which had stood for the wind levante on the rose’s east side. It’s said the cross designated the direction to Paradise, or at least to where Christ had been born.

In time, the Church of England, or Anglican Church, adopted the compass rose as a symbol of its worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church remains a part.

Fesselbinder’s instincts keep whispering to him that the compass rose in this particular old church holds a secret to the past. If only the rose and the stones and the roof beams could speak to him, he thinks. If only they could set free the history lodged in them. Alas, he’ll have to uncover their secrets in the usual way but he can’t possibly do it alone.

The museum is crammed with packing crates filled with books and papers, maps and artifacts. All around him are rare vases, old chests and stone rubbings, as rife with symbolism as the walls surrounding them.

Altogether it’s much more than one person can possibly sort, verify, catalog and study. Soon, though, he’ll have help.

Penelope Jones is about to arrive. And so are all those keen, if amateur, treasure seekers coming from St. Wilfrid of York.

Ah, yes. The professor’s fondest dream is on the brink of coming true.

On Monday, everyone will meet at the Compass Rose Café that now adjoins the museum. They’ll have a fine dinner together then retire to the main hall of the old church to begin their work.

While they work, they’ll reminisce about some of his favorite moments in church history: how the first Book of Common Prayer was put together in 1549 under his beloved Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, one of the first martyrs of the Anglican Church and its reformation; how Christ Church in Boston played a role in Paul Revere’s famous ride and became known as Old North Church.

Oh, and best of all perhaps, he’ll explain how the Anglican Compass Rose, a rose just like the one right her beneath their feet, was designed by Canon Edward West of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Set in the nave of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Canterbury, England, it was dedicated by Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie in 1988.

They’ll get together every evening at 5:15 when dinner starts until they wrap things up at 8 p.m. There will even be music, accompanied by Jim Cubbin and his young protégé Stuart Millard from St. Wilfrid.

Delightful musicians! The professor will be as pleased as anyone to hear them again.

Oh, yes. Fesselbinder wants you to know you’re welcome to join his treasure hunt. Tuition is $10, and for that you get dinner and a brand new T-shirt with a compass rose on the front.

If you’re a kid, you’ll also get to make some cool crafts. At the end of the week, you’ll get a chest of treasures to take home.

Grown-ups get to choose from two classes: “Bread for the Journey,” a look at how to examine one’s spiritual journey and develop practices that act as the “bread” to support a journey of faith or “Blessing of a Skinned Knee,” instruction on how to raise self-reliant children using Jewish teachings.

To sign up for “Treasure Seekers” or for more information, call the Rev. Christy Dorn, St. Wilfrid of York’s director of family ministries, at (714) 962-7512.

If the $10 tuition is a hardship, let her know. Some scholarships are available.