Olive Fleming Drane is a Scottish theologian and Christian minister who is widely known for her use of clowning in the pulpit. As her clown characters Valentine and Barni she has traveled the world, and been featured in radio and TV programs in many countries. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, she was educated in England and there she met her husband John Drane

John Drane

John William Drane is a theologian who is probably best known for his two best-selling books on the Bible, Introducing the Old Testament and Introducing the New Testament . He studied in the University of Aberdeen where he was a student of I...

 while they were both teenagers. She originally worked in research physics and medical technology, but then studied theology at the Graduate Theological Union

Graduate Theological Union

The Graduate Theological Union ' is a consortium of nine independent theological schools, and eleven centers and affiliates. Eight of the theological schools are located in Berkeley, California. The GTU was founded in 1962. It maintains the Graduate Theological Union Library, one of the most...

 in Berkeley, California, in the early 1990s, and also has a Master of Theology degree from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
She works alongside local churches as a mission consultant as well as continuing a worldwide ministry of teaching and preaching. She is a Fellow of St John's College, Durham

St John's College, Durham

St John's College is a college of the University of Durham, United Kingdom. It is one of only two 'Recognised Colleges' of the University, the other being St Chad's. This means that it is financially and constitutionally independent of the University and has a greater degree of administrative...

, where she teaches on the MA in theology and ministry at the Anglican theological school Cranmer Hall. She is also an adjunct professor in the School of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary

Fuller Theological Seminary

Fuller Theological Seminary is an accredited Christian educational institute with its main campus in Pasadena, California and several satellite campuses in the western United States...

, Pasadena, California, and is involved in the teaching and development of the mission shaped ministry course of the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

's Fresh Expressions

Fresh expressions

Fresh expressions are any of a number of new church groups that have developed within the Church of England since 1990. These believe that 21st century British society is very different from the society when most British churches were formed and that traditional expressions of church have become...

initiative.

Publications

• Family Get Together: Planning All-Age Worship (Birmingham: Administry 1990)

• Contributor, Janet Litherland (ed), Who’s Who and What’s New in Clown Ministry (Colorado Springs: Meriwether Press 1993)

• ‘Bible Readings’, in Setting the Agenda: the Report of the 1999 Church of England Conference on Evangelism (London: Church House Publishing 1999), pp. 11-19

• New Start: All-age Ecumenical Liturgical Resources for Advent 2000 (London: CTBI 2000)

• ‘Breaking into Dynamic Ways of being Church’, in Breaking New Ground: the first Scottish Ecumenical Assembly (Dunblane: ACTS 2001), pp. 138-154

• Being Creative with Forms of Worship (Sheffield: Administry, 2002), Administry How-To Guide 3/2

• Clowns, Storytellers, Disciples (Oxford: BRF 2002; Minneapolis: Augsburg Press 2004)

• co-authored with John Drane, Family Fortunes: faith-full caring for today's families (London: Darton Longman & Todd 2004)

• Spirituality to Go: rituals and reflections for everyday living (London: Darton Longman & Todd 2006)

• co-authored with John Drane, "Worship and Preaching", in Janet Wootton (ed), This is our Story: Free Church Women’s Ministry (Peterborough: Epworth Press 2007), pp. 50-67.

• [With John Drane] ‘Children and Death’, in Anne Richards & Peter Privett (eds), Through the Eyes of a Child (London: Church House Publishing, 2009)

• 'The Holy Fool: Clowning in Christian ministry', in The Bible in Transmission Spring 2011, 17-19

Video

• [With Peter Neilson], Towards Tomorrow: Exploring your Church’s Future (Church of Scotland Dept. of National Mission 1997)

Websites

• Olive Fleming Drane blogs at http://2churchmice.wordpress.com
• See also http://spirituality2go.com