He Said: Young Children & Worship: Creation Story

I began my preschool Godly Play storytelling with, well, the Beginning.  The foundational story is Creation and the way you tell this Story gives you a great foundation for how the Godly Play method works.  It sets you up for the intentional, repetitive, method that you will use for all the Young Children and Worship stories.  

Let me begin this post with how to make the Creation Cards.  Luckily for me, my wife had already made a set of Creation Cards for us to use with our kids at home.  I just borrowed them and took them to church to use for the time being (I will make my own set at some point).  The only thing I had to provide was the long, black, underlay that you unroll and place the cards on as you tell the Story and the tray to gather all the materials in.  We had large piece of black fabric in our church resource room, so I just cut the correct length and width according to the YCAW instructions.  I must admit, sewing is not my thing.  I am pretty good at arts and crafts, but I am no good with fabric.  My cut was pretty ugly, but the underlay works just fine.  I think perfection is the first hangup you need to abandon!  Just do your best and remember the focus in on the Story and not the materials.  

Creation Cards Tray 

When Susan made the Cards, she photocopied the templates from YCAW and then traced them on heavyweight scrap-booking paper.  She used earth-toned and textured paper, so they look really amazing.  When I make mine, I will probably just use regular cardstock because I'm not as cool as her.  :) After she pasted all the pieces on, she covered the assembled cards with self-adhesive laminating sheets (I prefer the Scotch brand of sheets).  Cut off the excess lamination and you are good to go.  Once I got them to church, I found an old wooden tray that was the perfect width to hold the cards and underlay and even had tall enough sides so the cards stand up in it.  The official Creation Card trays use grooves or dowel rods so each card has its own slot, but I don't think that's really necessary.  My Cards are just stacked in order.

When it came time to do the story, I was a little nervous.  I am pretty busy at work with my two roles as children's minister and preschool director, so I didn't get a ton of time to practice or memorize the storytelling pattern.  One thing that really helped though was to watch someone else do the story on YouTube.  University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, WA posts demonstrations of the storytelling on their channel.  Besides getting to see the entire story presentation, the thing that made me most comfortable was seeing an experienced Godly Play leader didn't have everything memorized.  She referred to an open 3-ring binder while she told the story, so she wouldn't miss the words.  In the Godly Play method, the words ARE important and we need to make sure we use the intentional language as we share the stories.  

I share the Story with the preschoolers at my church.  We have three classes: Twos, Threes, and Fours.  Each class comes to me at a different time to keep the numbers smaller while I tell the story.  The Twos classes only have 6-7 children, while the Threes and Fours have 10-14.  At first, I didn't have a classroom set aside for Godly Play, so I just met with them in an unused class that had an open area I could use for storytelling.  In November, I had time to get an old class that we aren't using cleaned out and partially set up to be a dedicated Godly Play Room (I will do a setting up a Godly Play classroom post later).  With this lesson, I set everything up on the floor so it would be easy for the kids to see everything.  

My only real problem with telling the story was the kids who kept creeping forward so they were right on top of the Creation Cards.  We have several kids who have to touch everything to experience it fully!  Of course, that is fully expected with preschoolers.  I have a couple who are a little more aggressive though.  I just kept right on following the story pattern.  When it got to be too much, I just stopped and called the child's name and very gently asked them not to touch.  At this point Godly Play was totally new for them.  We used to do our Bible Story times in our church's small chapel where the kids were separated from me in pews.  Now they were right up there with me and totally interested in my props.  I tried to be intentional about keeping my voice at a low volume and very pleasant and so far that has worked very well.  Try number one went pretty well for a novice Godly Play facilitator!

He Said: Godly Play with Preschoolers (1st Semester)

The Creation Story from Young Children and Worship

My wife and I have danced around using Godly Play with our kids and at our various churches since we were introduced to it at a CBF-Georgia General Assembly break-out session about 8 years ago.  Susan jumped on it more quickly than I did and bought the book, Young Children and Worship, several years ago.  She has already blogged about using Godly Play with our children here and here.  Attending the Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity conference in May of 2012 renewed my desire to change the way we introduce our children to faith.  At my church, I am not only the Children's Minister, I am also the director of our weekday preschool program.  I decided over the summer that I was going to start using Godly Play to share God's Story with the 2-4 year olds during our weekly chapel time.  

There are 40 stories in the Young Children and Worship book.  Because our school year runs from September-May, I had to work around school breaks, and I wanted to follow the lectionary calendar as closely as possible, I could only cover 30 of the stories in YCAW.  I wanted to hit the essential Old and New Testament stories, but I still had to leave out things I wish I could have included.  Here are the stories I covered in the Fall semester:

Creation

Exodus

The Ten Best Ways to Live

The Ark and a Tent for God

The Promised Land

Exile and Return

Advent: The Prophets Show the Way to Bethlehem

Advent: Mary and Joseph Show the Way to Bethlehem

Advent:The Shepherds Show the Way to Bethlehem

Advent: The Magi Show the Way to Bethlehem

One of the first things you need to know is that it takes a lot of prep time to prepare to tell the stories from YCAW.  Each story requires you to prepare or construct some or all of the following: people figures, a landscape or background, buildings, biblical items (the ark, altars, etc.), picture cards.  You also have to gather supplies like baskets, candles, and stones to use to tell each story or hold the materials.  YCAW has templates for all the figures and buildings that you can photocopy and use.  Where they don't have templates, they do have instructions and diagrams on what to make.  The book recommends you make the figures out of wood, but that is REALLY time-consuming and potentially difficult if you don't have the proper woodworking tools.  There are several places online where you can buy the story-sets pre-made like Worship Woodworks and Godly Play Resources (the official Godly Play store).  Complete sets are expensive though, ranging in price from $90 to almost $400!  Not very helpful for your budgets!  As an alternative, I have been photocopying the templates for the figures from the book and either pasting them to posterboard or laminating them before I cut them out.  Some of the materials I have made from cardboard and painted or from other random woodscraps that I have at home or church.  I have also collected a lot of the other materials like fabric from what I already had.  

My plan now is to make an individual post for each of the above stories.  I will share what materials I used to put the story together, including any shortcuts or effective substitutions I discovered.  I also want to reflect on how telling the story went for each age group and share the things I noticed about their attention and interaction with each story. I hope that you will find these posts useful.

He Said: Children's Bible Suggestions

I have been leading a Family Faith Formation discussion group on Wednesdays at church.  Recently, we started the discussion on why it's so important to teach our children that the Bible is a Story and not just a book full of propositions.  Susan has already posted her thoughts on the power of Story here.  Here is another good article on the Bible and children from the blog Bread Not Stones.  I recommend reading both posts before you look at the Bibles.  

Anyway, it is essential for our children's faith to help them understand what the Bible is and is not!  One of the parents in the group wanted me to recommend what Bibles to use with children once they move up from board and toddler Bibles.  I took a stack of Bibles with me and talked through the pros and cons of each one with those parents.  Here are my feelings on each one:

THE RHYME BIBLE

 The Rhyme Bible Storybook by Zonderkidz is a good Bible to use when you are transitioning from reading board books with your toddler to reading with your preschool age children.  Like it say in the title, all of the scriptures have been simplified into rhymes which makes for easy reading and remembering.  It also simplifies by narrowing the included stories to the main basics.  I like that it includes the story of Esther so there is at least one hero who is not a boy!  The main thing I don't like about this Bible is the illustrations.  Everyone is white!  Eve is blonde!!  Not showing the people of the Bible with darker skin and hair is one of my pet peeves (the events of the Bible took place in the Middle East and Mediterranean!).  The Rhyme Bible Storybook is pretty easy to find stocked at Barnes & Noble or your local Christian bookstore.  It's about $18 if you buy it off the shelf, but you can find it on Amazon for Christianbook.com for around $12.


THE JESUS STORYBOOK BIBLE

The Jesus Storybook Bible is another Bible by Zonderkidz and is relatively new (copyright 2007).  I really like that it starts off with an explanation of God's Story.  The author takes time to introduce that everything in Creation tells and helps us understand God's Story, not just the words put into the Bible.  She also explains in terms children can understand the common perceptions of what the Bible is (a set of rules, a book of heroes), but makes clear that we are to understand the Bible as a huge, sprawling, story of what God has done that includes people, adventures, some rules, mistakes, and even bad behavior by those people.  I like the artwork in this Bible.  The people definitely look less White/Anglo-Saxon and more Mediterranean/Middle Eastern.  My main issue with using this Bible is it's focus on making every story in the Old Testament be about Jesus.  I'm all for making connections, but I can still hear my OT professors from seminary saying, "Jesus is not in the Hebrew Scriptures!  They were not written for Christians!"  The author is also very focused on the theme of rescue which is definitely a valid Biblical theme.  God did rescue the Israelites over and over from various situations, but there were also times when God didn't rescue them and let the natural consequences of their actions play out.  The rescue theme also bothers me when it comes to the Cross.  I am not a proponent of Substitutionary Atonement theory (the idea that Jesus died on the cross as a substitute for all of the sins of humankind), especially when it comes to teaching children.  When I am introducing God to children, I don't want to associate God with violence.  How you deal with those ideas is up to you though.  It depends on your theology of the Atonement and what you think and feel about what Jesus accomplished on the cross.  I'm just telling you how I feel about that.  The Jesus Storybook Bible is easily found at you local retailers.   You can get it from Amazon or Christianbook.com for less than $10.  

THE SPARK STORYBOOK BIBLE

The Spark Storybook Bible is published by Augsburg Fortress.  This is the Bible that we use for preschool through Second Grade classes at my church.  It is designed to be used with the SPARK children's Sunday School curriculum.  It paraphrases 150 Bible stories but doesn't lose the intent or details of the stories.  The language is very accessible and easy for children to understand.  The illustrations are a little cartoonish, but at least they depict the characters with dark skin colors (can you tell I'm big on depicting Biblical characters in their appropriate culture?).  I also like that the authors give simple questions for further thought or instructions for an activity that connects the story to real life at the end of each story.  The only thing I don't like is the "expressive caterpillar, Squiggles" that the illustrator puts in the pictures that accompany each story.  They put him in so the children have someone to relate to, but I would rather give kids the opportunity to relate to the actual Biblical characters.  Overall, a really good Bible for younger kids.  You can purchase the SPARK Story Bible from Augsburg Fortress or Amazon for $20.  

EVERLASTING STORIES
This is currently my favorite children's Bible!  I would recommend it for older children though who are, at the very least, out of preschool.  The reason I would save it for older kids is because it doesn't leave out sections of the Bible that deal with difficult subjects.  It covers all the familiar and foundational Old Testament stories like Creation, Noah & the Flood, Abraham & the Covenant, Joseph & Egypt, Moses & the Exodus, David & the Great Kings, Jonah & the Fish,etc.  What I love though is that, unlike most children's Bibles, it includes the stories that detail how Israel fell apart into Northern and Southern Kingdoms.  It includes stories from the Exile after Israel is conquered and God's people are forced to leave their homeland.  I especially love that it includes the story of Hosea, who God raised up to be a prophet, but required him to marry a woman who was an adulterer who cheated on him.  That sounds like a story that parents should be uncomfortable explaining to children, but Hosea's faithfulness to his marriage is a beautiful picture of God's enduring faithfulness to us, his children who constantly stray from our relationship with God.  Another thing I love about this Bible is it's use of poetry from the Psalms and the Prophets to enhance the telling of the stories.  In the OT especially, it will pair up Psalms with the stories they refer to.  For example, the Creation Story includes quotations from Psalm 24:1-2 (The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it...) and helps put that Psalm in it's proper context while also making the telling of the Creation Story richer.  Everlasting Stories also includes a brief introduction to each Testament that helps the reader understand the types of literature in the Bible, how the writings were gathered together, and in what original languages we found those writings.  Finally, I must say that the illustrations in Everlasting Stories are simply amazing.  I love that all the people, especially Jesus, look Mediterranean or Middle Eastern.  Beyond that, the pictures in the book are seriously artistic.  It's like reading an ancient illuminated Bible with your children. Unfortunately, Everlasting Stories is not found on bookshelves at Barnes & Noble or your local Christian retailer.  The best place to find a copy for your family is at Amazon.com or Abebooks.com where you can find this amazing Bible for as little as $1 plus shipping.  Talk about value for your money!


THE CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH VERSION

Finally, for your older elementary kids or kids who read very well, I would recommend getting them a CEV Children's Bible.  This particular version, The Children's Illustrated Version, is published by the American Bible Society, a Bible translation initiative.  They created the CEV with the hearer of scripture in mind, not just the reader.  The CEV "has been described as a 'user-friendly' and a 'mission-driven' translation that can be read aloud without stumbling, heard without misunderstanding, and listened to with enjoyment and appreciation, because the language is contemporary and the style is lucid and lyrical" (quoted from the introduction to The Children's Illustrated Version).  This is not a paraphrase.  You get the Bible in it's entirety, but it is easy to read and helps make children comfortable with the Bible.  There are no Thees or Thous in this translation!  The illustrations are kinda dated and cheesy, but this Bible was published in the mid-1990s.  It is out of print, but you can still find it at Amazon or Christianbook.com for around $15 or you can go to used book sites like Abebooks.com and get it for $1 plus shipping.  

Well, there are the Bibles I would recommend.  I hope this helps your family find a Bible that you will use at home!

She said: A prayer tool

I am an awful pray-er. Truly awful, at least in the way that I expect prayer should be. I think, though, that this is the way many of us feel in our society. We're programmed to do, do, do. Our minds jump from one thing to the next. Sitting still without some kind of screen in front of us is just not gonna happen. I suspect that I am not the only one who secretly shrieks in dismay at the idea of quiet meditation, even as I intellectually accept the value of it.  Good grief, sitting still in silence with only my own words to fill my head sounds like the first level of hell to me.

It's no wonder I'm a bad pray-er.

Except...I know that prayer doesn't have to be sitting still in a quiet space with either my own words or no words. I know that it can take different forms. I have dabbled with different forms. I have tried walking prayer. I have tried prayer books. I have tried prayer journalling. I have tried praying while I do yoga (the sound of my loud breathing and crackling joints distracts me, however).

I have not been consistent with any of it, though.
The only consistent prayer time I have is my prayer time with my children.

Every night, I say a prayer with each of my kids. They are often fumbling, grasping for words prayers. I'm sure I leave a lot out that could be said. I definitely repeat a lot of the same phrases over and over. But I pray with them. For a moment each night, I am focused on the Presence of God-With-Us. For a moment my heart cries out to the Mysterious One. For a moment, I put aside the to-do lists and the i-don't-know-what-to-says and I just pray, whether I feel like it or not.

It's because of my kids that I have any real prayer life at all.

Let me be clear...This is not good that I rely on my kids for a prayer life; it just is. And though I have a lot of work to do on the prayer front, today I am thankful for one daily spiritual practice that is consistent and that we do together.

Even that consistency, though, needs evaluating. It's easy for me to pray for my kids each night. It's easy to pray for our little family. They are the most constant source of joy and fear in my life, so of course I'll pray for them, and I want my kids to hear me pray for them. But I also want to pray for people beyond our little family, and that's harder for me to do with consistency and with a specificity that my young kids will understand.

Enter...the prayer book.

I got the idea from a friend's Pinterest pin. It's just a small photo journal with photos of people we want to pray for. At the link, you will see a beautiful prayer book made with a scrapbooking kit. Mine are much simpler, as scrapbooking is no love of mine, but we are still loving our not-as-beautiful books. I made one book for each kid out of cheap $1 photo books from Walmart. On each page of the book, I put a small picture (printed on cardstock) of either a person or organization we'd like to pray for, and there's space on each page to add a small sticky note with particular prayer requests if we want, though we haven't done that yet.

I find these little prayer books helpful because they remind me to pray beyond the usual words, and they give us all an image to see as we pray. In addition to our regular prayers, we pray for one picture a day, and the kids enjoy checking to see who/what it will be today. The organization pages (which includes our church and school) also give me a chance to explain to them about some organizations that are doing important work, and they help us remember people we don't necessarily see. I've left some pages at the back of the photo book blank so we can add new faces/logos as we wish, and of course all of the pages can easily be switched out or around.

This is just one small but helpful tool in our prayer lives right now.

It's not the end of my quest for a better prayer life, though. I'm pretty sure that'll be a lifelong quest. Sometimes the quest feels a bit like drudgery. Like exercise or washing dishes ... something that really should be done even though I just don't feel like it. Sometimes I feel like it; sometimes I don't. But relationships are never about doing only what we feel like doing, and so I will try to join with my family in the quest for a more authentic relationship with our Creator, even when I just want to sleep.

He Said: Divine Imagination and Godly Play

I think one of the biggest issues facing the Church is that it has lost the ability to inhabit God’s Divine Imagination. At the CYNKC conference I attended in May, several of the presenters lamented about how good our churches have gotten at building programs and education events at the expense of cultivating our imaginations. It seems that we have ended up in a place where the adults in our churches can no longer imagine what our world would look like if God’s Kingdom is truly at hand as Jesus told the disciples over and over in the Gospels.  Our lack of cultivating Divine Imagination seems to be one of the main reasons Millennials (ie. young people) are leaving the church despite the fact that churches have given them so much attention over the last few decades.  

Ivy Beckwith, a long time children’s minister and author of Formational Children’s Ministry, 

says in the Church we do things with lack of imagination so we have not captured the imaginations of young people in order to change the world.   She told a story from her own experience about meeting with church leaders at her church who were having a fear-filled conversation about money at the time of the 2008 financial crisis.  After listening to lots of in-the-box, woe-is-me talk, Ivy told them the story of George Mueller.  Mueller was a British reformer who ran an orphanage in Bristol, England in the 1800s. Mueller never asked for money to support the ministry, but, instead, always prayed for God to provide. Ivy chose to tell the leaders about the time when he and the children had sat down and given thanks for their breakfast even though there was no food left in the pantry.  Before they knew it, there was a knock at the door and the baker delivered them a load of fresh bread, telling Mueller that God had sent a dream to him in the night telling the baker to make an extra batch of bread for the orphanage.  Shortly after the bread delivery, there was another knock at the door and the milkman stood before them.  The milkman explained that he needed to give his milk away before it spoiled because his cart had broken down right outside of the orphanage as he headed to the market.  When Ivy was done telling this story to the church leaders, they just stared at her, not knowing how to respond.  These responsible adults who were dedicated to the ministry of the church couldn’t imagine that God would work in this way. They demonstrated a lack of imagination.


What a disturbing story!  How are we, the Church, going to fully participate in the Kingdom of God and envision a new way in our world, if we can't participate in God's Imagination?  More simply put, how can we change the world if we can't imagine what it would look like?  I think we are losing young people at an alarming rate because we can't engage their imaginations.  I don't want my kids to abandon their lives of faith because all of us older Christians can't give them any sense of hope for the world.  Those of us who are parents and influencers of children need to work harder at cultivating our own imaginations.  We need to work harder at getting inside God's Imagination.  Do we really believe what God has promised us?  Do we take Jesus at his word?  Jesus told his disciples over and over, "The Kingdom of God is at hand!"  Jesus said, "The Lord’s Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom
for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, ‘This is the year the Lord has chosen.’” (Luke 4:18-19).  What would our world look like if all of us could imagine the Kingdom of God being real?  This is the year the Lord has chosen because every year the Kingdom is at hand!


I know how hard it is for adults to change their patterns once they are developed.  A colleague of mine in seminary once said that we all have "brain grooves" that we develop as we grow and some people's are way deeper than others!  That's why I feel so compelled to help kids develop Divine Imagination as early as possible.  We need to give them space and opportunities to develop Divine Imagination-oriented brain grooves while they are growing and developing.  That's why Susan and I have talked so much about Godly Play (see her two intro to Godly Play posts here: Part 1 and Part 2).  


For me, the power of Godly Play lies in choice.  Unfortunately, our kids live in a world where most of their lives are dictated to them.  They are being taught how to think at school, how to feel and consume by various kinds of media, and how to overfill their schedules by their over committed parents.  We are wringing the imagination out of our kids!  Our responsibility as the Church and as parents of faith is to create places for them to explore.  When we give our kids room to explore, we're acknowledging that children and God have a relationship we can nurture and not control.  Catherine Maresca, the founder of The Center for Children and Theology, said something amazing at CYNKC: "To help children be with Jesus, we need to learn to get out of the way."   We need to give them independence and respect as they interact with God on their own.  This is how we create the fertile ground where their Divine Imaginations can develop.  


The great weakness of our Christian Education efforts over the last four to five decades is our over-emphasis on giving kids all the answers.  We tell them the Great Story of faith, but then instead of allowing them to find their place in that Story, we tell them exactly what it means and how they should live in response.  Godly Play has the opposite intent.   Godly Play respects the innate spirituality of children and encourages curiosity and imagination in experiencing the mystery and joy of God (from the Godly Play Foundation website).  Godly Play is open-ended.  Instead of telling the kids what to think or asking specific discussion questions where answers are expected to be given, a Godly Play lesson ends with questions that begin with "I wonder..." and the leader expects no concrete answers in response.  Godly Play offers choice.  Instead of doing pre-packaged crafts that illustrate the lesson, Godly Play offers children the opportunity to work with natural materials that they choose. 
Why is choice so important for children?  Choice of materials give children an opportunity to meet their need of the day (are they sad? Shy? Bouncy? Etc.) Choice also emphasizes that there are so many ways to meet God and should celebrate them all.  When kids are in crisis they can choose what is comforting to them at that moment. Also, Children are best served by their hands, so when you give them choices you give them things to touch.  


Susan and I will continue to get into the nuts and bolts of using Godly Play with our kids at home and at church.  But for now, I am convinced that Godly Play is the best way to help our kids meet and develop a relationship God on their own terms and foster the Divine Imagination that they will need their entire lives!

A foray into Godly Play, part two

Yesterday I explained a little bit about what Godly Play is, particularly as it's conceived for a faith education classroom in a church. We, however, use Godly Play at home rather than in a church setting (though there has been some discussion about introducing Godly Play elements at our church).

Our Godly-Play-at-home experience is a bit more relaxed (maybe sometimes too relaxed), less formal and structured than in a classroom setting. We typically tell the stories at our dining table, often in the evening after baths but before bedtime routines. This seems to be the best time for us to practice storytelling together, a time when we're all together and not pulled in different directions, but we're still working on establishing a consistent pattern, particularly as extracurricular activites often make our evenings late.

Though I would like to work up to adding a creative work time to our Godly Play experience, at this point we're mainly playing with the stories and haven't established a creative response time. It's been fun, though to see our kids respond to the stories. We often give them a chance to tell the stories after we have introduced them, which allows the kids a time to process and manipulate the story elements.

There are only a few resources we need for at-home Godly Play. The most important resource is a storybook, of course! Though the church curriculum involves quite a number of script books, we're using the book Young Children and Worship, by Sonja Stewart and Jerome Berryman, which contains all of the basic stories for the church year. We also have its later companion book Following Jesus, which contains a lot of the Gospel stories that aren't in the first book. These two books are great for at-home use because not only do they have the story scripts, they also have directions, diagrams, and patterns for making story elements at home.

The most daunting aspect of Godly Play to me, initially, was the need to gather and make story elements. Though you can buy beautiful wooden sets for the stories, they're expensive and not a good option for us. But the most important part of Godly Play is experiencing the story, not having beautifully hand-crafted elements, and there are a number of ways to collect at-home story sets with minimal prep work and items that you may already have on hand. I have done such things as:

• create posterboard figures using the patterns in Young Children and Worship
• build cityscapes and tables using cardboard or foam board
• create buildings using regular wood play blocks
• use peg people or Lego people or Fisher Price Little People for story characters
• pull out fabric scraps or felt pieces for story underlays

My storyscapes are not beautiful, but they serve the purpose of making a story come to life (though I'm trying not to use the Lego or Fisher Price people too much just because they can be a distraction!). We also don't have the space or the baskets to have separate boxes for every story, so instead we just use a couple photo boxes in which we collect all of our story pieces. I try to keep one story basket on the table that contains the story items for our most recent story.

There are a number of other blogs that are great to explore if you're thinking about starting Godly Play at home. Here are a couple of my favorites:

• Watkins Every Flavor Beans has a great series of posts about getting started with Godly Play at home, including ways to use what you already have.
• My favorite blog for doable Godly Play inspiration is Explore and Express, written by an American expat living in Germany, so her blog is in both German and English! She shares some of what they do at home, at church (a small church plant) and in the schools (because German schools teach religion).  I could spend hours searching there.
• YouTube also has videos of info about Godly Play and of trained leaders telling many of the stories, which is a great help to those of us who haven't seen it done in person.

And here are a few pictures of some stories we've played with at home:


One of my first attempts, for the parable of the Great Banquet.



Palm Sunday - that's a posterboard Jesus on donkey



Creation - making and laminating the individual cards was
more labor intensive than most of the stories we have done

For a few weeks in the spring I tried to correspond our at-home stories with the stories the kids were learning about in Sunday School, but in the end I decided to give that up because it was hard to plan for it, and I like sticking to the timeline of Young Children and Worship. Now we have started back at the beginning - Creation - and are going to work our way through the Young Children and Worship book.

This week while I was out running errands one evening, I asked Brian to have the kids tell him the Creation story (because he hadn't been home when we introduced this story). He told me later that our 4-year-old took the first story card (which is supposed to depict "God made light") and said, "God made us a big present." Well, yes, exactly! God made us a big present. And how wonderful that we can explore it together!

A foray into Godly Play, part one

I mentioned last week that we've been experimenting with an open-ended story-based curriculum called Godly Play at our home. I found out about Godly Play in a break-out session at a conference a number of years ago, back when I was a Children's Minister. Something about it captured my imagination. It's unlike any other curriculum I had experienced, and I loved it.

Godly Play was developed by Jerome Berryman, who uses a Montessori approach to spiritual development. Here's how the Godly Play Foundation describes this methodology:

Godly Play teaches children the art of using Christian language - parable, sacred story, silence and liturgical action - helping them become more fully aware of the mystery of God’s presence in their lives.

When Christian language is learned by the Godly Play approach, it is learned as a means to know God and to make meaning of our lives. This approach is quite different from the traditional model in which the teacher tells the children what they need to know. Godly Play is not about things that are that simple. It is not just about learning lessons or keeping children entertained. It is about locating each lesson in the whole system of Christian language and involving the creative process to discover the depths of meaning in them. It’s about understanding how each of the stories of God’s people connects with the child’s own experience and relationship with God. Godly Play respects the innate spirituality of children and encourages curiosity and imagination in experiencing the mystery and joy of God.

It "encourages curiosity and imagination in experiencing the mystery and joy of God."
Yes! That's what I want for my children!

But what does that mean in practical terms? How does that work? (I was a science major and a math teacher...can you tell?)

A full-fledged Godly Play session in a church setting is arranged in a worship-like manner that includes welcome, prayer, story, creative work/expression, music - like a worship service with a creative bent. Each story, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, is told by a trained leader, on the floor, with beautiful wooden figures and other natural elements like wool felt or cotton fabric or sand. This is no workbook page activity, but a visual and physical experience of the story. Each story is followed by "wondering" statements that children may respond to (i.e. "I wonder how Moses felt about this..."). The wondering is intended to help the children further imagine themselves into the story, helping them to see or feel it in new ways, but not giving them right or wrong answers.

Each story has its own basket or box for the story elements. A Godly Play room is arranged with shelves full of these story baskets and other faith symbols so that during the creative work time, children may work with both the current story or other stories they've already experienced. Connections between stories are encouraged, drawing a Big Story together.

After the story is told, children have a creative work time in which to respond to the story. This could include playing with the story figures or making art that responds to the story experience. For some groups, this can be very open-ended, while for others (particularly younger ages) there may be a more directed expression type ... but not a specific end product. The goal is not to create a prescribed craft but to involve a child's imagination and experience in creative expression of the spiritual story. There's no right or wrong expression, though there is still an emphasis on respectful behavior!

Though the church where my kids attend Art Camp every summer uses Godly Play (and I'm sure there are other churches around that do as well), I've never actually seen it done in a church. It's more common in the Episcopalian and other mainline traditions, I think, but it's rare in mine (Baptist, of the moderate ilk), so most of my limited knowledge comes from books and blogs. The Wonder Circle is a great blog showing in detail how it is being done in a church during the Sunday School hour. If you use Godly Play at your church, I'd love to hear about your experience of it!

Godly Play is such a different way of doing faith education that to switch to Godly Play from a more traditional Sunday School curriculum would require a concerted effort and buy-in by a lot of people in a church that's never done it that way before. The story-telling is different. The art is different. The supplies are different. The room set-up is different. The theory of education is different. It's daunting. Some churches, then, use it during a time other than Sunday morning. Some churches even use it with adults (and I'll say from my own limited experience that I could see how it would be wonderful in an adult spiritual formation setting as well).

We, however, use it at home. Or, I should say, we're trying. We're new at this and are still experimenting with how to best incorporate Godly Play into our home. We've still got a lot to learn, but tomorrow we'll share some of what we've been trying and the resources we use ... in Part two ...