Godly Play® News

Curriculum Updates and Revisions in the Expanded 2nd Edition of Volume 3

Our curriculum updates, grammar and illustration revisions, and new stories continue with the revised and expanded second edition of The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Volume 3!

QUICK GUIDE: 2017 CURRICULUM UPDATES – VOLUME 3

For a quick guide to the 2017 curriculum updates in Volume 3, please see our one-page handout noting the changes you will find detailed in the revised and expanded second edition. We suggest that every Godly Play teacher receive a copy and that you leave a copy in each of your Godly Play rooms.

2017 Curriculum Updates – Volume 3

REVISED AND EXPANDED SECOND EDITION OF VOLUME 3

Be sure to order the new revised and expanded edition to discover the details of these updates for yourself!

Beyond the new practice, the new story, and the new words for the stories you already love, the new edition of Volume 3 includes significant grammar and illustration revisions to better support your program.

Order the book in print

Order the individual stories in digital form

Order digital Parent Pages

Continue reading

Drawing Close to God: A Reflection by Alyssa Pasternak Post

I began working in parish-based children’s ministry when my youngest child was just two months old. Churches are familiar places to them. Children’s spaces in particular become like an extension of our living room.

Recently my daughters helped me to select and prepare a small gift to give each student and teacher at our parish’s Blessing of the Backpacks – pocket-sized holding crosses made of olive wood in Bethlehem. Sitting in our Godly Play room, the girls took up the big work of taping said crosses to prayer cards and placing them neatly in baskets so that they could be handed out at each Mass.

Finally, this weekend they could place their new pocket crosses in one of the cool zippered compartments on their backpacks. (The one on the shoulder strap seemed to be the most awesome, in case you’re wondering.) Continue reading

Curriculum Updates and Revisions in the Expanded 2nd Edition of Volume 2

Yes, we have updated our curriculum, revised grammar and illustrations, and are adding new stories! Many of you had an opportunity to see the changes at our 2017 North American Godly Play Conference. This good news needs to be spread!

Quick Guide: 2017 Curriculum Updates – Volume 2

For a quick guide to the 2017 curriculum updates in Volume 2, please see our one-page handout noting the changes you will find detailed in the revised and expanded second edition. We suggest that every Godly Play teacher receive a copy and that you leave a copy in each of your Godly Play rooms.

2017 Curriculum Updates – Volume 2

Revised and Expanded Second Edition of Volume 2

For background information on how we got here, please take a minute to read the below story explaining the reasons and processes for the curriculum updates.

But most importantly, be sure to order the new revised and expanded edition to discover the details of these updates for yourself!

Beyond the new practice, the new story, and new words for the stories you already love, the new edition of Volume 2 includes significant grammar and illustration revisions to better support your program.

Order the book in print

Order the individual stories in digital form

Continue reading

John Pridmore Wrestles with the Angel of Childhood

A Book Review by Jeannie Babb

Playing with Icons: The Spirituality of Recalled Childhood
By John Pridmore
with foreward by Jerome Berryman

197 pp. The Center for the Theology of Childhood. $24.95

cover detail from Playing with IconsJohn Pridmore’s thorough and insightful book will capture the imagination of those who nurture children, especially in religious settings. Playing with Icons offers more an analysis of beautifully written case studies than a scientific survey. Pridmore, a retired Anglican priest, based his study on published autobiographies of childhood. He lists over a hundred such works in the bibliography, weaving evocative passages throughout the body of the book.

Pridmore invites the reader on an existential journey to play with and welcome the child. He likens children to icons, which when painted on wood gaze past us to behold God, even as we gaze at them and beyond them to God. Like an icon, a child’s vision of the divine lends us our own sighting. Pridmore invites us not only to pray with these icons, but to play with them and recognize this playfulness as a sort of prayer. Continue reading

All We Can Do is Begin

Based on an interview with the Rev. Thomas Blackmon by Sally Thomas

The Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana clergy directory lists the Rev. Thomas Blackmon as retired – but that has not stopped Tom and his wife, Molly Steele, from launching a new vision for Godly Play ministry in Honduras.

Tom Blackmon teaches children in Honduras

I wonder . . .

Tom has been a friend of Jerome Berryman and Godly Play for over thirty years; this June in Denver, he will step down from the Godly Play Foundation Board after 18 years of service. I first met Tom in Sewanee in 1997. Many of us remember with deep appreciation Tom’s phone calls as we were traveling to Core trainings beginning in 1999. They would always start, “I have been praying for you and your circle. I want you to know that.”  Tom is a visionary and dedicated partner in building Godly Play programs. Continue reading