Godly Play® News
When the Good Shepherd calls your name
There was once someone who said such amazing things and did such wonderful things that people followed him. They couldn’t help it. They wanted to know who he was, so they just had to ask him.
So begins the beloved Parable of the Good Shepherd in the Godly Play repertoire. As we approach Good Shepherd Sunday, we invite you to come closer. Lean into the circle as the lid comes off the box that is the Godly Play Foundation. I wonder what’s inside?
Once when they asked him who he was, he said “I am the Good Shepherd . . . I know each one of the sheep by name.” Continue reading
The Fires in Kansas
The Wichita Eagle
Many of you have asked about our friends and colleagues in Ashland, Kansas after the entire town was evacuated Monday due to uncontrollable wildfires ripping through the region. As Patricia Carney posted on Facebook: “I suspect many of us in the Godly Play world feel as though we have family in Ashland, Kansas! Prayers continue!”
We are grateful to report that all of the Foundation employees at Godly Play Resources are safe and their houses still stand. Godly Play Resources headquarters was spared, and the team is beginning to return to work. Your thoughts and prayers pouring in meant so much to Mike, Teresa, Connie, Teika, and all of our vendors and the professionals who serve the Foundation.
But the destruction to the area was significant. Continue reading
Sacred Space for Godly Play
by Jeannie Babb
Liturgical spaces help us come close to God
Where do you go when you need to pause, ground yourself, and reconnect with the Holy Spirit?
Sometimes I like to slip into an empty church and walk up the aisle, watching where the sun slants through the windows and lightly touching the wood of each pew until I find a place to kneel. I notice how the space feels sacred even when empty of the souls who have invested it with such meaning. A church is a people, not merely a building; yet I find holiness in this very space set aside for worship, as if the wood and stones are saturated with so many prayers from thousands and thousands of services.
Another place I find that sense of reverence is in the Godly Play space. Continue reading
Enclosing a space in which to be open
A book review and interview with Jerome Berryman, author of Becoming Like a Child: The Curiosity of Maturity Beyond the Norm
by Jeannie Babb
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).
Focusing on a single saying of Jesus, Jerome Berryman’s latest work combines decades of research with a lifetime of practice with lively stories from the Godly Play classroom. It’s the kind of book I want to spend much more time with, before saying anything at all. Yet, I also want to share it with you as soon as possible, because I hope you will read it and share it, and we can discuss it.
Becoming Like a Child (Church Publishing, 2017) is the sort of book I’d like to study in a Sunday class or a seminary class. Although the book is in some ways about Godly Play, it is not exactly a monograph. One need not be familiar with the practice, nor even interested in children’s ministry, to read this book and be led into a deeper understanding of Christianity, of the metaphor from which it takes its name, of human nature, and of oneself. Continue reading