guest post - Godly Play training 3

My guest this week is Matthew, a Children and Families worker from Derbyshire who is writing about his Godly Play training course. I’ll briefly summarize some highlights of what he’s already said, but here also are links to his part 1 and part 2.

Matthew was introduced to Godly Play when he saw a Sacred Story told within a child’s celebration service. That inspired him to organise a taster session for his Methodist Circuit, which in turn led to him signing up for the next available training course. The Godly Play training courses are three days long. Matthew wrote about being particularly challenged on Day 1 by the Door Person’s question, “Are you ready?” On Day 2 and right into Day 3 he was grappling with the differences between story “genres” in Godly Play. Being used to immersing himself in a Sacred Story and then Wondering afterwards, he was disconcerted to find that Parables have Wondering both at their beginnings and at their ends.

Here’s his Part 3:

By now I had more questions popping off in my head, Why are only certain stories covered? Why are they categorised into Sacred stories, Parables and Liturgical messages? Would I be able to write my own material one day? I learned in Day 3 that whilst these were valid questions, they were ones that were not necessary to explore at this point in my experience of Godly Play. It was clear to me that Godly Play had been thoroughly and thoughtfully prepared and put together.

World Communion (photo from Storyteller's training course)

A brief note on my first experience of storytelling … so far! As it was with Days 1 and 2, we spent the afternoons trying out the stories for ourselves. I chose to do a Liturgical message and it was the Good Shepherd and World Communion. Now I love Liturgy and I love Communion and what it represents, further I love the message of the Good Shepherd leading his people to Good Pasture, so it was no problem to get into the story. I was glad of the experience, however I need more opportunities to learn the scripts and get better at learning the actions that go along with them. In the morning I remembered the actions exactly as they were, but when it was time to present the words and actions in the environment I got rather nervous. I am sure it will get better with experience.

Godly Play going forwards

There are a few ideas the folk in the circuit and I have to see Godly Play as part of the Children’s work. They include

• having a Godly Play session monthly instead of Sunday school, 
• building up the stories to have as a mobile capacity for Godly Play, 
• perhaps the biggest of my dreams is to see a full Godly Play room in the circuit. 

I believe nothing is impossible with God, but prayer will be needed for full appreciation of the theology and values behind Godly Play in order for it to be wholeheartedly adopted. I have also reflected on using the principles, values etc. of Godly Play in some of the other areas of my practice. 

For example I have adopted the attitude of self-reflection when leading Collective Worship, and in two of the after-school clubs we are working on the Welcoming aspect to the Children, but also incorporating their parents around times of dropping off and picking up. One thing is clear for me is that I have more and more questions that will only be answered by continuing this spiritual journey with Godly Play. I intend on joining a network, where those exploring Godly play get together and experience a story and share our journeys with Godly Play.

Matthew Loader

Exploring the Sacred Story shelves
(photo from Storyteller's training course)

Children and Families Worker

Peak Methodist Circuit

Email: matthewloader@yahoo.co.uk

Tel: 07940849819
blog: Reflections of a Practitioner

Matthew, thanks very much! This has sparked memories of my own training experience, when everything was so new - both exciting and confusing. I hope it may also encourage others to attend taster sessions or full training courses. A training course introduces all the genres of Godly Play and gives everyone an opportunity to present a lesson, as well as to experience at least one complete Godly Play session with experienced leaders. For me, it was as much a retreat as a training event. I highly recommend it!

my world communion materials

It was months ago that I promised Sheila from Explore and Express that I'd write about how I made my World Communion materials. Since then she's gone ahead and made her own materials in her own way, which I'm glad about for her sake. But I'm perfectly happy to describe my own - a fair amount of the "traffic" that comes to me through search engines is people looking for information about materials - it was just that I hadn't actually finished mine until this week. These were made with much love and little expense. There was no woodworking involved!

The fence enclosing the sheep fold is of plastic (by Schleich), which disappointed me at first, but it is working well for us. It's easy to disassemble and store, which I have to do every week. We use only four pieces, two of which are designed not to fasten, so it's easy to open and close the pen. My green circle bases are simply cardboard painted green. I was a bit embarrassed about doing that, but this beautiful post at What Can We Leave Out reminds me that the beauty and value of these objects is as much in how you treat them as what they're made of. Here's another photograph of a World Communion base made out of cardboard (from Godly Play in Australia), with clothes-pin people. I would encourage you not to apologize for your materials as long as you have created them with love and care.

My figures are also made of cardboard, but a very stiff and solid board. It doesn't have the holes that you can see within the base (EDIT: corrugated, that's the word. It's not corrugated) - it's just a solid stiff cardboard. I no longer remember where it came from - it was just in our recycling box on the day that I went hunting for what to use for this. I used the patterns found in the Young Children and Worship book, but my figures are like typical Godly Play figures in that they are clothed and colored rather than just being wooden silhouettes. I bought a super-basic range of the three primary colors at the craft store: blue, yellow, red, and white paint (and bitterly regretted not having bought any black, but I used a Sharpie pen for hair and definition), and did my non-artistic best to mix them into a range of plausible skin tones and hair colors. I deliberately left one man bald and gave one woman white hair, and tried to give the priest a gender-neutral hairstyle.

side view, lamb's "wool"

upholstery swatches

I had stumbled across a couple books of upholstery swatches in the flea market. What a great find! (I also used them for my "Jesus the King" Palm Sunday materials.) With them I was able to create clothing (and sheepskin) which was soft to the touch. For the lamb on the Jesus's shoulders I actually used a thicker fleece material, for a contrast with his garment. (The priest's stole is a bit of ribbon.)

The whole process of course took much longer than I had anticipated. I clothed them front and back, just using scissors and glue. A couple of hours before church I realized I wouldn't have time to finish, and decided to prioritize the children over the adults. So we had the Good Shepherd, five sheep, one priest, and five children for our first session. It was only the Shepherd, two sheep and the priest who could even stand up that day! (This was done simply by using little cardboard bases like paper dolls often have, set at right angles to the figures' flat bodies.)

(back view)

And for the next several months, that was the range of figures that we had. I did nothing else apart from provide the rest of the bases so that each figure could stand up. The unclothed adults were stashed away in a craft box at my house. We did have a communion table or altar, which was simply a simple, unvarnished dolls' house table which I bought on sale. It's not quite to scale, but seems to work fine. The "chalice" and paten were another flea market find. They were the creamer and one saucer from a little tea set. Again it's not ideal - there's a chip missing - but they do for now. In fact, if you remember, stf couldn't find them one week and substituted cardboard ones in their place (which are now lovingly stored together with these ones in their basket).

Last Sunday I presented these materials again. The story of that presentation will have to wait for another post. But it was the motivation I needed to finally finish clothing my figures. I had already tried to dress one of the girls in a shalwar kameez for some cultural diversity, although at least one person has told me it just looks like she's wearing a coat and scarf. But I gave the adults a real variety of clothing. One woman is in a cheongsam and one is in a gákti. One man is in a suit and tie and the other is in sweats (a jogging suit). One thing I don't have, though, is a diversity of mobility (at one parish in Lohja, Finland, they include a man with a cane).

It was actually a friend who was looking to do some "community service" who clothed the man in sweats - thank you!

You might also like to read the post about the first time I presented this lesson

and a short post (with a photo) about how limited my materials were then

guest post: flying solo

Written by see-through faith on 13 March

flying solo ....

well not quite as I had a helper over at junior church today, but as the lady who usually leads jr church and who has introduced Godly play there wasn't there I was the leader this week. Her shoes are hard ones to fill, let me tell you, but I - and the kids - had a lot of fun and met with God in great and sometimes unexpected ways!

For those of you who aren't familiar with Godly play, the idea - from my perspective at least- is to make it possible for kids to experience and learn about God in different ways in a setting that is their church - i.e. not the grown ups' place. Ideally you'd have a special room set aside for just that purpose. But we don't live in ideal worlds, and so I love the way Storyteller has gone about creating that special sacred space where it also ok - very ok - to play in the journey to discovering God.

Every Sunday she spends a lot of time hauling stuff in (and out) to prepare the space for junior church. I didn't have time (or energy) to do that - so we ran with a sort of skeleton junior church this week. The boundaries were there as usual and the mats were there and the funny thing was that we started before I knew it because the little kids each found a mat, sat down and waited and suddently it was a go :)

There were two parts that carried most impact for me

Firstly there was the careful changing of the liturgical colours from green to purple (for we are now in Lent). That meant handling the holy family (nativity) figures and explaing simply who each one was. The 'liturgy' we use goes something like this

Here is the Christ child. See how he's holding out his arms to give you a hug. He was born. He grew up. He became a man. And he died on a cross. That's sad. But that's also wonderful in an Easter kind of way. Because now the Risen Christ can extend his arms and hug every one.

The kids really listened attentively to this part -and we looked at the liturgical colours - white (with gold) and red and green - and of course purple. That fitted in well with what they'd done last week which was learn about telling the time in church (i.e. the church year)

Usually they'd then have a lesson. I'm not up to that so I read a story about the miraculous catch of fish with lots of actions and times to reflect. I wonder how they felt. I wonder how many fish they caught. I wonder what Jesus meant by fishers of men. etc.

Then there was the response time.

Again the skeleton set up this week meant they had a choice, but not an awful lot. There was no parable box for example, or the baptism set, and horror of horrors no clay (playdough) or glitter glue. No fuss -simpler choices this week.

This was the second event that impacted me most

The youngest wanted a story - not the fish story again, but the one about the nativity. (a link to what I'd said about the holy family perhaps?) And then she wanted to 'do' the story of the good shepherd herself. She carefully got the things out and set it up and sort of did it herself with me close by. It was fun and lovely ... only then disaster struck. "Where's the bread and wine?" oops! You see I hadn't found those figures when unpacking the boxes (though I found them later) so we improvised (made a loaf out of card and a jug out of shiny paper) and she carefully took the Good shepherd the five sheep and priest at the altar along with all the people. So moving!

We finished with the feast (which I at least once called snack by mistake!) and then I read another story, this time about the good shepherd a different version with 100 sheep but one which put the parable into context. They liked it a lot

As usual we finished with communion and a blessing when the priest (finally) arrived. I couldnt' remember the song we usually sing so we sang thank you for this fine day. And it was a fine day and so blessed!

But I'm very glad storyteller will be back next Sunday, so I can go back to being a participant able to respond to the message in my own way and an adult who is privileged to be present at junior church and whose responsiblities are a) turning up in good time b) toilet /washing hands duties and c) preparing the snack feast (which the parents take turns in providing)!

spot the differences

Here is what our focal shelf looked like a month ago:

Here's what it looked like today:

One difference is that for the February picture I remembered to kneel down so that the photo was taken from a child's perspective, whereas the March photo is my perspective. 

Several things have found their way into new or different baskets, but that's not important. What I really want you to notice is the new materials that have been added. The Good Shepherd and World Communion materials were new last time (two weeks ago). Do you see what was new today? Do you know what it is? I plan to tell you this week!

just a glimpse

Here is just a glimpse of my new materials. My helper snapped this photo with her phone on Sunday. As you can see, I had no fence for the sheepfold yet, so used the enclosure from the parable box. Three sheep cannot stand yet, but two are upright (one is hard to see - I wonder what color you think it might be). 

The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd and World Communion

Whew! Exhausting Day

What a day! I'm exhausted! Some good, some less good (but mostly good).

I had wanted to have the materials ready today for the lesson about the Good Shepherd and World Communion. Good: I was able to present the lesson. Less good: We'll have to pretend the rest of these sheep can stand up too. That and the fact that the priest was the only adult at communion! Once I realized that I wasn't going to get all the figures done, I prioritized them as follows: Good Shepherd, priest, children, other adults. (The adults didn't get done at all. The only figures who could stand up were the Shepherd, the priest, and two sheep.)

A different priest was serving our congregation today. Good: He was absolutely willing to come across to our building to give us communion and blessings, and was complimentary about our Godly Play set-up. Less good: I misjudged when he would come. I was desperately scrabbling around for things to do to keep the children occupied and in the circle as our feast drew to a close. We sang a silly song. And sang it again. We talked about what we were all wearing. I finally wound up giving the kids a quiz on our stories. Hmmm. Which story has a rainbow in it? Uh-huh. And which story has a star in it? Montessori educators are probably horrified.

The children and I are still finding our way with regard to what is and isn't acceptable behavior in the room and in the circle. (Parents who are reading - your child behaved just fine!) My helper said to me today, "You're so patient!" Good: the "Getting Ready" bench came into its own today, used absolutely not in a punishing sort of way but just in an appropriate you can sit there if you aren't ready yet, and I'll tell you the story later.* And two children chose to sit there. Less good: I'm probably being too patient. When I told my husband about this on the drive home he suggested that probably I need to be more explicit sooner about behavior that isn't ideal, because this is all so new for all of us.

Early Christian image of Christ as the Good Shepherd (Fourth Century A.D.)
Museo Epigrafico, Rome (Foto: Kleuske) (licensed image)

So, it was almost all good today, but now I'm just wrung out. I'm so wrung out that I couldn't help it. I just had to come here and write about my day before I could cope with supper. Thanks for reading!


*In fact, nobody wondered aloud today, except me, so I just brought the Getting Ready children back to the circle (they had listened and watched very attentively from the bench), and asked if they'd like to hear the story again or if they were ready to do their work, and both decided to go straight to work.