Godly Play

I'm looking out of my study window, snow is everywhere. Immediately below me a toddler and her parents are making a snowman. Beyond, in the sloping field, a small army of older children are sledging as they have been for the last 6 hours. This makes me quite happy, because ever since the dawn of time, before TV and computers, snow would have led to children doing exactly this; playing in it and sliding down hills very fast on it. And here I am indoors having made it to Asda and back for supplies and now very happy to sit at my computer in a warm dry pair of jogging bottoms and a hoodie. Gosh, I'm so boring these days!

This weekend I've been learning how to lead Godly Play. I hadn't heard of it before coming to Cuddesdon, but I've seen it done a few times in Childrens' Church and felt both intrigued and a little sceptical, so I enrolled myself onto the course.

Basically, Godly Play is telling Bible stories through moving models. The children sit in a circle and the leader speaks very softly, looking down at the model and not at the children, as they guide them through the story. The models are very minimalist, always made of wood or natural materials. And the words used are non-preachy. At the end of the story the leader asks a number of "I wonder..." questions ("I wonder if this person has a name", "I wonder what your favourite bit of the story was", "I wonder where you would put yourself in the story" etc. etc.) The children are never told that an answer is wrong. After the 'wondering' they are invited to 'wonder' some more through drawing, painting, making things with clay or just playing with the model that was used to tell the story.

I think the training's been a real eye-opener for me. There's lots about Godly Play that I love. I love the idea of not being preachy to children, of leaving them to work out things for themselves, and of not telling them "ok now we're making a donkey" but letting them respond in the way they want. There are some things I still feel a bit sceptical about - like how you maintain control in this situation, and how interested the children might be in quite a long story where they just have to sit still and quiet. But I've seen it done with children before and, for the mostpart, they are pretty engaged.

I really wish I was back at St David's now and could try out Godly Play on the children there. I think so often in my leading of Junior Church I was too concerned that the children 'got the message' immediately without giving them the space to work out the message for themselves - or the freedom to take something away from the Bible story that is completely different to what I, in my narrow grown-up way, wanted to teach.

Still, lots of exciting possibilities to do this stuff in the future. There's my Easter placement for a start, I may be able to do a Sunday School session for them. And Curacy of course. We know that Curates always get lumbered with the kids work!

And I really want this Godly Play Liturgical year clock - it might be quite a good teaching aid for adults (and a handy reference for me too!)