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Becky Ramsey | Author & Children’s Minister
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What is Godly Play?
According to the Godly Play Foundation, Godly Play is a creative and imaginative approach to Christian nurture.
Godly Play is 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.
Read more about Godly Play here.
How do we do Godly Play at First Baptist Greenville?
Christians of many different denominations use Godly Play and probably do it differently, even within the same denomination. In this blog, I describe Godly Play by sharing the way our church does it. That doesn’t mean that it’s the best way or the prescribed way, or the only way, of course, but it’s the way that suits us best.
What are we here for?
We meet here to talk about Godly Play, to share what it’s all about and to discuss how to do it better.
The weekly blog posts are designed to help Sunday school teachers prepare for their Godly Play lessons, and the individual pages (see the tabs at the top of this page) share information about how we do Godly Play at First Baptist Church, Greenville, SC.
We’d love to hear from teachers everywhere, not just the ones at our church! We hope you’ll join our circle and share your ideas!
What Godly Play is Not
Godly Play 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.
Welcome to Faces of Easter 6: Remembering Jesus Healing and Sharing Parables, our lesson for April 5, though we won’t be meeting, of course. I’m putting this out during our global pandemic just in case it can help someone who might be using these stories at home or on the internet. And I’m sending you a virtual hug!
Welcome to Faces of Easter 6: Remembering Jesus At the Last Supper. You can also choose to do the same basic lesson but told in a different way,The Synagogue and the Upper Room (Lesson 11 in the yellow book.) Or you can combine the two lessons as you like. I bet the children would really enjoy seeing how the synagogue and the upper room physically unite together to become the church!
What a whirlwind of a story this week’s lesson is! So much happens, and all of it so very important: Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey, greeted with palms waving, Jesus teaching in the temple and sharing the parable of the widow’s offering, the temple guards’ plan to take him on Thursday, the last supper in the upper room, Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas’ kiss of betrayal and Jesus’ arrest. What an honor, to be able to share this with the children and help them process it.
This is a perfect week to let the children respond to the story by gathering things from the Godly Play materials in the room that they feel help tell the story. I hope you’ll be able to jot these down for me, along with their thinking on this, so that I can share it with the parents. I’ll also have the following wondering questions for you in case that works better for your class, or if you have time to do both:
Wondering Questions:
1. I wonder what part of the story is your favorite.
2. I wonder what part of the story is the most important.
3. I wonder what special message God has for you in this story
- I wonder where you are in this story. I wonder what part of this story is about you.
Give A Gift To God Time
Here are some ideas to add to your own:
1. Retell the story in sections. The story can be divided into scenes, with children working on different ones in pairs or individually. These can be hung together in your classroom if you like. Scenes would include the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, Jesus teaching in the temple, an illustration of the parable of the widow’s offering, the Last Supper, Jesus praying in the garden, Jesus’ arrest.
2. Act out the last supper.
3. Make more ornaments for your Jesus (Easter) tree. Children could make donkeys or palm branches, representations of the widow’s offering, bread or chalices of wine, praying hands or a praying Jesus, or bags of money, representing the 30 pieces of silver Judas was paid to betray Jesus.
4. Palm art. Here are directions for palm crosses for older children. You can use green ribbon too.
5. See more ideas of Palm Sunday crafts here.
If you’re on Pinterest, find my Last Supper page here for more ideas.
Enjoy! I hope you have a very meaningful Sunday!
Love, Becky