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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.
Jonah, the Backward Prophet
Welcome to Jonah, The Backward Prophet, the Godly Play story found in the orange Volume 2, The Complete Guide to Godly Play, 14 Presentations for Fall book on p.107-113.
This story fits within the larger story of the Exile and the Return that we recently shared. I’m sure the children will enjoy the message of this favorite: how God constantly reaches out to people-and even to his prophet- no matter if they seem to do everything the wrong way. God is always calling us to God’s self, trying to save us from ourselves and from sin that hurts us.
As in the story of Elijah, it is important that we focus on God’s saving nature rather than focusing on God as the One who sends storms. With the hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes in the news, hurting people all over the world, we certainly don’t want children to get the idea that God is the author and sender of such pain and suffering. (As in the story of Elijah, God was not in the wind, God was not in the earthquake- God was in the still small voice…)
Idea Sparkers for our Make a Gift for God Time:
1. Recreate the story in some way.
a. Could your children make parts of the story? Someone make a boat, another a whale, another the plant, the waves, another Jonah. Put them all together and take a photo, please!
b. Each child could make a depiction of Jonah in the whale, like the one shown here. I’d just recommend that you encourage each child to invent his/her own way of making this, rather than having them all done the same way. The children will think of all sorts of creative ways to do it. You could even take them into the resource room and show them lots of options. They could make the whale out of a milk jug, as shown here. (Scroll down) Or out of paper plates, as shown here. Or out of a paper bag as shown here.
c. Celebrate the story with a snack, as long as you’re following Covid procedures to keep everyone as safe as possible. (One gloved adult serves individual servings-rather than kids serving themselves, etc) Here are some ideas:
1. Goldfish crackers (I’ll have some if you want them)
2. Make a snack boat. Put blue frosting on a graham cracker to represent the sea. Cut an apple into wedges for a boat to stick on the sea. Make a cheese sail and attach to the boat with a toothpick. Have any ideas for Jonah? (I won’t have these items so you’d need to bring them.)
3. Make whales with individual egg carton sections.
4. Watch the video of the child telling the Jonah story below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4VrujheblY
5. Let the children retell the Jonah story with the Godly Play materials and video them.
6. I’ll have several Jonah books from the media center in the Children’s Activity Room. Feel free to take them to your classroom. Just return them please, when you’re done.
For more art response ideas, check out my Pinterest page, here.
Enjoy the story, y’all! Thanks for what you do!
Love, Becky