The Implementation of Godly Play in a Church in Galicia (Spain)

On Sunday 3 October 2010, Godly Play classes began for a group of 3 to 7 year-olds, at the Evangelical Church in Castiñeiras, a small fishing town in the Galician province of La Coruña. They have continued uninterrupted every morning Sunday since. Throughout the first term (Oct-Dec 2010), detailed monitoring of the classes was carried out, with special emphasis on observing the responses made by the children through their wondering, expressive art and play. Open-ended response is encouraged by this imaginative approach to engaging with Bible stories. This brief report provides only general information on a few of these observations. For a more detailed explanation on how Godly Play has been implemented in the Castiñeiras Sunday school, we hope that local inquirers, or indeed visitors to Galicia, will feel free to speak to one of our Godly Play teachers about it, ideally in our specially prepared classroom. Alternatively, they can contact me (David Pritchard) by email.

GODLY PLAY CLASSROOM, FURNITURE & TEACHING MATERIALS

The Godly Play sessions took place initially (from October to December 2010) on the 1st floor of the chapel in Castiñeiras, in one of the small classrooms. Following the pastor's recommendation, we later moved to a more spacious classroom (since January 2011). In both cases, careful analysis of the available space was made so that the furniture could be arranged and the teaching materials displayed in the most suitable way possible, taking into account the nature of Godly Play and its cyclical curriculum. It is important for its development that a safe and stimulating environment is created which is conducive to learning Bible stories and reflecting on existential matters. Furthermore, the teaching materials need to be attractive for children of all ages. They must also be sufficiently robust and durable, and their simple design should evoke the imagination of boys and girls as they use them in free play to draw meaning from the Biblical narratives.

Shelves were constructed before the summer of 2010 to house the teaching materials and art supplies. At around this time, too, the task of crafting our own resources was begun, and this is a work still in progress. Our do-it-yourself resourcing has advanced very rapidly thanks to the collaboration of a large group of volunteers, including church members, young people and other folk who are not themselves churchgoers, but offered to lend a hand. The result has been materials of excellent quality and beauty. The team of Sunday school teachers, who represent the children attending the class -- and these youngsters are surely the real beneficiaries of these resource materials! -- feel tremendously grateful for this collaboration.

As of today, most of the basic resource materials have been created. This is the stuff necessary for teaching the core lessons in the Godly Play curriculum. We reckon that the task of crafting the remaining basic materials will be completed by the end of this term (January-April 2011). Following that, it is hoped that materials for the enrichment lessons will be added bit by bit.

By making our own materials, a substantial amount of money has been saved. We reckon that, had we purchased the equivalent materials from one of the official Godly Play resource suppliers, the bill would have come to at least 1,600 euros, plus additional costs of post & packaging from abroad. Taking into account the stuff that is still being made, the amount needed to equip a Godly Play classroom with the essential materials for the core curriculum would come to around 2,700 euros, plus p&p. That is the overall amount that we would have saved. Obviously, money has been spent: the main expense was the shelving. However, thanks to the collaboration mentioned above, other expenditure has been limited to the purchase of supplies (wood, felt, paint...) needed to make the resources, as well as accessories such as trays, rugs, art materials, etc.

TEACHER TRAINING

A series of workshops have been organised in order to present the Godly Play method and to train teachers in its techniques, as well as to promote a deeper grasp of its theological and pedagogical underpinnings. These workshops have been run by Castiñeiras Evangelical Church in collaboration with Unión Bíblica (Scripture Union Spain). Registration has been open to anyone interested in attending from any church. The training events have taken place on Saturdays (8 hours each workshop):

• 8 May 2010… ‘How to Share Parables with Children Using the Godly Play Method’ - 13 members of churches in Castiñeiras-Ribeira, Ferrol and Santiago de Compostela attended this training event.
• 12 June 2010… ‘How to Tell Children Sacred Stories through Godly Play’ - There were 9 trainees from churches in Castiñeiras and Ferrol.
• 11 September 2010… ‘Godly Play Space and Materials’ - 7 trainees attended from Castiñeiras and Ferrol.
• 29 January 2011… ‘Children and Liturgical Action in the Godly Play method’ - There were 13 trainees from churches in Castiñeiras, Ferrol, Moaña and Ramallosa.

Besides these training days, the team members of the Godly Play class at Castiñeiras have benefitted from ongoing, hands-on learning, above all through supervised teaching experience with the children. Throughout the first term, three of the teachers gained experience in different roles: as 'storytellers', 'door persons' and 'observers'. Other teachers have joined the same process at the start of the 2nd term. This training is based on a discipleship-mentoring-coaching model, involving observation, trainer modelling & supervision, teaching experience with the children, and reflective analysis and evaluation of that same experience. This process will continue, for Godly Play employs the ancient art of storytelling and - as with any other creative process - 'practice makes perfect'. Likewise, the art of facilitating and supporting 'wondering' and the spiritual growth of children is continuously worked on and matured.

CHILDREN'S RESPONSE TO THE METHOD

Without a doubt, the most thrilling and satisfying aspect in this process of implementing Godly Play has been the entirely favourable response of the children. We have observed the following features, amongst others:

• Their eagerness and ease in learning the different routines and phases of a typical Godly Play lesson: (i) THRESHOLD – getting ready at the door; picking up their individual rug; quietly joining other children on the floor as together they form the Godly Play circle; greeting the storyteller…; (ii) BIBLE STORY – observing and listening to the storyteller as s/he presents the lesson; wondering out loud as the storyteller leads the group in active reflection; listening to and respecting the opinions of the other children in the group…; RESPONSE – though expressive art or by means of free play and interaction with the story materials; working individually or in small groups; finding a place for their work and respecting the space of others…; FEAST – taking turns in serving the rest of the group, bringing napkins, glasses, fruit, water, etc.; passing the offering; praying and hearing the Bible reading; watering the plant…; DISMISSAL – waiting their turn to approach the storyteller to say goodbye and receive their blessing; collecting their rug and depositing it in the rug box; leaving the room…

• Their progressive asimilation of the implicit values in a Godly Play session: silence and slowing down, active listening, wondering, respect shown to others and their work space, respect in taking turns, serving others, care for the environment and the materials, freedom/responsibility, sharing, blessing, awe at life's mysteries and the presence of God…
• The enthusiasm with which the children receive the Bible stories and their level of engagement with the stories; their curiosity and openess to ongoing discovery; their ability to draw connections between one story and another, and with their own life experiences…
• The gratitude that the children have displayed at the opportunity to freely choose their work and means of response, that they can engage playfully with the lesson materials without undue teacher interference, and for the attractive range and quality of the art materials.
• The creativity displayed in the children's expressive art and play.

The following is just one example of the children's ability to make connections and draw out meaning from them (i.e. how they link one story with another):

A 6 year-old girl was observed during the work time, as she began to take out several lessons and lay out the materials on the floor. First the green underlay of the Good Shepherd parable. Then, at its side, the brown felt cloth of the Parable of the Deep Well. She then placed the figures of each of these stories on their respective underlay. Then she began to move the Good Shepherd and the sheep through the green pastures towards a small piece of blue felt representing the quiet waters. She then broke with the 'normal' Good Shepherd parable as, instead of leading his sheep towards the 'dangerous places' on the green felt, the figure of the shepherd led his sheep over to the second story, across the 'desert' towards the deep well. The girl then asked the door person to help her tie together the 6 golden threads and miniature bucket. She then proceeded to lower the bucket into the well, draw out the refreshing water and hand it to the sheep to drink. Finally, she took out the Baptism lesson and proceeded to baptize a little wooden figure in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit... This 6-year-old had never witnessed a Godly Play 'side-by-side' presentation. However, she was already intuitively anticipating such presentations (normally reserved for older children) and playfully making hermeneutical connections through her project on water.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Our classroom has already served as a reference and a source of inspiration for visitors from other churches. They have expressed curiosity and interest in learning more about Godly Play, and some have attended workshop trainings as a result.
• There are already plans for extending the Godly Play classes to the groups of older children in our Sunday school. This will probably start in the 3rd term of this school year, as well as enjoy periodic sessions during the summer holidays.
• There are also plans for offering parents the chance to take part in a number of Godly Play sessions so that they can get a first-hand grasp of the type and style of teaching that their children are receiving on Sunday mornings.

David Pritchard - adapted from a report presented at the AGM of the Evangelical Church in Castiñeiras, Spain (January 2011)

III European Godly Play Conference

Please make a note of the dates for the next European Godly Play Conference: from Friday 17 to Monday 20 September 2010. It will take place at the Finnish Lutheran Church Training College, near Helsinki, overlooking a beautiful lake.

The Godly Play Finland website has further details about the conference, besides a provisional programme and an invitation from the organisers.

The international speakers will include Jerome Berryman, the founder of Godly Play.

Godly Play introduction in Granada

On Saturday 14th November, I was in Ogíjares (Granada) leading a Godly Play introductory seminar that included a general presentation of the method and also offered the participants a chance to learn some of the Old Testament sacred stories for themselves. Sixteen teachers from several different churches and schools in Granada came to the seminar: the Mosaic fellowship, Cristo de la Yedra R.C. school, Inmaculada Niña R.C. school, the R.C. parish church of San Miguel Arcángel, the Iglesia Evangélica Española (IEE - Methodist/Presbyterian), the Baptist church... Here is some of the participant feedback following the seminar:

• I would like to see Godly Play used in practice with a group of children. It has been very interesting. It would be good to have a workshop set up for the creation of Godly Play materials, maybe coordinated by the future GP Spain association.

• It's a great way to evangelise. I would like to attend more workshops for every aspect of Godly Play: 'door persons', 'storytellers', crafts people, etc.

• I love the similarities between this approach and the Sunday Eucharistic celebration.

• I'm looking forward to practising this at home with my own children.

• It can be easily applied to mixed gender and age groups. The material is very resistant and durable, and re-useable for different lessons.

• A good method to share God's truths and teachings. Right from early childhood, it invites people to see God as very close, as it encourages wondering and personal involvement.

• I think this a a great way to tell children Bible stories.

• I would like to learn how to use this to teach my students and children Catechesis.

The seminar took place on the premises owned by Mosaic, a Christian community which has been practising Godly Play for about 2 years. They have a dedicated classroom in the town of Ogíjares, near Granada, as well as most of the story materials.


Besides Godly Play, Mosaic has also run sessions on Living in a Fragile World, Godly Play style activities on ecological issues, conservation & citizenship. They have done this experimentally in the open air with all-age groups.

On Sunday 15th November, the day after the seminar, I took part in an ecumenical activity based on two Godly Play stories (the Parable of the Leaven & the Parable of the Deep Well). Children and adults from several Protestant, Catholic & Moslem communities or families attended this event.

More photos HERE

I National Godly Play Meeting

Over the recent long bank holiday weekend (9th to 12th October), the first national Godly Play meeting took place in Madrid for teachers who are already committed to this method in Spain.

Fifteen people took part, coming from Barcelona, Galicia, Madrid, Menorca and Tarragona, and representing churches who use Godly Play in English, Spanish and Catalan. Special guest, Ulrike Labuhn joined us from Berlin. Ulrike, a Godly Play trainer in Germany, speaks good Spanish, having lived for a time in Bolivia.

The motto for the gathering was Ultreya!, the old pilgrim's cry of encouragement - Onwards!, and this mutual encouragement was really the object of gathering together.

Our meeting was structured in two main parts: 1) Looking backwards at the lessons learned on the way, regarding Godly Play practice, and 2) Looking forwards to the next stages of the continuing journey, especially as we travel together in terms of establishing common structures aimed at consolidating, extending and supporting Godly Play practice in Spain. As is common in other GP events, the programme was also based on the usual GP cycle: 1) Building the circle ('threshold community') - getting to know one another; 2) Storytelling - telling our own individual and corporate stories, as well as a full GP session; 3) Getting out our work - responding individually and as a group to different proposals, especially those relating to the development of Godly Play in Spain; 4) Feast - times of fellowship between sessions, especially at mealtimes and in the evenings. There were also brief times of collective worship each morning and evening led by different members of the group, as well as a leaving ceremony, in which we symbolically blessed one another and the children we represented, as well as all the children in Spain and beyond whom we also wished to join the Godly Play 'circle'.

Time was made available for the participants to share, often through visual presentations, the development of their own practice of Godly Play in their respective churches and localities, as well as resource materials which they may have made themselves. This gave us better insight into the GP classrooms that are already functioning, or being developed, in Barcelona, Madrid and Tarragona.

Our guest, Ulrike Labuhn, also gave us an overview of the growth of GP in Germany, with particular emphasis on the process of translating and adapting stories from volume 6 of The Complete Guide to Godly Play. Ulrike had already told us the German version of the story of Job in a previous session, which was rather different from the 'official' GP version that is found in the manuals. The developments in Germany were very useful to us as we discussed the future of GP in Spain. One of the main differences at present is the high proportion of professionals (teachers, theologians, therapists...) in the German movement, whereas in Spain the majority of GP practitioners are volunteer Sunday school teachers.

One of the doubts the group raised was the difficulty of going ahead with an organized structure for Godly Play Spain when there was a perceived vacuum of knowledge about GP internationally. This was seen to be part of a much wider problem, as there is so little being translated into Spanish about recent research and study in fields such as the theology of childhood / child theology and the spirituality of children, both of which inform the development of Godly Play and methodology in general. So, time was dedicated at the meeting to offering basic background information about these topics, as well as the international structures of GP, which are also presently in a state of renewal and development.

It was stated very clearly at the meeting that the most important thing for the practitioners was what takes place at ground level (literally) within the circle of children in a real-life Godly Play session. Everything else (e.g. training, resourcing, publications, associations, etc) were there to support such action. The vision was to help make it possible for children anywhere in Spain to join a Godly Play circle, and that this work be of an increasingly deeper understanding and higher quality. To facilitate such growth, we need to create certain structures. However, we certainly did not wish to create another organization simply for the sake of it!

Apart from the sessions on helping us to work towards a structured organization for Godly Play in Spain, there were also two workshop sessions: 1) Raquel García gave a practical demonstration on her work with adolescents, which uses an adaptation of the Play of Life model of psychodrama, developed by the Argentinian pyschiatrist, Dr Carlos Raimundo; and 2) Dr Raúl García gave a talk on the Therapeutic Power of Narratives, followed by a time of questions and answers.

In the final stages of the meeting, the participants reached agreement regarding the next steps to take towards setting up a Godly Play association in Spain. A representative group has been appointed to work on the statutes and aims of such an association, and another to find a place to hold the next meeting in Salou, Tarragona, probably for next autumn. Ulrike and I will work on a plan for accredited training (which was one of the major issues that the group felt was important to address in the short term). It is hoped that the next National GP Meeting will include an accredited training module and also a session in which the new GP Association will be formally created and the first board of directors elected.

So, there seems to be plenty of work to get on with in the coming months!

I National Godly Play Meeting

Next October, the first Godly Play national meeting will be held in Madrid. It is aimed at teachers who are already practising Godly Play, a way of helping children engage imaginatively with Bible stories.

This gathering is being convened by David Pritchard, children's ministry coordinator of Scripture Union Spain and an accredited trainer of Godly Play. David started introducing this approach into Spain (with initial help from Peter Privett) in 2004, and throughout these last 5 years, churches and other groups throughout most of Spain have been offered introductory Godly Play days or taster sessions, as well as different workshops aimed at helping the participants get started in the method and training them in basic skills.

The result of this work is that Godly Play has now taken root in the educational practice of several local churches belonging to a range of denominations and languages (Spanish, Catalan & English speaking). Some churches are now using the method every week in their Sunday schools, whilst others more sporadically. In some places, dedicated Godly Play classrooms have been established. Other people have seen that Godly Play is useful to them in contexts beyond the church doors, and not only in their work with children.

As such rich and varied experiences have built up, David Pritchard believes that the time is right to make a stop along the way and to take a breather, so as to ponder and reflect on what has been learned so far and to share that with others. This is the reason behind this first national meeting.

The slogan for the gathering, '¡Ultreya!', means 'Onwards!', 'Press on!' or 'Keep on going!'. This word of encouragement comes from Latin –- ultra (beyond) and eia (an interjection for 'to move') -- and it was used by the Compostelan pilgrims whenever they met along the way to greet one another and to be encouraged to press on towards their destination. So, the purpose of this first national Godly Play meeting is precisely so that the participants can encourage one another mutually to carry on with their use of Godly Play.

As the next stage of the journey is considered, there will also be attention paid to the contents, structures and models of partnership and cooperation for the development of Godly Play in Spain over the next few years. One of the people attending the meeting will be Ulrike Labuhn, an accredited Godly Play teacher and trainer from Germany, who will give input regarding the growth and development of the method in that particular European country, so as to offer the gathering an element of comparison. It is hoped that other participants will also take responsibility for different aspects of the programme.

So, the meeting will be more of a consultation or discussion forum, rather than a 'conference' or 'training event' per se. It is intended mainly for practitioners of Godly Play in Spain.

The sessions will take place in both Spanish and English, and translation will be provided according to the needs of those attending.

For more information about the event, the brochure can be downloaded in Spanish or in English.

II European Godly Play Conference - photos

Many other photos of the II European Godly Play Conference, which took place last September in Madrid, can be found here. Enjoy!

The next conference will take place in Finland in 2010.

II European Godly Play Conference

This coming September, Spain will be hosting the second European Godly Play Conference.

After the success of the first European GodlyPlay Conference in 2006, this gathering is aimed at exploring issues that relate to the response time in Godly Play. How do we honour and give value to the responses of the children and what space is needed for this to happen?

The Art of Creation will help us consider the nature of such response in the light of different means of creative expression and a diversity of cultural and confessional contexts.

This international conference offers a time...

• to build the circle and share our different cultural experiences of Godly Play
• to have our thinking stimulated by contributions from our main speaker
• to experience Godly Play and the "Art of creation" in different workshops
• to enjoy one another’s company.

The 3 main input sessions will be given by Dr. Christina Kalloch (Germany), our guest speaker. The workshops will be led by group members from Spain, Germany, Finland, Norway, UK and Canada.

The conference will take place from 18-22 September, at the Casa de Espiritualidad “La Concepción y Pío X”, Los Negrales (Madrid). Due to limitations of space, registration is by invitation only. Each participating country is allowed a maximum of 6 delegates.