easter 2015

How long did you think it would be before I'd find a venue for presenting Godly Play again? As part of my ministry training, I had to preach the sermon for our congregation yesterday. And what should be the Gospel text in our lectionary but a section from Mark's Gospel which included the Parable of the Mustard Seed! So, since the children are with us in their Play and Pray area in the chapel, I decided we should have a children's lesson as well as a grown-up sermon. I invited everyone to come to the front of the chapel before the Gospel reading, and presented the Godly Play lesson then. After we'd wondered for a bit, and put the materials away, I had everyone stand to listen to the Gospel, or rather, the bits that hadn't already been presented in the Godly Play lesson, which is to say Mark 4: 26-29 and 33-34 . Only then did everyone go back to their original places, and I went to the pulpit for the sermon. This was actually the first time I've presented this les...

As Sheila says in her introduction to this guest-post , life happens. I promised almost two weeks ago that I'd share more about our Play and Pray area and implied that would happen straightaway. Instead I finally posted two long posts about it today. Sheila and I had planned to include a guest post from Leann, of Montessori Tidbits , in our Eastertide series. Instead, she published this yesterday and I'm getting it posted today.  I love the simple prayers of a child.  They are so sincere, innocent, and pure.  They are spoken from the heart and in a way that many adults miss in their own prayer life. As a Christian mom, I have always sought ways to help my son understand prayer is more than just asking for things. It�s his time to mention things that are important to him.  It�s his time to say thank you. It�s his time to ask for help, especially on character traits that he�s working on. However, my son sometimes has a hard time remembering what he wants to pray for an...

As promised, somewhat belatedly, here's more on  the launch of our Play and Pray area . This post will tell you what the set-up was like, including some initial reflections on what worked and what didn't. We chose our space to gave a good vantage point for any child who wanted to see what was going on.  The space felt enormous as we were moving twelve chairs to make room for it, but didn't feel so large once three children were inside it. As soon as one lay stomach-down to do some drawing I began to be thankful that more children hadn't come! The floor was lined with a thin comforter / padded blanket. Each corner was covered with a mat (and sometimes a strategically-positioned chair leg) to help keep it in place. Spare mats were available by the "entrance", but they weren't really made use of this week. I realized that my idea of putting all the materials around the edges was perhaps ill-conceived when I watched the smallest child labor to get past the o...

As I've said here , the adults were very positive about our first week of summer Play and Pray. I described our space and materials in this post . But I haven't really said much about my own expectations nor about what actually happened. That's this post. Expectations:  The children will need to learn new rules for this space. Some are like the rules in Junior Church - we talk more quietly than usual and we move more slowly than usual. I modeled that we did not need to be  silent  during the hymns or music, but that we could sing along OR talk quietly together. Of the three children present this week, the older two already attend day-care classes (in fact, one has just "graduated" from pre-school or kindergarden and will start first grade next year), and they have several times sat through adult church services with only a few coloring pages or such-like to keep them occupied. For them it was pretty easy to stay still and quiet through the service. The youngest ...

Today our congregation launched the Play and Pray area for children to use during our regular service (we had a sort of trial run back in October). The plan is to have this all through the summer, and then to revisit the question of Junior Church (and/or carrying on with Play and Pray) in the autumn. Our set-up has been inspired by Margaret's blog post about the Play and Pray area at St. George's Church, Campden Hill, and Carolynn's pages  for the Spiritual Child Network. I received *very* positive feedback from the adults after today's service! Even more importantly, I think the children were also positive about it. (during the service) One child wasn't sure what would be available, so brought her own coloring pages (and kindly allowed the other children to use them as well). My hope is to move toward more specifically church-oriented themes for future art projects (as well as encouraging free drawing, which some children also did today). In addition to coloring,...