Godly Play Case study

Holy Trinity Wavertree

Holy Trinity Wavertree serves an urban parish about two miles out of Liverpool City Centre. The church ran a Giving in Grace programme (see the case study)in the autumn of 2005. The leadership wanted to help the children engage with the programme as well as the adults and so they chose the Preach Exodus! materials to the form the basis of the preaching series.

The Climbers and Explorer groups (aged 3-11 years) followed the Preach Exodus! strand of the Giving in Grace programme. All the Godly Play scripts in the Preach Exodus! resource were used with one exception - the Desert freedom box (week two). The reason for this was that the planning of the worship was carefully done to link with the adults and so the story of the people of Israel who were set free to leave Egypt was explored in one of the regular monthly all age worship services. The leaders of the children's' ministry commented that it was good for them and the children's to see and experience the links between the worship in church and where the children met in the church hall over the road. This was reinforced when, at the end of each weeks activity, the contents of the boxes were displayed on the window ledges in the church. View the pictures to see how Holy Trinity presented the completed Godly Play work to the congregation.

The children's ministry leaders adapted the scripts and included some of the Warming Up Warming Down activities and games which also form part of the Preach Exodus resources. (For more on this see How to Use Preach Exodus!). The Action Scenes proved very useful for stimulating discussions amongst the children and also as take home sheets. The leaders did comment that it took a while to access all the different elements to the web site resources in order to produce a comprehensive programme for the children.This underlines the need for children's ministry leaders to allow plenty of time for planning.

Once the Godly Play session started the children's were keen to see what came out of the boxes and they responded very well to the "wondering questions" The adults who were involved commented on the sense of sacred space that was created during the presentations of the bible story. The visual, aural and kinaesthetic qualities of the Godly Play experience can appeal to all ages. The adults present joined in and also responded well. One leader particularly appreciated the session involving the Gold Box which retells the story of the Golden Calf. The jewellery made from yellow play dough was recreated into a golden calf and then later squashed by Moses. The leader felt that this simple activity greatly enhanced the impact of the story.

The final word should go to one of the children's ministry leaders at Holy Trinity, "I must admit that it was hard work preparing the boxes and the programme, but it was well worth it."

For more about Godly Play see the Godly Play web page and also the Word document How to Use Godly Play.