Sunday School here at C.G.S is called Godly Play.

From The Complete Guide to Godly Play: Volume 1 by Jerome W. Berryman
You still might be wondering: what are the benefits of Godly Play for the children of our church? Godly Play is a distinctive approach to Christian ministry with children, both innovative and deeply grounded in our spiritual tradition:

• Godly Play helps re-sacralize the everyday things of the world, such as bread, wine, candles, oil, wood, linens, and clay. Godly Play reteaches a sacramental worldview in an often practical and materialistic society.
• Godly Play teaches children and adults that being quiet and deliberate about their work can be as satisfying as being noisy, busy, and pushy. It delivers this counter-cultural message in a comforting and consistent way.
• Godly Play provides sensorial materials to work within a safe, stimulating environment. In this way, Godly Play combines and integrates the two primary gateways to knowing for young children – language (the verbal system) and play (the nonverbal system).
• Godly Play is not a rote or transfer method of teaching and learning. It is a discovery method that engages the whole child – hands, heart, mind, senses, intuition. This is the best way for children (and adults!) to internalize what is being taught.
• Godly Play uses craft activities but uses them differently from most curricula. Rather than have children create something prepackaged, each child creates an expressive response to what is individually thought and felt after receiving the parable or sacred story in a group setting. The children have the opportunity to enter the story, wonder about it, and then create meaning for their own lives.
• Godly Play respects the many demands placed on teachers’ time. Unlike many curricula, in which a teacher must plan new activities and gather new materials every week, a Godly Play classroom maintains a stable setup and routine from week to week. Teachers can focus their attention on entering deeply into that week’s story and responding with complete presence to the community of children who gather there.
• Godly Play teaches reliance upon a gracious God who is real and accessible in all the mysteries of life, both sad and joyful – rather than dependence upon the transient “magic” that comes from the latest movie, toy, or video game.
• Godly Play teaches children to respect the things and people they work with and to enjoy each other with care and patience.
• Godly Play teaches the classic rhythm for living modeled in the Bible: the alternation of action and reflection, engagement and prayer. Godly Play teaches those who teach it and those who learn it to build a spiritual rule (or way) of life.
• Godly Play teaches kindness and mutuality through its rituals and how it organizes physical space, objects, and the community of children. A Godly Play community embodies the biblical ethic of how people are to live together.
• Godly Play offers a contemporary and child-accessible version of the ancient spiritual practice of lectio-divina: holy reading, wondering, and responding to the Bible’s sacred stories. Instead of analyzing God’s word, the children meditate in an artistic and kinesthetic way. Godly Play helps children know God and the Bible instead of simply knowing about God or about the Bible.
• Godly Play teaches that everything in God’s creation is charged with the possibility of holiness, including each of us, and that we are in a relationship with everything in Creation. There is no sacred versus the profane; all ground is holy ground.

 Godly Play teaches that there is kairos time (significant time) as well as chronos time (chronological or clock time). Kairos time is not concerned with knowing what time it is. Instead, Godly Play gives us time to see God in the center of daily life and to reflect on what time is for.

​- Sophie Jobe