Review: Teaching Godly Play

August 4, 2025August 3, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Cover image of "Teaching Godly Play by Jerome W. Berryman

Teaching Godly Play, Jerome W. Berryman. Church Publishing (ISBN: 9781606740484) 2009

Summary: An introduction to the Godly Play approach to the Christian formation of pre-adolescent children.

I made a mistake in picking up this book. I thought this would be a discussion of play and how one might think as a Christian about the subject. So that you don’t make the same mistake, “Godly Play” is the name of an educational approach to the Christian education or formation of pre-adolescent children developed by Jerome and Thea Berryman.

That said, I’m glad to have made this mistake. The Christian education of children is often left to committed but poorly trained adult volunteers. One of the thing I appreciated here is that the Berrymans developed an approach to the Christian formation of children that thinks about the roles of the co-teachers (storyteller and door person), the flow of lessons, how one works with a community of children, and the setup of a classroom.

The dedication, which written shortly after the passing of Berryman’s wife, Thea, explains how they developed this approach out of their experience with Montessori education, including their training with Maria Montessori. The dedication concludes with a diagram of the Godly Play Room. Bookmark this for reference as you read the book. Then Berryman explains his use of the language of play and the idea that children might come to understand their faith through the medium of play. What he offers is a brief theology of play. An explanation follows of bringing a community of children together to play through listening, wondering, through artistic expression, feasting, and blessing. The goal of this is to form children in a Christian language that enables them to make sense of their faith for themselves.

Berryman then walks, chapter by chapter, through the flow of a Godly Play class. It begins at the threshold, where parents and children leave each other with the door person’s help. Children “get ready” to enter the circle, which involves sitting quietly on the floor with legs crossed and hands folded, resting on their ankles. When the child does this at the door, they can take a seat in the circle.

The co-teacher who is storyteller sits on the floor with the children. Berryman describes setting up the circle and presenting the story. Then comes the wondering time. This is where children are invited to ask wondering questions about the story. Along the way, Berryman also offers help in dealing with disruptions in a non-punitive fashion.

The next step involves dismissing children so they can work on their own responses to the story. Children are dismissed one at a time and helped by the door person to use art or lesson materials during this time. Examples are provided of the different ways children can “work’ during this time–really a kind of wondering play. The time concludes with clean-up, putting all materials away on the appropriate shelves.

Then the group prepares for “the feast.” The feast may be as simple as cookies and juice, prepared by volunteers. Each child has the chance to pray quietly or out loud. After prayer, they enjoy the feast, which can be a time for informal visiting with children. Then it’s time to clean up. One can see how this anticipates the Eucharist.

By then, parents are waiting. There is a process of saying good-bye to each child and to bless each other and commend them to their parents.

The final two chapters focus on growing as Godly Play teachers. The first asks, “How do you know Godly Play when you see it?” Berryman notes that both God and play must be present! He also outlines how the Godly Play curriculum uses a spiral approach to reinforce learning the Christian language. Finally, he contends that growth as a Godly Play teacher involves staying close to children.

The book serves as an introduction to the Godly Play approach of Christian education. On its own, it offers help to those who teach children. Better yet, seek out Godly Play training and use the Get Started resources and Godly Play resources to set up a classroom.

This book makes us consider how seriously do we take the Christian formation of children. Is it as carefully thought through as a regular classroom? Is teacher training and good curriculum materials offered? And are children treated as part of our community, with dignity? Whether or not a church adopts Godly Play, these are questions we must ask.

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Thanks for visiting Bob on Books. I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]

Review: Story, Ritual, Prophecy, Wisdom

August 7, 2024August 6, 2024 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Cover image of "Story, Ritual, Prophecy, Wisdom" by Mark W. Hamilton and Samjung Kang-Hamilton

Story, Ritual, Prophecy, Wisdom, Mark W. Hamilton and Samjung Kang-Hamilton. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802883186), 2024.

Summary: Four modes of scripture for religious education and their use in teaching the Bible: story, ritual, prophecy, and wisdom.

The Bible has played a central role in the church’s worship and the formation of Christians through the ages. Yet in contemporary times, many within the church have felt distant from lists of names, stories set in different cultures, and moral injunctions at variance with contemporary practice. Alternatively, some have tried to carry over structures of authority without consideration of differing contexts and tried to treat the Bible as a rulebook. The writers of this text for religious educators assume the use of the Bible as “taught text” to be used in a variety of church contexts from worship and religious instruction to catechesis of new and young believers.

The co-authors propose four modes for instruction: story, ritual, prophecy, and wisdom. Firstly, they explore story, how it works in scripture, and the use of various media in teaching. Secondly, the authors consider key biblical rituals, and the observance of baptism, eucharist and other ritual practices. Thirdly, prophecy envisions an imagined world shaped by God’s justice. Finally, wisdom passages from Proverbs to the Sermon on the Mount invite us into prudent living toward God, others, and our own desires.

But what does all this mean for how we teach the Bible? In light of our rapidly changing culture, the authors advocate going forward the Bible rather than back. For example, rather than simply trying to inculcate truth, they advocate approaches allowing for discovery. This requires a teacher who:

encourages students to reflect on and share their feelings with others;

invites holistic awareness of body and mind, of the whole person;

has well thought-out convictions but creates space for those of others;

establishes an atmosphere of trust and care;

builds trust among students;

mentors students in their discovery of faith, hope, and love;

helps with critical reflection on the past so as to build a meaning-making self;

identifies aspects of the Bible both to learn and to unlearn; and

questions easy assumptions about theology and other aspects of human existence. (quoted from p. 151)

For whom is this book written? Given the stance of the authors regarding issues of justice, this book serves those in progressive settings who take the Bible seriously. This includes religious educators and their students in seminaries, directors of Christian education in churches. Directors of worship and spiritual formation will also profit. Reading and teaching scripture for understanding and transformation is urgent in today’s churches. Thus, these four modes of scripture for religious education offer a vital rubric for religious educators.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Mother of Modern Evangelicalism

June 4, 2021September 2, 2025 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears, Arlin C. Migliazzo, Foreword by Kristen Kobes Du Mez. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2020.

Summary: The first comprehensive biography on Henrietta Mears that focuses on her early life, her Christian Education ministry at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, and her national impact on a nascent evangelical network of leaders, on Christian publishing and retreat ministry.

She had been dead for almost a decade when I received a copy of What the Bible is All About. I was a young Christian, still in high school, trying to read the Bible. The book started me on a lifelong habit of reading scripture through its clear explanations of the layout of the Bible, the world of the Bible, and the central figure of scripture, the Lord Jesus. In a small way at least, I was one more person in whose life Henrietta Mears had an impact. I had no notion of the breadth of impact the grandmotherly woman on the back cover had during her life on American evangelicalism.

The edition of *What the Bible is All About* that helped me begin reading the Bible.

Mears established the largest Sunday School in the country and headed up the National Sunday School Association, raising the standards of Christian education throughout the country. She hosted a ministry to some of the leading men and women in Hollywood during the 1950’s. She was a catalyst in the ministries of Bill Bright, Dawson Trotman, and Billy Graham as well as many others. The need for Christ-centered and biblically sound Sunday School materials led to establish Gospel Light Publishing, which she headed up for many years. She purchased a Christian conference center, Forest Home. Her college class turned out a generation of leaders who became pastors, missionaries, and leaders in a number of professions across the country, creating a network that served for the expansion of a theologically conservative but culturally engaging evangelicalism.

All this in spite of a very obvious fact. Mears was a woman in an era where gender roles were very well defined and men preached and led. She never challenged this gender framework. She simply led with excellence and expected that of those around her. She sought out men especially for her college ministry who would be leaders, mentored them, sometimes in demanding terms. She poured herself into others with a kind of tough and yet utterly supportive love that led to their blossoming.

Working at the intersection of the entertainment industry and a center of education, she both hued to theological orthodoxy and adopted an open and generous stance to the intellectual and entertainment world of her day, establishing a model for a culturally winsome evangelicalism that contrasted with the fortress mentality of some fundamentalists (though not all, as Migliazzo notes).

While the work of Mears between 1928 and her death in 1963 was fairly well known, Arlin Migliazzo draws on various archival materials and interviews to show the depth and breadth of that work. He also introduces us to the young Henrietta Mears, growing up in the upper Midwest. She grew up in a devout Baptist family. Her father traveled extensively for his business and so her mother Margaret played a significant role in her upbringing, imparting her faith, as well as a keen work ethic, and high standards of responsibility.

He also traces her college training in education and early teaching experience, where almost immediately, she was made principal of a small rural Minnesota high school. Returning to Minneapolis, she took up leadership of the Sunday School under leading fundamentalist pastor William Bell Riley. She built a girls ministry called Fidelis that reached over 500 in number. She turned her back on marriage. After almost ten years came the call to Hollywood Presbyterian Church.

She had a husky voice, weak eyes, and was described as “built like a fireplug.” She could be demanding. When she felt betrayed, she could be unforgiving. She liked the finer things, including fur collars. Migliazzo notes her weak record on issues of race. Yet when she began to speak in a class or convention, she commanded attention for the clarity of her teaching and passion for Christ. How else to account for her influence on the likes of Graham, Bright, and others?

Migliazzo’s outstanding biography not only helps us to take the measure of her life in full but also sets her in the larger framework of the emergence of evangelicalism from its fundamentalist roots. She played a vital role in that emergence, and “showed” the capabilities of women given over to Christ in a time when “telling” wasn’t possible.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Opening the Red Door

February 12, 2020September 5, 2025 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Opening the Red Door, John A. Bernbaum. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.

Summary: An inside account by a founder and President of the Russian-American Christian University, from the surprise invitation received from Russian leadership to its closing.

The period of 1989-1990 was a heady time as the Iron Curtain fell and country after country overturned Communist leadership and talked of embracing democracy. Then the changes came to the Soviet Union itself under Gorbachev and Yeltsin as glasnost and perestroika gave way to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the spinning off of republics as autonomous nations, leaving Russia, a large, but much diminished country, struggling to convert from a command to some version of a capitalist economy, and failing miserably in the effort.

This book originates in that era. A group of Christian college leaders with the Christian College Coalition (now the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities) who had ties with evangelical mission efforts to Eastern Europe sought to discern what opportunities this might present to build ties of understanding and opportunities for Christian influence in a country that had been officially atheist since 1917. They determined to explore possibilities for student study and cultural exchanges during a 1990 visit when a more daring proposal came from a Russian governmental official. Please come and set up a faith-based university in Russia!

John Bernbaum, then a vice president with the Christian College Coalition, was part of this delegation and was tasked to follow up this proposal, a task that eventually led to his presidency of the Russian-American Christian University (later the Russian-American Institute). In this work, he offers a first-person account of the history of this initiative from the initial proposal to the decision to close the doors years later.

Bernbaum traces this history from working groups to a joint Russian-American and the first classes in 1994-1995. He recounts the beginnings from agreements and charters, setting up tax exempt status in the US and gaining licenses in Russia. He describes the expansion of the program from initial English Language programs to a full program of undergraduate courses and the first graduation in 2001 (of 19 students). He traces the various moves to different temporary facilities and the nearly ten year process from 2001 to 2010 in securing land, gaining permits, building, and gaining occupancy permits for their own academic facility and the “perfect storm” that led to the closure of the Russian American Institute in 2011 and the sale of its building in 2014. It is a narrative of a both extraordinary and less than perfect Russian-American partnership.

The external events in Russia were critical to this history, as the initially open and supportive relationship with the Yeltsin government gave way to the Putin era, and an increasing chilling of American-Russian relations, coupled with increasing suspicion of any American effort in Russia. At first this manifested in community opposition and bureaucratic delays culminating in a reclassification of their tax status increasing annunal taxes from $2,000 to $500,000 coupled with a refusal of reaccreditation.

The brightest spot in the narratives are the descriptions of the students and their eager welcome and embrace of instruction by a joint American and Russian faculty. We also see how forming deep relationships of integrity with Russian officials overcame many barriers until political pressure became too great. This was matched by the generosity of Bernbaum’s American partners.

The deep regret of course was that international relations finally made it impossible to continue this effort. The narrative offers evidence that the students who came through the program, the many faculty from both countries who taught in the program, and the student exchanges and programs in English and Russian that were formed, built bridges of understanding and equipped a cohort of students with a Christian vision for their work in Russia. One hopes this is a kind of “mustard seed conspiracy” that will one day bear great fruit in Russia, and in American relations with that great country. One also hopes and prays that the spiritual hunger that originated this initiative will be sustained and grow.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.