Children's Spirituality Summit 2024

"Jerome Berryman’s Godly Play process has refocused children’s ministry efforts on the child’s encounter with God (Berryman 1991; 2009). This establishes a consideration of the person of the child as both a receiver of and a responder to revelation. How should such a view be understood and practised within the theological constraints of Reformed evangelicalism?

Two of Michael Anthony’s categories of Contemplative Reflective and Instructional-Analytic approaches to children’s ministry (Anthony 2006) will be employed; the first representing a constructivist account of knowledge and the second a transmissionist account. This paper will analyse contemporary publications for Sunday children’s ministry within these categories with reference to the agency of the child. First, the nature of agency within the theology, pedagogy and process of Godly Play will be examined and critiqued. Second, a range of UK evangelical publications (Anon n.d.; Clark et al. 2005; Kessell 2018; Bell, Bell, and Amatt n.d.) will be similarly tested. These will then be compared and analysed from a Reformed evangelical perspective and suggestions made to establish a more consistent and coherent practice within that field that allows a child’s way of encountering God in the community of faith.

Several conclusions will be drawn: first, that the nature of agency in Godly Play is less than is claimed and represents an individualistic and untested claim of authenticity. Second, the suggestion will be made that there is space for the agency of the child within the theological resources of evangelicalism, but these exist within community and in response to revelation in an encounter initiated by God. The discussion asserts the need for evangelicalism to allocate more space for the child's active participation. As the nature of encounter differs in each approach, so do the dynamics of agency and response.