Getting Started: Discernment of the Meeting Community

Interest in using Godly Play® and Faith & Play™ may come from parents, religious education committee members, or other Friends with care of children’s programs or spiritual formation. The meeting community should consider how they are able to support bringing this method into their religious education program, and sustaining it.

Considerations include:

• Interest from meeting members in becoming trained storytellers and doorkeepers
• Creation and cost of making materials for stories
• How the content of the stories fits into the curricular choices of the meeting’s religious education program.

Parents in the community should be informed about:

• How the method works
• What kind of stories will be used
• How they can support the program by wondering with their children at home all week long.

Depending on the size of the meeting and its children’s program, the community might need to discern their commitment to Godly Play and Faith & Play as a whole meeting community, or through the work of a religious education committee. It is helpful for the community as a whole to understand the unique “hows” and “whys” of using Godly Play and Faith & Play as storytelling approaches that invite silence, wonder, and continuing revelation into the meeting’s children’s program.