Frohes Pfingstfest / Happy Pentecost!

Happy Pentecost Sunday! 

Our church celebrated Pentecost together with a brunch and children's church. And today was the first time that I can remember in several years when I was not in our Godly Play time telling a story. The reason is because we have added another young woman, Jessica, to our teaching team! I am absolutely thrilled that she is beginning her own Godly Play journey.

We only get to use our red liturgical mat once a year, so that makes it extra special for the children, who immediately notice what day it is!

Jessica told the Godly Play story, Paul's Discovery, today. Similar in format to the the Faces of Easter and Advent, pictures of the life of Paul are laid out on a red underlay. 

Today's story, Paul's Discovery.

Jessica and Melinda told me a little about the interesting Wondering time afterwards. The children seemed to agree that the most important part of the story was Paul's dramatic encounter with Jesus in the bright light and his resulting blindness. Without that incident, "he wouldn't have written all those letters to the churches" that we have in the New Testament. 

When asked if there was a part of the story that made them think of something in their own lives, one child answered that something reminded them of Jessica and Melinda's lives.  The part where Paul leaves his parents and goes to live somewhere else made this child think of how it must have been when Jessica and Melinda moved out of the homes they grew up in and began to live separately from their parents. 

At the same time, the children were also troubled that there was no more mention of Paul's parents in the story. Truthfully, history does not tell us what happened to them after Paul went to study with Gamaliel. 

During Response Time, the children drew pictures. A couple of little girls were into drawing native Americans. In the Godly Play classroom, we welcome everything the children create, whether it has something to do with the story that have just heard or not. We want them to learn that they can share all of their lives with God, and that God is indeed interested in the things that interest them.

Because we celebrate the worldwide church's birthday on Pentecost, the children also decorated cupcakes during Response Time. They ate some of them during their feast and then presented the adults in the church with the rest. One of the children led the adults in singing a round of "Happy Birthday" to the church. (Even though we are a German-speaking church, everyone knows this song and many people in Berlin also sing it at birthdays.)

Here in Germany, Pentecost Monday is a national holiday, so I plan to sleep in tomorrow and enjoy the sunshine. Have a wonderful week!

Godly Play: Paul's Discovery

Most Godly Play storytellers present Paul's Discovery, about the life of the Apostle Paul, in the spring after Pentecost. But because our church plant only has two Sunday gatherings a month, we finally got to it in July. This is a longer story that gives some historical background into Paul's world. It emphasizes the drastic change that occurred in Paul and why he so was transformed. 

As you can see, the materials are reminiscent of The Faces of Easter, about the life of Christ. Like Faces, it is a biographical story told with pictures laid in chronological order.  The red underlay reminds the listeners of the Holy Spirit and the season of Pentecost. 

To make the panels, I ordered prints by the German artist, Juliana Heidenreich, from the Diakonie Leipzig, the Godly Play supplier in Germany. I then mounted them on wooden panels, and finished them off with a coat of matte varnish. 

Because this story is so long, I chose to tell it in two parts. On the first Sunday, we heard the first three panels that depict Paul's early life up until he meets the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus. 

Although the children present had heard the story of Paul's conversion many times in children's Bibles, they hung on every word of the story. When I stopped after the third panel, they begged me to go on. But since I wanted them to really have a chance to digest what they had heard, and because I had not yet had a chance to memorize the rest of the story (!), I gently told them that I would continue at our next children's service. 

At our next gathering, I told the second half of Paul's story, which deals with how he was  transformed by God's love and able to teach others to love as well. The listeners also hear about Paul's calling and how he used all of his gifts to do what God asked of him. 

Everyone knows that working with children is very unpredictable. While they hung on every word of Part 1, they seemed quite distracted during Part 2. During the Wondering, one child was a bit upset that no one knows exactly how Paul died. 

Another child drew ships both times during the creative phase, perhaps due to a combination of hearing about Paul's shipwrecks and a recent visit to the Deutsche Museum in Munich, which has a vast collection of historic sailing ships.  I love seeing the connections that children make!