Welcome to the website of the Godly Play Foundation!  In 1960 a question emerged for me to which Godly Play became the answer, so Godly Play has grown out of many decades of research to develop the method, publish the spiral curriculum and conceive the theory of playful orthodoxy on which it is based.  Godly Play is now ready for you if you are ready to come play!

Play is primarily pleasurable, involves deep concentration, is done for itself, alters time, and is voluntary.  It also stimulates creativity, the learning of languages (such as the language of the Christian Tradition) and the incorporation of social roles (which is the beginning of all human ethics).  When God is invited to come play at the edges of your knowing and being, you are not only involved in something that is deeply and profoundly fun, even if a bit scary, but you are also invited into a game worth playing.  The goal is for children to enter adolescence with an inner working model of the Christian language system so they will have the appropriate tools to help them form the new and larger identity that this time in life requires.  But wait a minute!  Teachers cannot teach well unless they have experienced what they are teaching, so Godly Play is for you (and other adults) as well as for children.  Besides, the creation of existential meaning does not end with adolescence, does it?  Godly Play can foster spiritual growth throughout all the stages of life.

Tour the website and get involved.  The only way to know Godly Play, like any art, is to do it.  It does help, however, to have wonderful teachers to guide you by their experience.  There are many such teachers, as well as other important resources, at the Foundation to help you move toward the life-long development of this art and to become part of the worldwide network of Godly-players.

Jerome W. Berryman

Denver, Colorado