Do It Yourself: Crafty Strategies for Expanding Access to Godly Play

I have a reputation among friends and colleagues for being unusually crafty. If a new artistic practice catches my attention, I will devote myself to honing at least passable skills at it in the least expensive, most independent way possible. 

All of this is to say that, while I may not know how to knit a sweater, I’ve made a few scarfs. I whip up crocheted hats when my parish requests them for the homeless community served by the local feeding ministry. I create pretty fancy cards for holidays and other major occasions. Most recently, I’ve become preoccupied with multiple forms of lace making, cross stitch, and blackwork embroidery. 

The other side of this coin, of course, is that when I say I’ve made something for my Godly Play classroom, people tend to think I’ve embarked on a complicated project, when in fact most of what I do is really simple. It’s a lot of gluing, straight forward cutting and pasting, perhaps a little painting, but mostly of solid colors. And, all of this crafting is rooted in the ongoing work of the Godly Play Foundation’s Beloved Me, Beloved We Initiative and the associated Equity Audit, both of which I am a part of.

The D.I.Y. Ethos – Economics & The Equity Audit

Let me say it plainly: Godly Play is an expensive program.

This isn’t a secret to anyone involved with the program and as someone privileged enough to guide children in Godly Play for the past decade, I love knowing the inner workings of our material production. It’s hard not to feel strongly about the community of craftspeople in Ashland, Kansas (population about 800) who make our materials. Loving how these materials are made doesn’t make purchasing them more feasible for many communities, though, which is why I’m so glad that the Equity Audit toolkits address this head on.

During our first round of material reviews, we shared major concerns about materials and how they could be fixed without huge reinvestments. These changes include adding gold trim to the white blocks in the Circle of the Church Year with a paint pen so that white alone isn’t the stand in for celebration. Another change includes repainting older versions of the people from The Good Shepherd & World Communion so that they no longer wear ethnic costumes. Yes, many countries have distinctive dress for special occasions, but realistically, in the modern world, most people wear essentially similar clothing. A pretty easy start, right?

Printables and Paper Mache

Another major shift in Godly Play’s available materials over the last few years making more print-based stories available to be printed and mounted yourself, in many cases for free. This has been particularly essential as we’ve worked to update the art for some of the major image-based stories, such as the Faces of Easter—there are two major reasons why.

First, when we take the steps to change any Godly Play materials, it is done with immense consideration. There are a lot of stakeholders involved and often substantial expense, and it almost certainly means that we want people to use the new materials rather than the old ones. This requires prioritizing access to those new materials by making them especially affordable.

The second reason for this shift is that the most expensive part of these image-based stories is the wood on which the images are mounted. If you already have the wooden boards, it doesn’t make sense to buy them again. You can use a heat gun to peel back the old images and then heavy bonding materials like Mod Podge to attach the new images and seal them. Or, if you don’t have the boards, you can sub in other sturdy backing like heavy photo mats or thinner craft wood. It may not be as durable, but it can be made to look quite nice and will get you a long way towards building out your materials.

Right now there are free downloads for Faces of Easter, Creation, and several of the Parables, which have new figures available. You can also download paid PDFs the scrolls in the Prophets, the Circle of the Holy Eucharist, the control cards for the Books of the Bible, and many others – and there will be even more once the Revised & Expanded (and audited) Volume 8 comes out in November, which includes several stories with new art. Pro tip: invest in sewing clips for better gluing; I used them on the edges of images, as well as to hold the prophet scrolls onto the dowels while they dried.

The other big DIY projects I did this summer for my expanding Godly Play program were painting the Parable of Parables and making and painting a new Mount Sinai model. These are both paper mache projects of different sorts. I purchased paper mache boxes from the Godly Play Foundation then painted them myself while also constructing my own mountain. That being said, paper mache is messier than it is difficult. In both cases, these are projects that are more time intensive than they are difficult. The boxes, for example, need several coats of acrylic, but they dry quickly, while the mountain will need to dry between layers of paper.

Exploring Your Options

As we’ve established, I delight in art projects, so figuring out how to D.I.Y. my Godly Play materials is fun for me. I’m also part-time paid staff at my parish and have a clear program budget. To whatever extent possible, I want you to be realistic about how much time you’re investing into these things. Sometimes making materials is worth it and sometimes it very clearly is not. But, it’s almost always going to be a good choice to add that gold trim yourself rather than buying new blocks for your Circle of the Church Year or to take that set of blue Advent cards from your neighboring church that no longer needs them, even if your church uses purple for Advent. Repainting the blue parts isn’t hard or time consuming. 

There are also strategies I’m excited to try but haven’t had a chance to, yet, particularly for the Parables. Many of us have simply laminated the new Parable images because most of them do not fit onto the old pieces, but then they feel rather flimsy. I’m interested in experimenting with lightly mounting the pieces and then using Mod Podge’s Dimensional Magic product to give them some heft and thickness. I learned about it by reinforcing cardboard game tokens, and then immediately thought how it could also work with Godly Play materials.

Finally, embracing D.I.Y. options in your Godly Play can be a way to build community investment and buy-in in your parish among people who wouldn’t necessarily jump to be a storyteller or door person. People really do love sharing their talents and having them valued. Invite them into the process. 

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How has your congregation adapted or updated its Godly Play materials?