This month saw the death of Jerome Berryman, the founder of Godly Play, which is the method of catechesis we use with our children’s group at St Mary’s. Godly Play has close links with the Montessori method of early years education, and is founded on the expectation that children have an innate spirituality and sense of God, and just lack the vocabulary to express it. In a Godly Play session, open-ended questions beginning ‘I wonder’ are used to explore stories from the Bible. Figures and pictures are used to illustrate the story, but children are encouraged and allowed to use their imagination to respond to the story in the way that makes sense to them.

On Tuesday, we were engaged in another type of playing: this time, with Lego. In our Lego Church event, we used the bricks to conquer challenges (‘make a model of how you got here today, make a self-portrait in under 5 minutes’) and to explore the Bible. We read the story of the Tower of Babel, then discovered how difficult it is to build anything together if we don’t cooperate. At the end, we deconstructed our creations and tidied up together.

In both Godly Play and Lego Church, children’s innate desire to play is at the heart of getting them to engage with the Gospel message. But what has struck me recently in my contemplation of these activities is not how ‘effective’ they are in producing a certain outcome. Rather, it’s the realisation that, for the adults in the room, we are witnessing something incredibly rare in our adult lives: activities enjoyed purely for their own sake, with no external end or goal. It’s sometimes said that ‘Play is children’s work’, which can be a useful way of protecting its importance in children’s natural development. However, this imposes an adult perspective which still valorises productivity, and makes play an instrument of development.

If, instead, we learn to appreciate the pointlessness of play, I think it also teaches us something about God’s joy in his creation. We begin to think of the act of creation as something God chooses to sustain, not through a sense of obligation but through sheer delight in the pleasure of making. We begin to think of ourselves and the world around us as cherished, quirky and fiercely loved, like toys brought to life by the love of children.