Godly Play applied insights from Montessori education to children’s formation, but it became more than Montessori for churches. The Godly Play Foundation’s website shows a map and links to its presence in more than 60 nations, including Cambodia, Ethiopia, Germany, Israel, Pakistan, and Russia.

Berryman was born in Ashland, Kansas, and the Godly Play Foundation is based there. He married Dorothea Schoonyoung in 1960, and they had two daughters in the same decade.

Their younger daughter, Colleen, was born with spina bifada. She painted and was a reading teacher at School of the Woods in Houston for many years, until she died in 2020. Thea Berryman was the music teacher at the same school for more than 35 years.

Berryman was a graduate of the University of Kansas, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Tulsa Law School. He also read theology at Oxford University’s Mansfield College during the summer of 1966 and graduated from the year-long program at the Center for Advanced Montessori Studies in Bergamo, Italy, in 1972.

He had three post-doctoral residencies in theology and medical ethics at the Institute of Religion in the Texas Medical Center in Houston (1973-76). Both General Theological Seminary and Virginia Theological Seminary gave him honorary degrees.

Berryman was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1962 and was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1984.

Berryman often remembered encountering the “God of Power” during his childhood, especially when he engaged with nature and was guided by supportive adults. He felt that the “church God” was more rigid and formal, and he began seeking a bridge between children’s experiences and formal Christian teaching.

The foundation said the Berrymans “embarked on a journey to develop a new approach to spiritual nurture that honors the centrality, capacity, and competency of children,” which led them to develop Godly Play. He founded the Center for the Theology of Childhood in 1997 to continue to inspire research and theological discourse on the spirituality of children. That center is now part of the Godly Play Foundation.

The center keeps a 4,000-volume library and a Godly Play room based at St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Denver. Berryman retired in 2007 as executive director of the center and became its senior fellow. In his retirement, he was based in the Diocese of Colorado.

“I had the privilege of meeting with Jerome almost every week since I started this role in 2020,” said Dr. Heather Ingersoll, executive director of the foundation. “It is hard to describe someone who was one of the most brilliant minds in Christian education and Children’s spirituality, yet so practical, personable, and kind. His fierce dedication to ensuring that our religious and academic spaces honor children’s spiritual journeys is inspiring and was a transformational gift to all who encountered and will encounter his work.”

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl Minor, director of the Center for the Theology of Childhood, said she met Berryman in 1992. “It will be my privilege to honor his legacy, continuing the important work of advocating for children in the academy and the church. In Godly Play, we often talk about endings that are also beginnings. May it be so for Jerome and for us as we both grieve and carry on his work in the world.”

He was a native of Baltimore, and an alumnus of the University of Rochester, the University of Notre Dame (from which he earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in mathematics), and the University of Indiana School of Law.

He was ordained deacon in 1973 and priest in 1974. He served most of his years in Texas, but also in Indiana and Maine. He was chaplain to Daughters of the King in the Diocese of Texas. He composed seven liturgical songs that were published by the World Library of Sacred Music and J.S. Paluch.

He wrote books and articles on mathematics, calculus and statistics, axiomatic geometry, computer law, Alzheimer’s disease, and spiritual formation. He was a certified community health worker and certified long-term care ombudsman, and was active in protecting the rights of the elderly.

He is survived by a brother, three children, and two grandchildren.

The Rev. John Harnish Loving, a U.S. Army veteran, musician, and ecumenist, died May 16 at 85.

He was a native of Richmond, Virginia, and a graduate of the University of Richmond and General Theological Seminary. He served in the U.S. Army Security Agency in Monterey, California, and Frankfurt, Germany, from 1961 to 1964, between completing college and attending seminary.

He was ordained deacon in 1967 and priest in 1968, and served multiple churches in the dioceses of Texas, West Texas, and Northwest Texas. He served parishes in Oklahoma and Virginia before his ministry in Texas. After retiring, he continued serving as an interim priest and in supply ministry until he was 80.

While he was rector at Emmanuel Church in San Angelo, Texas, the parish formed a companion relationship with St. Andrew’s Russian Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg after the fall of the Soviet Union. He and his wife made several trips to Russia and led two tour groups there. He was a supply priest for one month at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Moscow.

As a pianist and organist, he loved the music and liturgy of the Episcopal Church and was a passionate opera fan.

He is survived by Nancy, his wife of 56 years, a sister, two sons, and three grandchildren.

The Rev. Marie Odgers, who began ministry as a deacon after supporting her husband’s ministry as a United Methodist pastor for decades, died June 10 at 91.

She was a native of Fremont, Nebraska, and a graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University. She married her husband, Richard, on the same day that she graduated from NWU. Her husband served in seven Nebraska churches from 1958 to 1993.

They retired to Lincoln, and she returned to Nebraska Wesleyan to complete an associate’s degree in library science. She was ordained to the diaconate in 2010, and served at St. David’s, Lincoln, alongside Deacon Sarah Grubb.

She was active in Girl Scouts from 1941 until 2017 — serving at camp, leading troops, and working as an employee of a Guiding Star Council. Her childhood dream was to visit Our Chalet in Switzerland, the original worldwide site for Girl Scouts and Girl Guides. She fulfilled that dream three times as an adult.

She is survived a son, a daughter, and a granddaughter.

Other Deaths

The Rev. Arthur Cameron Chard, May 17
The Rev. David Elsensohn, June 27
The Rev. Dr. Donald William Kimmick, Ed.D., July 6
The Rev. Peter David Mackey, June 19
The Rev. Deacon Everett Powell, May 18

Aaron’s mother has a friend who attends the Australian church’s Chinese congregation. Through the friend, his mother connected with Chan and asked if Aaron could be baptized at St. Thomas’, said a report by Hannah Felsbourg of Melbourne Anglican.

Chan said he talked with Aaron about three months before the baptism, and he led Aaron through an intensive training course. Aaron asked his mother to make embroidery that illustrated the pilgrimage they took to Australia for his baptism. They left the embroidery with Chan as a gift.

The Rev. John Carrick, lead minister of St. Thomas’, said that witnessing baptisms strengthens the faith of parishioners while it celebrates the faith of the newly baptized.

“When Christians see people are becoming new believers, there is that real sense of hope that the church is going to continue,” he said. “We’re reminded that it’s not all up to us, that Christ said that he will build his church, and we worked with him toward that.”

Although China’s communist regime has shown more tolerance of capitalism and some Western values in recent decades, it retains a tight control of religious rights.

According to the Pew Research Center, youth under the age of 18 are prohibited from having any religious affiliation by China’s constitution. Sunday schools, religious camps, and youth groups are forbidden and in some places, baptism and church attendance by young people are heavily restricted. China’s schools promote atheism and the government strongly encourages participation in Chinese Communist Party youth groups, in which participants take a vow of atheism.

Even the Roman Catholic Church signed a controversial concordat with the Chinese government in 2018, effectively ceding authority to the regime to appoint new state-approved bishops. Chinese President Xi Jinping pushes Sinicization, which depicts the historic figures of Christian history as Chinese.

Burwood’s Chinese community is one of the congregation’s six “mission focus groups,” including school-aged children, families with young children, migrants, young adults, and seniors. The church runs Introducing God, a six-week program similar to the Alpha Course. “Melbourne has many worldviews, so we assume that the course guests haven’t accepted that the God of the Bible is true,” the church’s website said.