Play As Devotion for a Church Meeting – Transcript
Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministry best practices and quick help – wisdom from the field. This is our collaborative Wisdom from the Field project featuring short interviews with transitional interim ministers, and others, with practical help and wisdom to offer those engaged in transitional ministry. Thank you for tuning into this episode of wisdom from the field.
Jim Latimer
Today we have the great fun and pleasure having with us Reverend Niki Harvel. Niki is an ELCA minister. She has served in a variety of pastorates and currently is in a designated term pastorate. Niki and I have known each other for a while. And one of the things that stands out to me is how she has a knack for helping congregations reinvent their ministries and activities in ways that are authentically joyful to the Gospel. And fun! She has real genius around fun and joy and bringing it back into ministries that can get pretty tired. And that brings us to play. She wanted to speak to us today around play as devotion in a meeting. And when she spoke about that I’m going, Oh, yes! Talk to us! Go ahead, Niki, please.
Niki Harvell
Wonderful. Yes. Play, I think is one of those pieces that is so often overlooked, but is really an essential component of ministry. And sometimes we find ourselves either dealing with immediate crises or depth of pastoral care, or all those other pieces that are easily attached to ministry, and we forget about play. Or, it’s relegated to children and youth only – not seen as beneficial for adults. But the reality is that play has so many benefits for not only individuals, but for our ministries and our leadership. So, using play and games and that playfulness as a start, a stepping stone at the very beginning of a meeting or a gathering, really sets a different tone entirely for what you’re going to do.
Jim Latimer
Nice. I love how you’re positioning play as being just good for our health – our mental health, and therefore our spiritual health and everything.
Niki Harvell
Right. Yes. And you can certainly see the science of the benefits. But one of the big reasons that I think play is so important, especially as a devotion. A devotion can be more than simply prayer or even a reflective practice – while those have great purpose as a devotion in meetings – and play can sometimes be that difference between a meeting being just business or meeting being ministry. Because if we think of where folks are coming from – they’re coming oftentimes from work or from home. They’re coming from a busy scheduled day of productivity, and that’s where worth and value is. And now they’re coming into this meeting. And so, if we don’t find a way to shift the headspace to start on a united territory of just pure, joyful, fun creativity, then that’s the mindset they’re going to stay in for the meeting. And so, you get very different results when you switch over to a start with playfulness.
Jim Latimer
I love that distinction that you’re making there, that the mindset that we bring right to a meeting, when we inject play into it, then instead of just being business, it becomes ministry and all the richness of that. And it is more productive for the ministry for the gospel, for what we’re for as a community of faith. So, can you give us some example or two around that?
Niki Harvell
Yeah. So, I’m going to use counsel or a similar church leadership group – the kind of meeting which I feel is most at risk of becoming too much business and not enough fun. And so, an example of some kind of play that you might do at the beginning of that is first to think about what kind of end result are you hoping for. What kind of mental space are you wanting to create for the room? What tone are you setting? So, if you want one that is team building, if you’re going to be talking about some possibly contentious issues that are high anxiety, you want to do a team building game. And one that has nothing to do with what you’re talking about. One that is purely fun. You’re focusing on the skill. So, you want to do a team building game. You might give everybody a different type of material – toothpicks, marshmallows, duct tape, newspaper, whatever, and have them all build a tower, and see if they can get it higher than, for example, the table, in five minutes working together. Or, you might do a cooperative thing where everyone starts with a blank piece of paper, and you ask them to draw a shape. And then you pass the paper. The next one, you say, Okay, now add something to the shape that would make this look like a monster. Great, pass it again. Now make this monster in a particular setting, add some kind of a landscape. And keep passing it around until you get back to the original picture. And then just enjoy the silliness that has come out of this, or the similarities and the differences. So those are some examples.
Jim Latimer
Let me pause you there. Everybody starts with a piece of paper. And so, then you have all of these different additions…(laughing)
Niki Harvel
Yes.
Jim Latimer
And these are short, too – seven or eight minutes, right? It’s not like it takes a lot of time. But it totally shifts the space. Shifts the headspace and the mood.
Niki Harvell
Yes, it absolutely does. And I’ve even used that particular game as a transition and interim, as we’re looking at, for example, if we’re going to be doing vision work, or we’re trying to understand our church story. To use it as a way to start drawing a church. And framing the questions with things like, What’s your picture missing? Draw something that would connect what’s on your paper with the community. So, adding those different pieces along the way are great opportunities for that.
Jim Latimer
Can I pause you for a moment? With the drawing one, in particular, for people that say, Oh, I can’t draw. I can’t do that! How do you help people let go of some of the limitations that they want to hold on to?
Niki Harvel
The two easiest ways are one, draw a bad example. Don’t have an artist do it. And if you are an artist, don’t draw the example, have somebody who’s not an artist draw the example. That way you can say, So, at the end we might have something that looks like this! Make your sample and what you do in it accessible to everybody. You’re not setting a top bar. You’re setting the tone. And then the other easy way to do that is to just not require drawing. Say, Okay, well, then you can add a speech bubble! And have them say what they want, or put a little sign in the front. That’s, okay, too. Because it’s not about the skill level. And if you have somebody who’s not comfortable, then you’re going to miss the purpose of the game and it won’t be joyful for them.
Jim Latimer
Nice. I love those ways to help people. Just show up! However God made you or whoever you are, show up! That’s what we want. Nice. Well, that’s really good! Two concrete examples around play as devotion in a meeting, and this particular example as a church council, but it could be deacons, it could be any regularly scheduled meeting, right? Or something that tends to be overly business, overly heavy, to release the joy through fun and play because that’s the spirit. The spirit particularly comes alive in those situations.
Niki Harvell
Right.
Jim Latimer
Great, Niki. Okay, well, thank you so much for this. I took notes, and I’m sure some people will really benefit from these specific examples too. Thanks, Niki.
Niki Harvell
You’re welcome.
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