Date: October 8, 2026
On Wednesday, October 7, 2026, VTS’s Department of Lifelong Learning and the Godly Play Foundation marked the opening of the Jerome W. Berryman Special Collection and Archive.
Housed in its own room within the Lifelong Learning offices, the collection is open to those wishing to explore the sources that informed Berryman’s work. Thanks to the efforts of Lifelong Learning and Godly Play Foundation staff members plus Lifelong Learning student worker and VTS seminarian Jasina Wise, visitors are able to easily search for a particular book or essay using a digital catalogue.
Contents of the Berryman Special Collection and Archive were culled from the personal library of Dr. Jerome W. Berryman (1937-2024), cofounder of the global Christian education movement known as Godly Play. (Berryman developed Godly Play with his wife, Thea.) The collection’s 800+ volumes, paired with the archives being housed at Bishop Payne Library, represent a lifetime of work in the theology of childhood, Christian formation, children’s spirituality, and pastoral practice.
Virginia Theological Seminary is home to its own Godly Play room located in the lower level of the Addison Academic Center. We at the seminary are particularly blessed by the enduring gift from Dr. Berryman and his family of an endowed faculty position: The Berryman Family Chair in Children’s Spirituality and Nurture. In 2022, Rode Molla, Ph.D. became the very first person in the Berryman Family Chair when she joined VTS as an assistant professor.
Too learn more about the collection and to browse the digital catalogue: Berryman Special Collection – The Center for the Theology of Childhood.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and President of The General Theological Seminary