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

Dudley-Smith wrote the texts for his hymns but not the music. “I can’t read music and I’m totally unmusical,” Dudley-Smith told Canon Herbert Taylor early in his vocation as a priest, but Taylor included his text for “Tell Out My Soul” in the Anglican Hymn Book in 1965.

“Everyone knows Tell out my soul (May 1961) and Lord, for the years (February 1967) but, after those …?” Canon Michael Saward, a fellow hymn-writer, wrote in 2006. “Yet, of all today’s hymn-writers, he is probably alone in producing the highest percentage of Rolls Royce texts and a very small scrap-yard of old bangers.”

He was born in 1926. Dudley-Smith’s father was a schoolmaster, and he died when his son was 11.

Dudley-Smith was a leading figure among evangelicals in the Church of England. He became editor of Crusade magazine, created in 1954 after a Billy Graham crusade in London. He was a long-standing friend of John R.W. Stott’s, and wrote a two-volume biography of Stott. He preached at Stott’s funeral. Church Times reported that John Betjeman described “Tell Out My Soul” as “one of the few modern hymns that will truly last.”

He was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 2003 for his “services to hymnody.” Among his many other books was Snakes and Ladders: A Hymn Writer’s Reflections (The Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 2009). His final book was A Functional Art: Reflections of a Hymn Writer (Oxford).

He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Harvard College and studied mathematical statistics for three years at the University of Chicago. After teaching mathematics for a time at the University of Oregon, he studied at Church Divinity School of the Pacific. He was ordained deacon in 1963 and priest in 1964. He served at many parishes in the Diocese of Western Oregon.

His widow, Inga, remembered that when Dubay spoke about attending seminary, a colleague said, “Oh, you’re going to study theometrics, the measurement of God.”

He became a psychotherapist and was licensed for marriage and family counseling. He served as executive director of William Temple House in 1992-93 and remained adjunct staff at Trinity Cathedral in Portland while serving as a therapist. He retired in the early 2000s.

Dubay is survived by three sons and two grandchildren.

The Rev. Deacon Patsy Nell Rushworth Lyle, who served as a deacon in the Diocese of Louisiana beginning in 1986, died May 22 at 89.

She was born in Baton Rouge, and earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Louisiana State University. She worked with her father for 14 years before she began a nine-year discernment period to become a deacon.

“She answered the phone at any time of the day or night and went anywhere she was needed,” a family obituary said. “She was as comfortable and present celebrating your most joyous occasion as she was sitting with you and sharing your most painful grief.”

Her ministry included providing spiritual direction, counseling people in transition or grief, helping people face their death, and serving on staff of Cursillo and Kairos weekends.

She is survived by a daughter, a son, six grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren.

The Rev. Deacon Carol Ann Mills, who lived in Australia for several years before becoming a deacon in San Francisco, died April 20 at 79.

She was born in Chicago. She completed a bachelor’s degree in library science from Eastern Michigan University and a master’s degree from Texas Women’s University in Denton.

Mills met her husband when they were both members of a church choir. Early in their marriage, they moved to Canberra, Australia. Her husband worked on his Ph.D. and she worked as head of the film and media department of the Australian National Library.

She was ordained to the diaconate in 1985 after attending the Diocese of California’s School for Deacons. After the family moved back to Dallas, she completed her training in hospital chaplaincy.

She served as a deacon in several Episcopal churches in the Diocese of Dallas before moving to Houston in 1988. She loved preaching, serving as deacon at the altar, serving in Kairos prison ministry, and caring for the elderly.

She is survived by her husband, Joseph Mills Jr., her husband of 53 years; a son; a daughter; and seven grandchildren.

Other Deaths

Committed to raising up Indigenous clergy and integrating Christian faith and Navajo spirituality, Bailey guided the small but vibrant Episcopal community on the nation’s largest reservation through a time of self-determination that ended in a joyous vote by General Convention this year to make Navajoland a missionary diocese.

When elected as bishop of what was called the Navajoland Area Mission in 2010, Bailey was already 70, the first septuagenarian chosen to lead an Episcopal diocese since the 18th century. In ordinary circumstances, 72 is the mandatory retirement age for bishops.

Bailey pressed on well into his 80s, providing pastoral leadership to the mission’s nine churches, overseeing major renovations of the historic Meem Chapel at Good Shepherd Mission in Fort Defiance, Arizona, and converting a former mission hospital into the Hozho Wellness Center, a ministry focused on healing trauma among Navajo women and children.

During the pandemic, he helped coordinate a feeding ministry across the hard-hit Navajo Nation that distributed food and garden plants to families beyond the reach of conventional assistance programs.

The Episcopal Church in Navajoland’s website said that other priorities for his ministry included “developing programs to address substance abuse and domestic violence; supporting veterans; and developing new sources of income to support the mission.”

Bailey’s leadership in Navajoland developed out of decades of experience working with Native American communities. During a 19-year ministry at St. Stephen’s Church in Phoenix, he helped establish a 60-bed retreat center that often provided shelter for Navajo families that traveled to the city for medical care. He served as chair of the Diocese of Arizona’s Native American Ministries Commission, and worked closely with the Rt. Rev. Steven Tsosie Plummer, Navajoland’s first Diné bishop, helping with administrative tasks for five to six weeks each year.

He served the Diocese of Utah as deployment officer and canon to the ordinary for eight years, where he played a key role in the Jubilee Project, which renovated church buildings and launched new community ministries across the diocese.

He was elected Bishop of Navajoland by the House of Bishops in March 2010, succeeding the Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald, who resigned as interim bishop to become the Anglican Church of Canada’s first national Indigenous bishop.

Bailey was consecrated on August 7, 2010, at what Episcopal News Service called “a ceremony rife with tradition, joy, and hope” in a performing arts center in Kirtland, New Mexico, on the border of the Navajo reservation. Several hundred Diné attended the service, which incorporated various sacred elements of Navajo tradition, including eagle feathers, smudging with smoldering sage, and sweetgrass incense.

Bailey resigned as bishop in 2023, and the Rt. Rev. Barry Beisner, former Bishop of Northern California, was elected as interim bishop. The recent change to Navajoland’s status will allow members to elect their bishop, whom they hope will be a native Diné.

Bailey is survived by his wife, Anne, and their three children. Funeral services will be held at All Saints’ Church in Farmington, New Mexico, headquarters of the Missionary Diocese of Navajoland, at a later date.