Plan to Play: How Storymakers Cultivates Sacramental Imagination
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” -Rev. Fred Rogers
Before founding Storymakers, Melina Isa Luna spent much of her career in behavioral health. “What I found when I was trying to connect with kids or clients was that I was able to make connections through art and collaborative play to develop throughlines, and know more about what was happening in their lives,” Luna reflected. “This just seems easier sometimes with kids; they can more easily reach that flow state of connection and imagination. But it's the grown ups that can have such a hard time living in that space.”
When she lived near a seminary in Pittsburgh, Luna audited classes about hermeneutics and Christian Scripture, and began to see how often children’s curriculum reduced Scripture to simplified moral direction. A story like David and Goliath was used to offer children a prompt toward courage, while the broader arc of God’s story faded into the background.
“This isn’t only about being like a certain character,” she said. “This is a redemptive narrative. This is something so much bigger.”
That discovery led Luna to ask how children could engage that larger story with every part of themselves, and see the Bible as an invitation to an ongoing narrative that included their own lives and imaginations.
With an eye toward this kind of biblical imagination, Luna and a group of creatives from around New York City launched a creative arts camp in their congregation, bringing artists, storytellers, and children together in an immersive environment. Children acted out stories, built set pieces creatively representing the world of the Bible, and engaged Scripture through multiple forms of expression and play.
As the creative arts camp inspired collaboration, pastors and ministry leaders around New York City began asking how they could be involved. When the camp grew, Luna and her collaborators realized these sparks of imagination could be translated into something more widely accessible. In 2018, with support from early donors and partners, Luna launched Storymakers as a resource for churches around the world with the mission of “sparking faith through imagination.” Since then, they have created curriculum for various age ranges, along with family conversation cards, Scripture memory cards, and resources that help adults playfully engage with Scripture.
“Our hope is that in everything we do, kids leave knowing God is with them and for them, and that we can help grownups to know that,” Luna said. “I think it’s sometimes not natural for grownups to feel that freedom, and so that’s what we try to overcommunicate: plan to play.”
Leaders whose congregations have used Storymakers’ resources and family ministry curriculum often describe a renewed sense of engagement. Catherine Breed, Storymakers Parent and Congregational Liaison, who first encountered the curriculum while serving in local church ministry, recalled how it changed her own experience.
“I was starting to get burnt out in ministry,” she said. “This reinvigorated me. It gave me energy again. And our volunteers felt it too.”
The tactile nature of the materials plays a role. Children receive something they can hold and keep; when children miss a week of engaging with the curriculum, they can re-enter without losing continuity. When they return home, the story travels with them.
“It creates a kind of familiarity,” Breed said. “You can pick it back up, and it’s still there.”
The Creative Process: How Storymakers Creates Resources that Spark Faith at Church and Home
It can be challenging for congregations to balance formation in the home, and formation in the congregation. Storymakers has purposefully built resources designed to move between spaces rather than remaining fixed, so a lesson experienced in a classroom can be carried home, revisited, and discussed in the rhythms of family life. Storymakers’ materials are made to be kept and added to over time, so the format itself encourages continuity.
“There’s a collective aspect to it,” Luna said. “We want it to feel like we’re woven into each other’s stories, into God’s story.”
Each resource is structured with six points of engagement:
Visual language: engaging the imagination through artwork and imagery.
Scripture (hearing the story): encountering the biblical text read aloud.
Embodiment: acting out the narrative, moving, participating physically in the story.
Anchoring in facts: remembering fun facts and context that reinforce Scripture’s rootedness in its context.
Social learning: hearing others’ responses and engaging in shared group experiences.
Art processing: creating something to reflect on and internalize the story.
Over time, kids and grownups inhabit Scripture and congregational life as places they are invited to be part of God’s family and story. Different generations learn to listen to each other, and see the Spirit-filled community expand through participation.
When the Storymakers team celebrates impact, they reflect on how families have reported increased engagement around Scripture, how children are seeing curiosity come alive as they ask rich questions about Scripture, and how adults find themselves revisiting stories with new attention.
“We’re always talking about easy wins,” Luna said. “Quality over quantity.”
With a grant awarded by Lilly Endowment, Inc. through the Christian Parenting and Caregiving initiative, StoryMakers has been able to expand into areas they have long been dreaming about, including the “Play Together” family devotional, story cards, and a resource about play created specifically for grownups. The expansion of Storymakers has allowed the team to develop additional resources aimed at strengthening those connections. These resources include family devotionals, play-based guides, and simple tools designed for use in everyday settings.
The work continues to unfold incrementally. Each new resource builds on the same core conviction that imagination plays a central role in spiritual formation. Children enter that space naturally but adults often require an invitation (yet are delighted by what emerges when they accept it).
For Luna, the long-term vision remains grounded in the same insight that shaped her early work: when the imagination is engaged, people become ripe for formation and ready to connect with God’s story more richly.
“We want them to leave wanting more,” she said.
