Sep 14, 2021 | Care Conversations
9. What might ‘To Serve and to be Served’ look like in a school community?
It will mean the sharing of our gifts to worship the Lord together
Our gifts in music will be expressed in lunch-time mini-concerts; we will encourage students to tutor others in musicianship.
We will create books; we will perform poetry readings
We will design and generate community murals, tapestries, and painting.
Because we grow in more intimate knowledge of each person and we love them, we will recognise when help, care, tears and encouragement are required.
We will encourage students in greeting one another at school entrances; caring for one another during recess and lunch breaks.
We will have classes lead devotional times with other classes; not just older students inputting into the lives of younger children, but also younger children ministering to more senior students.
We will involve our students in construction projects around the school that will benefit the community.
We will have a positive impact on our local region beyond the fences of the school. We may commit to making sure that our local bus shelter or park is kept clean and neat. We may visit immediate neighbours to offer assistance. We will encourage cross-generational service.
We will help one another to see “patterns of service”. The incarnate Christ SAW the needs of sinful humanity; FELT the pain of people and MOVED towards the resolution of that pain and anguish.
So, we’ll train ourselves and our young people to SEE needs FEEL the needs of people and MOVE towards the resolution of those needs.
We will become the picture of the Incarnate Christ in our communities.
Blessings
Brian
Sep 14, 2021 | Teachers Talking
Making a Difference
In 1985, High School teacher Christa McAuliffe (1948-1986) made history when she became the first American citizen selected from 11,000 applicants to go into space.
Christa saw this space mission as the ultimate field trip on which she could help her students better understand space as she would beam into their classroom from space and they would be part of history. As her students watched the Challenger lift off on 28 January 1986, and less than two minutes after lift-off, the shuttle exploded, and everyone aboard died. Recently when reflecting on her legacy, her husband commented that she had inspired generations of classroom teachers and students and focused public attention on the critical importance of teachers in the nation’s wellbeing.
Teachers from all walks of life want to make a difference in the lives of their students. But we must ask ‘what kind of difference’ are we to make in a Christian school? In the Old Testament there is a beautiful, insightful picture of the educational process that is to take place as the Hebrew people unfold to the children what it means to live out their identity as God’s chosen and called people. When the children ask, ‘what is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?’ they were to tell them their Exodus story. One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is to be a person who unfolds God’s story to them. This means each teacher needs to be learning to understand all things in the light of the Gospel of Christ and His purpose for creation. Neil Postman suggests that the most important contribution schools can make to our youth is “to give them a sense of coherence in their studies, a sense of purpose, meaning and interconnectedness in what they learn.” (Postman, 1992, p. 186)
The curriculum and the culture of the school that the students participate in, though imperfect, is a community that embodies the presence of God’s Kingdom rule. It is a world where things are being reconciled and a world of wonder and gratitude. Love is reimagined to look like the God-man who came to serve and give His life a ransom for many. It is a new community of Jesus where people of all ethnic backgrounds can belong. When the cruciform life of the Saviour is seen in the lives of their teachers, over the long haul, students are given a foretaste of the power and truth of the Gospel.
Redemptive teaching seeks to make the eternal future present in the teaching relationship here and now.
“To build a better world, the beginnings of that world must be visible in daily life. There is no reason to expect much to happen in the future if the signs of hope are not in the present. We cannot speak about ways to bring peace and freedom if we cannot draw from our own experiences of peace and freedom here and now. We cannot commit ourselves to work for justice and love in tomorrow’s society, if we cannot discover the seeds of it in the relationships we engage ourselves in today.” (Nouwen, 1971, p. 14)
In the final analysis, to be a teacher is to see teaching “as primarily a way of life for others to see and understand and so that liberation can become a possibility.” (Nouwen, 1971, Introduction)
Looking at teaching as a calling from Christ Himself, St Augustine concluded that it is in teaching that man most significantly expresses his love of God and of his fellowman. (Augustine) The calling of a teacher is an enormous privilege and noble task. As God’s children, we need to recognise that in the complexities and demands of being a teacher, we are recipients of God’s grace and He calls us to live out His grace in our vocation, knowing that He dwells with us. As the Body of Christ, we do this journey together trusting Christ to work in and through us by His Spirit as we lead the students in God’s purpose.
“Therefore, since through God’s mercy, we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.” (2 Corinthians 4:1)
Grace and Peace
TEC Team
Reference
- Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to Technology. Vintage Publishing
- Nouwen, H. (1971) Creative Ministry. Image Books
- Augustine, The Practice of the Catholic Church. 56
Sep 14, 2021 | Hope_Tina
Contentment – Transformation vs Gratification
Pumping through in the veins of our society is the ideology of consumerism which boldly claims our happiness in life will be settled and enhanced by the consumer transactions we make. Contentment appears to be within our grasp. Or is it? We are led to believe that the more we “consume”, products, relationships, or services, the greater our chance at happiness and sense of contentment. We are promised gratification but fail to see how inequitable this approach to life is when we will inevitably emerge from the transient states of fulfilment.
Consumerism is a worldview that pulsates with an insatiable desire to feel fulfilled by consuming, be it a possession, experience or relationships. The illusion of gratification as a pathway to contentment leaves us as casualties of the consumerism belief system. The individual pursues the “feeding frenzy” and discovers all too quickly how the hunger and desire for more seems to continuously increase. In reality, it is discontentment that sits beneath consumerism as it lures in the unfulfilled soul and promises what it actually can’t deliver.
Hebrews 13:5 cautions us about consumerism and reminds us we need to be content with what we have and not to become prisoners of currency and consumerism. Most importantly, the focus is on God who will never leave us or forsake us, implying that a perceived joy of possessions will fade and will never ever give us the level of security or contentment we are wired for as humans made in God’s image. God is enough for us. Right there is the deal-breaker. God is the source of true contentment, not possessions or experiences.
Christian contentment is not a commodity we go and pick off the shelf. It’s not a product or a service that results from a monetary transaction. Contentment is a transformation of our inner person that leads to a deep sense of fulfilment rather than a momentary sense of gratification that comes from a desire for things or experiences, that keeps us coming up empty. Christian contentment is a posture of “being” that flows out of a dependency on the character of God as He transforms us and brings authentic fulfilment, rather than a procurement of something that will ultimately disintegrate in its capacity to leave us content.
Never has there been a more illusory ideology than consumerism. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good shop and there is nothing wrong with buying things, however when we get entangled with the roots of consumerism and allow it to shape us and drive us to try and feel content, we are gratified and not transformed.
Christian contentment begins with God who sees our deep need for meaning, fulfilment and contentment. There is a once off transaction that takes place when God deposits the seeds of salvation into our hungry souls. This is a one-way transaction that costs us nothing and cost God everything. Once He secures us, contentment becomes a transformational process where the deeper layers of our souls are bathed in the balm of genuine love that births contentment rather than a short-term fix that results from gratification after we have engaged with a misleading system of belief.
Consumerism says, “it’s time for something new”. But the need for something new is not just an occasional desire. It is a hedonistic drive that constantly circles back to the same start point: discontentment. No amount of gratification will ever be enough because it draws meaning and fulfilment from a source that is ever shifting.
The life to faith calls us to “the new”, but it causes us to look outward, beyond ourselves and to our Creator. We depend on God and His capacity to transform us as we encounter His goodness, faithfulness, and love in all seasons of life. Colossians 3:9-10 reminds us that when we enter into a relationship with Jesus, we “put off” the old and “put on” the new. God begins to transform and renew us into the image of Jesus. This is the epicentre of contentment, transformation in Christ rather than self-gratification.
What is it we hunger for? If we hunger for anything less than Jesus, we will fall prey to a life of discontentment. As we pursue Jesus, He leads us into the gardens of His grace and goodness and there we find exactly what He promises: Christian contentment.
Friends, as you “put on” the new in Christ, may you know the deep wells of His love and devotion for you as His treasured possession. He will transform you and seal true contentment into your souls.
Blessings
Tina
Sep 14, 2021 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
God is not in lockdown. When the walls of our lives are pressing in on us and it feels like our shoes have been nailed to the floor lest we wander outside the borders of our designated spaces, we feel increasingly shackled and restricted. Lockdown has made us feel like there is a new face to life. What about all our plans, our time, our relationships, or our ministries? As we continue to do life inside our four walls, there is a niggling thought that is silently bubbling away as we fleetingly wonder, “has COVID got the reins?” But wait! There’s an open window that lets us see out to an unconstrained realm and we realise, with great hope that the realm of the Kingdom of God is open, and the business of God has not changed because God is not in lockdown. We might be contained, but heaven’s doors remain open, and God is moving across the earth and in our lives the same way He always has and always will. In God’s realm, there is no restriction, no containment, and no curbing of His purposes. God is not in lockdown.
God has not been put on hold in this season of confinement and nor have His plans been delayed. He is not marking time, scanning the four walls of His universe, and wondering when to start the clock on His Kingdom commitments again. Nothing contains Him. There are no walls for God. The heavens are not like His safehouse where He goes to hide from the same things that cause us to retreat. God hasn’t retreated because God is not in lockdown. He is untouched by the things that touch our world and continues to put His powerful touch on us, making all the difference. He is still the same, He is still doing what He has always done, and nothing can thwart His grand plans to keep advancing His redemptive story.
Psalm 113 asks a leading question, “who is like the Lord our God who sits enthroned on high yet stoops down and comes in close to His people, raising them out of the ash heap, and repositioning their lives (para)”. That’s who our God is! Uncontained and incomparable! Immense and intimate. Our God is not in lockdown. Imagine that! The same, uncontained God who is seated above the heavens, utterly majestic also moves into our locked down spaces and settles our hearts with His tender presence. There is and will only ever be One who holds the reins of life, God! What a hope and what a comfort that our God is not in lockdown.
So, friends, get your “uncontained God” on today.
Best days to come.
Wen
PS: Oh, and one more thought for the road: one day God is going to kick every sickness and virus to the curb and what a great day that will be.
Sep 8, 2021 | Care Conversations
8. To ‘SERVE and to be SERVED’
Our four “hallmarks” of community are all connected.
We can only ‘know and be known’ if we know that we are ‘loved and able to love’. Serving is an act of love and is made possible by our knowledge of one another’s needs.
Our hallmarks are also most effectively informed by knowing who the Triune God is. He knows us intimately and want us to know Him. He is love itself and desires that we love Him. He serves His creation and desires our service. He celebrates His own creative goodness and wants us to celebrate Him and with Him.
Many years ago, when we were part of a team pioneering a new Christian School, we set out to write our statement of purpose. One of our principles was “to develop joy in serving”. It fitted well with what we understood to be our calling.
The following day one of our teachers came to see me and expressed her dissatisfaction with our statement; she saw it as incomplete. She suggested “to develop joy in serving and in the acceptance of being served.” She was absolutely correct.
We realised that it can actually be easier to serve others than to be served. Serving others can indeed cause us to behave in “superior” ways – to presume that we have no need of the service of others. Serving and being served both require humility.
Serving requires us to take the gifts that God has given us and to use them for His glory and in the service of others.
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that we are to be salt in the world – to preserve that which is virtuous, to enhance goodness and add positive flavour. He also says we should be like a light on a hill – in other words to be a beacon that will be seen and noticed as something that brings light into darkness. It is our love and service for one another that will make a visible a difference to the world around us.
Then Matthew points out: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
There is a direct connection between our service and our reflection of the nature of God that shows His glory.
Blessings
Brian
