October 21, 2013 Serving with Gladness– Community Building

Preparing our students for a life of Christian service requires 360 degree activities.  These activities should provide the student to be challenged intellectually and accept things of the mind, stir them emotionally to engage the heart, and provide opportunities to learn by doing, activating the hands.    These can come in the form of community building initiatives that stress the need for community in our lives and our need to share community with others.  The community builder theme suggests that students will be active pursuers, builders and promoters of communal shalom. We strive to have our classrooms be communities of grace where students will walk and work together.  Our students take part in this through their classrooms, in their neighbourhoods and in the global village they are part of.  In fact, they need to be. Reading through the teaching for transformation booklet, they give numerous examples of community and outline this theme well. Community is how God made us.  One of clearest and most well-known Biblical metaphors compares Christian community to a body which is made up of many parts. We need all the parts to work together in order to experience health and wholeness.  We all know that maintaining a healthy body isn’t something that just happens by itself. Attention must be paid to what we eat and drink, how active we are and how we manage other contributing factors. Students need to learn and experience that community doesn’t just happen, it does take work. We need to pursue it. We can’t just wait for community and peace to come to us – we must go out and make it happen. We need to build and promote shalom– to be active and eager examples of these types of communities.  Blessings on the journey.  ~Mr. Bouwers