Introduction

Welcome to Teachers Talking for Term 2. Last term we explored the different worldviews and how they seek to make sense of the world and our purpose in it. As our students engage in a culture that has largely rejected the God of the Bible from its imagination, we feel the pressure of the social dualism of Biblical truth when our culture and curriculum tells the story of a closed universe. At a time when the Christian mind is often being pressured to conform to the spirit of the age, it is imperative that the Scriptures be brought back from the margin to be re-established at the centre as the text for living the way of Jesus and implementing our educational task.

Like sentinels who kept vigil during the night on the ancient city walls, we are called by God to be gatekeepers who bring His truth to bear on the lives of our children who are being impacted by the decay and despair of the culture we inhabit.

GK Chesterton so aptly commented that because he felt his life was a story then there must be a story-teller. The first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” boldly declares that we are not part of a meaningless cosmos that came into being by time and chance.

There is a true story that emerges from before time and we are part of it. The Bible, the written testimony of the divine revelation of God, is the true story of creation and salvation history and this glorious story, as we read, listen and meditate upon it, becomes our story. Our school communities are called to tell this story and model and teach life as discipleship that responds to the Lordship of Christ and builds a better world turning it upside-down (but in reality the right-side up). The theme for our Term 2 Teachers Talking is “Eat this Book” – the title of a book by Eugene Peterson on how to read God’s Word and to live in its story. For Christian teachers, there can be no false separation between our personal and professional lives. We teach who we are, for when “a student is fully trained he/she will be like their teacher.” (Luke 6:40)

As the Latin phrase says, ‘Nemo potest dare quad nonhabet’ – You can’t give what you don’t have. The very process of designing learning for our students that flows from one’s deeply held Biblical beliefs is a picture of redemption at work.

A key aim of the Excellence Centre is to bless and transform the thinking of teachers as they fulfil their God-given calling.

We trust these talks will assist you to explore with your students the wonder and riches of God’s Word with the goal that His Story will become their story.

“Stand at the crossroads and look, ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your souls.”   Jeremiah 6:16

 

Grace and Peace
The Excellence Centre