Teachers Talking | Term 1, 2024
Introduction
Welcome to Teachers Talking for 2024.
As the new school year opens, Christian schools and teachers face many complex challenges that reflect a culture that has largely forgotten the God of the Bible. In this context, for some, you are commencing your teaching vocation, for others, you are starting in a new school, and for many, you are continuing in your current situation.
We know that Christian teachers are dedicated to their God‑given calling and desire to educate their students so they may be formed into the people God designed them to be. In the midst of daily routines, and the demands of teaching, there are the strong cultural forces that would seek to lead students into a way of life that dehumanises them. This year, the theme of The Excellence Centre is Hope with Love, for the hope we offer students flows from the love of Christ, expressed in God’s Story of Redemption and embodied in our historical and cultural time. The authority for our lives lies in Biblical Story and so inhabiting our story means allowing it to form us into a counter‑cultural people who live as citizens in the Kingdom of God.
To this end, during Term 1, the Teachers Talking offerings will focus on the theme, What does it look like to be a counter‑cultural people? These talks will explore the Word of God which has its own narratives, patterns, dispositions and images that enable us to critique our own culture, ‘the water we swim in’, so we might not be captivated or seduced by it. We need to learn about the language and thought patterns that both we and our children are subject to. Cultural changes occur so fast and are transmitted so widely through online platforms that our students rapidly absorb them. We are then pointed to the truth and beauty of Christ and His Gospel work as the better story that points to the restoration of God’s good creation and the transformation of our lives to be those who bless God’s world. In this way we can train our students to think critically about diverse points of view- exploring the implications of them and learning to think God’s thoughts after Him.
May we live faithfully in our present time as our schools and classes seek to be places where students receive a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.
Grace and peace
The Excellence Centre Team
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world (be counter‑cultural), but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.”(Romans 12: 2)