Transcript Schools of Mission?

Conference background
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A School Mission Statement
Based on an historic foundation of musical
excellence, XXX School is a flexible and
inclusive academic environment. We are a
caring family-based community in which all
children are respected and valued. We
prepare them, as individuals, to be
confident in a future with exceptional
possibilities.
Another School Mission Statement
• Our mission is to be a school where every individual is highly
valued and where care and concern for others is central to our
work. All our students are expected to achieve their full
potential and become equipped for adult life. At this school
everything we do is guided by Gospel values.
The school Mission Statement is on display in every room. The
Mission Statement guides us in everything we say and do at the
school. Gospel values are particularly important to us.
– Gospel values are:
– Love, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Justice, Faith, Integrity,
Humility, Service, Peace, Hope and Prayer
And the greatest of these is Love.
Mission Expressed in Anglican Ethos Statement
• The school aims to serve its
community by providing an
education of the highest
quality within the context of
Christian belief and practice.
It encourages an
understanding of the
meaning and significance of
faith and promotes
Christian values through the
experience its offers to all
its pupils.
Mission and Church Schools
• “Church Schools stand
at the centre of the
Church’s Mission to the
Nation”
• “Transforming Church
and Community
through Education and
Learning”
‘Most parishes have one or more schools within their
boundaries. In 2001, Lord Dearing’s report The Way
Ahead: Church of England Schools in the New Millennium
highlighted the potential for creative relationships being
forged between parish church and school.
The potential for developing relationship, whether with
church or community schools, is enormous through
chaplaincy, activity clubs, religious education, serving on
governing bodies and visits to the church itself. The
continuing requirement for an act of daily worship of a
broadly Christian nature in every school offers further
possibilities for parish and school engagement.’
Going for Growth 2.4
The Education Division is
committed to enabling every
child and young person to
have a life-enhancing
encounter with the Christian
faith and the person of Jesus
Christ.
Transforming Mission
Summary of David Bosch’s Book
(Orbis 1991)
1929-1992
Missio Dei
From….
God
Church
World
Missio Dei
To….
World
God
Church
To sum up…
• "...mission is, quite simply, the participation of
Christians in the liberating mission of Jesus,
wagering on a future that verifiable experience
seems to belie. It is the good news of God's love,
incarnated in the witness of a community, for the
sake of the world." p.519.
Missio Dei “Mission of God”
• The mission of God as creator, through Christ, in
the Spirit is to bring into being, sustain and
perfect the whole creation
• Mission Shaped Church
• The mission of God as Redeemer, through Christ,
in the Spirit, is to restore and reconcile the fallen
creation from Colossians 1.20
What difference might a
Missio Dei view of mission
make to the task of leading and
contributing to a school with a
Christian character?
Exploring Metaphors
Part Three
1811
The National Society for the Education of the
Poor in the Principles of the Established
Church
Values
http://www.christianvalues4schools.co.uk/
School as Church?
(Consider) ‘the idea of the Church school as itself a kind of church…. If we are
to speak as Dearing did of the Church school as having a central role in
mission, it ought to be obvious that its common religious life is of first
importance – since there is no mission worth the name that is not rooted in
shared life, involving an invitation to others to share it.
The fact is that very many students in a Church school will have their primary
exposure to shared religious activity in school. They and their families will
not regularly and invariably be part of a worshipping group, whatever
motions may have been gone through by parents to win places.
What the school does corporately as a Christian body will be, to all intents and
purposes, how these parents and students will experience the reality of
Church.’
‘A Culture of Hope? Priorities and Vision in Church schools’ (The Association of Anglican Secondary School
Heads annual conference, Exeter 11 September 2003)
Tribal
• ‘Our sort of school for our sort of people so that, in
turn, our children will build the Church of tomorrow’
• Maintaining or developing ‘territory’ in society the size of its stake in the community
• Institution that exists, primarily, to further the
place of the institutional Church in the wider
community.
• One measure of school’s ‘success’/ value may be
its capacity to ‘deliver’ church families/children
Belonging: Threshold/ Part of Family of Church
• Threshold
• Family of Church
• Jean Boutellier
• Free entrance and
exit
• Integrally part of
church building
• ‘Not yet’/ ‘Not Quite’
• All are ‘members’ of
church – linked by
membership of
school
• Fully Including
• Can be +ve and -ve
Community of Christian Safety
• Correctly defined as a ‘Faith School’
• Perhaps, a restrictive admission policy with
church membership as its primary criterion.
• Relationships between church and school will be
close and at its most developed, caters very
much for those already within the church family
• May attract high achieving families who in turn
deliver good examination results
• Could be construed as an ‘Ark of Salvation’, place
of safety in a hostile world.
Community for Outreach
• Reaches out to all members of the community
• Admissions criteria with church membership low
down
• Whilst numbers of children from church attending
families may be low, relations between church and
school often very close and ‘organic’.
• Common in areas where there is no viable
alternative such as rural areas
• Provide a real opportunity for encounter with
Christian community etc. for those who might
otherwise never hear it.
• Church/ministers rejoice that school as provides an
opportunity to make connections etc.
Distinct
• Not afraid to be ’different’
• Very conscious of roots of identity beyond
the immediate (‘radical’)
• May stand out from other schools or
challenge norms or ‘prevailing orthodoxy’
• Can be reflective or militant.
Partnering
• A good ‘joiner’ and ‘reconciler’.
• Wants to build partnerships and emphasise
common values, identity etc.
• Quiescent
• Non-confrontational
• Can be reflective or conformist
Pastoral Cycle
Judge:
Theological
and Biblical
Reflection
See:
Attention to
Context and
Experience
Act:
Response,
Planning and
Action
5 Marks of Mission
1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
2. To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
3. To respond to human need by loving service
4. To seek to transform unjust structures of
society
5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation
and sustain and renew the life of the earth
Going for Growth
How and where children and young people hear the Christian
story
• Respecting the integrity of family background in the
proclamation
• Empowering and training Christians of all ages to be confident in
their faith and their ability to share it with others
• Proclamation without indoctrination or coercion
• Recognition that proclamation will differ according to context –
parish, school, community, culture
• Adults actively listening and responding to the good news
proclaimed by children and young people
• Recognising that children and young people are their own
agents in forming their belief base – and considering the
building blocks that will enable this to happen