new church life: november/december 2014
• Assisting in the development of and response to conscience
• Promoting innocence or a willingness to follow the Lord
I believe that wherever there are parents who want the very best for their
children, there will be a call for New Church education. Spiritually minded
parents will want their children to learn of the Lord and the things of spiritual
life as they grow, so that they can become loving, wise and useful human
beings who are following the Lord to heaven. Fortunately for us, the Lord has
a great deal to share on this use.
Administrator-to-administrator support. The goal here was to absorb the
fact that all the people around that table are current leaders in the field of New
Church education. As such, they are not only shouldering the load in their
local context, but can provide valuable input to our system of education.
Many of these administrators do see each other as colleagues to whom
they can turn for counsel on the leadership issues they are facing. It always
helps to take the time to build those relationships at a retreat like this one.
Connectivity. We discussed the premise that we are stronger together than
apart. It is easy to say, but sometimes challenging to achieve, given busyness,
local pressures, the perception of divergent ideologies and distance.
What we discovered once again is the similarity of commitment that
exists within all of our schools, despite differences in approaches based on
local contexts.
We also explored ways in which we can assist each other in our respective
work: what General Church Education can do to support administrators; what
the College can do in terms of educating teachers who meet the needs of our
schools; and what we can all do to demonstrate that we are one system rather
than a bunch of independent schools.
Planning. Finally, we had the opportunity to access the brain trust gathered to
explore major challenges and opportunities before us that could feed into the
“education” strand of the General Church strategic planning proces