"GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."
Read again. There are parts of it that I am skilled to do, and there are parts of it that WE are skilled to do. There are parts of it, however, that are, in fact impossible. That doesn't mean we should change our mission. Quite the contrary. It means, we have to call in the big guns. The portion of our mission statement that says we will "spiritually . . . equip, challenge, and inspire" is not within our power. It is only possible if we are daily putting this part of our mission in the hands of God.
I don't know if you have ever written a mission statement with a group of people. You wouldn't believe how long it takes to dissect each phrase and word. The first draft of this statement only included the word "equips." Some of the teacher in the room felt that word was too small, that it made it sound like we only did the minimum. While I disagreed, I certainly understood how, if they thought that others might as well. We spent several minutes brainstorming other words with the intent of replacing the word equipped. When we were through, the three favorite words were "challenges and inspires," and there were a few people who still fought for the word "equips." We ended up keeping all three words, not because it was easier, but because each of those words means something different that we agreed we wanted for our students. Let's look at each of them.
Equip
As I said earlier, there was a contingent in favor of this word because it means giving students what they need. Imagine that you are an astronaut being sent on a mission. You would expect NASA to equip you with training time and manuals, a suit, oxygen, biomonitors, etc. You would expect that the ship would be equipped with fuel, safety devices and procedures, food and water that can be consumed in microgravity, waste disposal equipment, electrical systems, and guidance computers. As you can see, equipping is hardly a small thing.
When we set out to spiritually equip students, the job is daunting. We have chapel and Bible classes. Our English classes teach students to analyze literature, and those skills are useful for Bible analysis as well. We converse with our students often about spiritual issues. Tomorrow, our high school students leave for a spiritual retreat, in which they will hear sermons but also be broken into smaller groups to discuss topics that have been specifically chosen for them by the faculty and staff. While there may be people who thought of this word as small, you can see that God must be the one who does the equipping because it is too big a job for us.
Challenge
Challenging students comes with the job description of any teacher. English teachers challenge students to raise their level of writing and increase their vocabulary. Science teachers challenge students to ask big questions and draw conclusions from things they observe. Foreign language teachers challenge students to speak when it is not comfortable to do so. In Christian education, all of those things are still there, but we are also tasked with challenging our students to stand up to the influence of their culture, one that is increasingly secular and even militantly atheist. Sometimes, it feels a bit like we are standing in a raging storm with the culture flashing lightning and blaring thunder, while we shout at our students to fight back. It would be easy to give up on this if it were up to us. Fortunately, God will challenge their hearts. We, their teachers, are merely the tools he uses to do so.
Inspires
If there is any word in the mission statement that I know for sure I am incapable of achieving, it is this one. I can teach. I can talk. I can design lessons. I can give students opportunities. I cannot inspire. Only God can do that, so we as teachers should pray each day that he will.
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