What a great day

Today I had the privilege of hanging out with some great people at a schoolswork conference in Surrey. There was a great turn out, and I’ve come away from the day really encouraged about the passion and enthusiasm for thinking creatively about our input into schools. The day began with a keynote from Nick Shepherd reminding us of the mission each of us is a part of as we step into the world of education each day. It’s interesting, as he was talking my mind drifted to a conversation I had with a teacher in school last week…

...it was the end of a long day, and it had been a good day, but I was just reflecting with a teacher in the staff room about the day that had been, and we got onto talking about the variety of things I’ve been involved in at school over the last few years. We ended up talking about faith and after a while the teacher turned to me and said ‘it sounds like faith is really important to you, haven’t you ever thought about being a missionary and going to somewhere like Africa?’. I smiled, and loved the heart behind her question as I felt her connect with my desire to make a difference through my faith, and was then thrilled to be able to explain that I did in fact see school as a mission field, that I am a missionary by coming into school each day. She took a moment to think about it, and then seemed to agree.

When we go in to schools as Christian visitors, we’re taking up the call to be part of God’s mission…His mission of redeeming broken lives, bringing healing, offering hope, revealing unconditional love.

The conference today was exactly what schoolswork.co.uk is designed to be about, and it was great to be a part of it…connecting with other workers, sharing stories, encouraging others, being encouraged, learning from each other…

It has stirred me up to make sure there are more opportunities to meet and connect with others who share the dream to make a difference in schools, and are passionate about learning how to do that better, and what that even means!

Nick’s encouragement at the start of the day was really perfect…he began with two words - ‘slow down’. When everything else is speeding up around you, demands and expectations form yourself and your job, summer camp is scarily close and end of term assemblies still haven’t been planned…do take time to slow down, to reflect and evaluate, to look back over this year and to feel good about the things that went well, and also to decide to learn and move on from the things that still niggle at you, that you weren’t happy with.
Be encouraged as you step into schools for the rest of this week. You are an incredibly important part of God’s mission to schools.

TAGS: conference