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paulvipond · Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 60 Location: Bury

Some true stories just stir your spirit............

"Once upon a time in a primary school close, close to where the A404 runs down by a great oak, and snug up against the parish church, there was a group of Christian children. Now every year, the whole school – the teachers, the staff, and the kids – discuss what the school’s values should be, the values that are displayed in the school hall on paper elephant heads and shape all that everyone does. And anyone may suggest a new value to replace an existing value. And every year everyone votes.

And the school, which is called Holy Trinity, sits snug up against the parish church is a Church of England school but counts among its people Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs and many with no particular faith at all.

And so the group of Christian children pondered how they might in this place of study and play, of talk and food and many faiths, bring the warm light of Christ to shine? And so they went to the head teacher and said,
“We think one of our values should be ‘What would Jesus do?’”

And so the head talked to the Muslims who didn’t mind, because after all Jesus is a prophet. And she talked to the Hindus and the Hindu children talked with the children who were Christians and they talked with the Headteacher and they talked together about this strange and unusual value. And after much discussion the Hindu children returned to the Headteacher and said this is after all a Christian school, so we feel you have every right to have this value. And so it was agreed that WWJD should become one of the school’s values, one of the criteria by which everything that happens in that school should be evaluated. And though the Christian children had never heard grown-up phrases like ‘changing corporate culture’ or ‘transforming ethos’ this is what they had done. And they were 10 years old.

Was it easier, I wonder, or more difficult for Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego? Is it easier or more difficult for you or me? Or have you or I perhaps already done it?

Is this too small a tale to tell, I wonder, of how the life of Jesus so courses through a ten year old that they want to see his name high and lifted up… as indeed it is, for all to see, on a paper elephant head on the walls of their school hall?"

What values are you and I bringing to where we are?

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Make you walk in the dust of your rabbi, Jesus