Phil and Lisa led an assembly at Ladies College on the theme ‘Respect for life’. They reflected on events that have happened over the last few years where little respect had been shown as well as giving students the opportunity to pause and reflect and think about the terrible events happening in Ukraine right now. Drawing on the teaching of Jesus about ‘loving your neighbour as you love yourself’ (Matthew 22:39) they encouraged the students to think about the importance of being kind to others. They explained that Jesus went a step further to say ‘love your enemies’ (Matthew 5:44) yes, love those people who you might struggle with or find annoying and challenged the students to think about building bridges with people who they don’t see eye to eye with. The assembly was well received by the schools with teachers offering praise for the message they had given.
The team have also been busy delivering lessons at Blanchelande College on ‘The Problem of Evil and Suffering’ to Year 7 students. The lesson explores ‘the different types of evil in the world’ and asks the questions ‘Where does evil come from?’ and ‘What does the Bible have to say about how to respond to evil?’. We end the session by looking at some Christian charities and what they are doing to combat evil and suffering in our world. The students have engaged well with the lessons and asked some interesting questions.
In the session we look at the importance of freewill and how God didn’t create robots. We do a quiz to see if they can name some famous robots from movies, look at the pictures below, how many robots can you name?
Behind the scenes the team are also working on a project – another virtual assembly! We thought it would be beneficial to have a backup assembly that can be sent out to primary schools if for some reason we are unable to visit. This one includes some of our loved puppets acting out the story of Esther. Victoria is working hard using her creative talents to put the video together.
Finally the team went along to another Godly Play session held by Eleanor at St Peter’s Church. This time the story was Ruth and it was great to see another effective way to tell the story in a different, visual way. We are hoping to include this method more in our lessons in primary schools.
