Having only followed pro-cycling for around ten months, I’ve decided to publicly embarrass myself with some predictions for the forthcoming ‘Spring Monuments’ (Milan-San Remo; Tour of Flanders; Paris-Roubaix; Liege-Bastogne-Liege). So here goes…
Milan – San Remo: Andre Greipel
Tour of Flanders: Tom Boonen
Paris – Roubaix: Juan Antonio Flecha
Liege – Bastogne – Liege: Philippe Gilbert
Would be happy with 1 out of 4.
Monday, 27 February 2012
Sunday, 12 February 2012
A Royal Priesthood (talk transcript)
A transcript of a talk I gave last week, unedited.
----------------------------------------------
I was reading the local news a couple of weeks ago, and discovered to my alarm that our very own Quayside was invaded by hostile forces! And we’re not talking about contemporary art lovers or stag weekends, but actual soldiers with guns and marines with boats. Fortunately the whole thing was just a military exercise, and apart from worrying a few locals, left no lasting damage to the city. But the exercise was apparently very successful, with the invaders invading, the defenders defending, the medics mediccing and the support staff supporting. In what was designed to be a ‘war simulation zone’, all the players knew their role and acted accordingly.
Contrast their attitudes with those of the four players in this bizarre game of Monopoly. It became apparent very quickly in this game, that the top hat had no ambition beyond going round the board as many times as possible, as quickly as possible. He never stopped to buy anything, but just kept on rolling. Odd as that was, the dog behaved in an even stranger way, rejoicing every time he had to pay tax or a utility bill. Meanwhile the car attempted to keep out of trouble by sitting in jail all game, and the iron spent all his money building hotels on chance and community chest squares. Now to win at Monopoly you have to be a ruthless capitalist, crushing your opponents under your superior material acquisition, but none of these players grasped that – rather the top hat thought he was an athlete, the dog became a convinced communist, the car was a complete coward and the iron was simply a nut case. Unlike the cadets and soldiers in the Quayside exercise, the Monopoly players simply did not understand who they were or what they were meant to be doing.
And those two questions – who are we? and what are meant to be doing? – are vital questions to ask ourselves, both as individual Christians and as the collective body of Christ. If we turn in our bibles to the reading we have just heard, in verse 9 Peter describes the church as ‘a royal priesthood’, a single phrase which gets to heart of what it is to be and to live as Christians. So in the few minutes I have tonight I’d like us to explore the idea of ‘a royal priesthood’ with these two questions – what does it mean to be a royal priesthood? And what does it look like to live as a royal priesthood?
So firstly, what does it mean to be a royal priesthood?
To return briefly to military analogy, the ‘royal’ in the Royal Navy indicates two things – that it is the possession of the Queen, and also that it has been commissioned by the Queen. And the word ‘royal’ operates in the same way in verse 9–we belong to God and we are commissioned by God. But who exactly who belongs to this royal priesthood? Peter makes it clear in verse 10 that it is all those who have received the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. And this is a wonderful thing – for just as the whole world is invited to receive mercy in Christ Jesus, all those who take up that offer become the possession of God and part of this royal priesthood.
So that’s the royal part. What about the priesthood? Priesthood can evoke images of Old Testament Israel, where those descended from Aaron, the Levites, were appointed to offer sacrifices in order to mediate between God and humans. But the book of Hebrews makes it abundantly clear that Jesus has permanently fulfilled the necessity to make atoning sacrifice for human sin, and that faith in Christ is the qualification to access the living God, rather than a visit to an appointed priest. Peter thus can’t be suggesting that the New Testament priesthood is about providing access to God, so what does he have in mind? We get a hint in verse 5 of our reading, where he commands that the royal priesthood offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus”. But what exactly does that mean?
Well, to get a true idea of what the royal priesthood should look like, we have to go back to the Old Testament. But not to Israel’s priesthood. That priesthood operated as it did because the rebellion of Humankind meant that mediation through the sacrifice of blood was necessary to maintain relationship between a just God and a rebellious nation. But Israel’s priesthood was neither the first priesthood nor the model of what God intended priesthood to be. Rather, we need to go back to the creation-order itself. We see in the early chapters of Genesis and indeed throughout the Old Testament, God’s purpose for creating Humans as his image-bearers on Earth was that they would bring God’s rule to bear on Earth and gather the praises of the Earth to God. This is the true priesthood and the pattern of priesthood that we are to follow; indeed it was the design of creation that all humans would be priests, but this calling was surrendered by Humans as one of the consequences of rebellion against God. Wonderfully, the priesthood has now been restored to the church of Christ. So these “acceptable spiritual sacrifices” spoken of by Peter are all of the fruits of the church of Christ seeking once again to fulfil this priestly role of bringing the rule of God to bear on Earth and of gathering the Earth’s praise to God.
So what exactly does this mean for us? And how do we go about fulfilling this call? This brings me to my second question: what does it look like to live as a royal priesthood?
If we begin with our attitudes, the Epistles highlight three virtues that should especially mark the followers of Jesus and so should be distinctives of the royal priesthood. These are “faith, hope and love”, a trio exhorted by Paul in 1 Corinthians, Colossians and 1 Thessalonians. So as a priesthood we must have real faith in the goodness, promises and word of the God we are seeking to serve and praise, otherwise our efforts will at best be half-hearted and at worst a vanity parade. We must hope for the return of our king Jesus, as without hope of a perfect and united New Earth and New Heavens, we will neither have the vision to herald the reign of God nor the motivation to persevere in our priesthood. And we must love, for in commanding us to “love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and to love our neighbour as ourselves”, Jesus has established love rather than military might or philosophical brilliance to be the means by which His people should seek to live and make him known. So faith, hope and love are to be our priestly attitudes.
What about our actions? In short, the priestly call encompasses the whole life of the church, but there are four tasks in particular that scripture presents as central to this call. Firstly, is the task proclamation. If a king is going to be obeyed and worshipped, he must send heralds into the realm to proclaim his kingship. So we must boldly, unashamedly and urgently proclaim to the whole world that Christ Jesus is the King. Secondly, there is the task of humble service. Jesus leaves us in no doubt that the Christian life is one of putting others’ interests first and seeking their good ahead of our own. Indeed this is the practical fruit of the virtue of love, and highlights again that the priesthood is not to bring God’s rule on Earth through arrogance and muscle, but through a willing outpouring of our lives in service for the good of others and the glory of God.
Thirdly is the task to pray. Prayer is the supreme means that God has given us to seek to bring his rule upon Earth. We are appointed as intercessors to the king, and God has so ordered things that the welfare of all creation, its people, its cities and its nations, are dependent on our prayers. This is sobering when we consider the slowness and dispassion that is so often the experience of our prayer life. But let me balance this with an encouragement, in that I’m certain that without the faithful praying of this church over the years, that both our life as a church and the well-being of this city would be in a far worse state than they are. And let us take heart for tonight’s meeting, that by seeking the good of the Earth and the glory of God through our prayers, we are truly being God’s royal priesthood.
These three tasks - proclamation, humble service and prayer - come under the “God to Earth” dimension of priesthood, so what about the “Earth to God” dimension? Well this is where the final task comes into play, namely the task of praise. Praise encompasses all aspects of thankfulness and thanksgiving, and in our passage in verse 9 Peter exhorts the church to “declare the praises of him who brought us out of the darkness and into his glorious light”. In light of His glorious redeeming work, there is no limit on the type or amount of praise that should be rendered to God. Yet scripture does proscribe a special union between praise and music. We see this throughout the Old Testament and supremely in the Psalter, but also in the New Testament – through Paul encouraging both the Ephesian and Colossian churches to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, and through the inclusion in scripture of early church hymns, such as the ‘Christ the servant’ hymn in Philippians 2. The royal priesthood is thus charged calling every heart to give thanks to the Lord Jesus, singing praise to the Mighty King and leading the whole creation in doing so!
I’d like to conclude by exhorting us not to make the mistake of the Monopoly players, but rather to remember who we are, and what we are called to do. We should rejoice to be part of this amazingly-called royal priesthood and at having the creation-purpose of our humanity restored by the mercy of God. So tonight may we pray with desperate and longing hearts to see God’s Spirit move to transform people’s lives, that he may bring people out of their darkness and that they may bring Him praise. Let us give thanks for the growth he has granted us, but not to be satisfied until every tongue on Tyneside, and indeed throughout all creation, confesses that Jesus Christ is the Lord, to the praise of God the Father.
----------------------------------------------
I was reading the local news a couple of weeks ago, and discovered to my alarm that our very own Quayside was invaded by hostile forces! And we’re not talking about contemporary art lovers or stag weekends, but actual soldiers with guns and marines with boats. Fortunately the whole thing was just a military exercise, and apart from worrying a few locals, left no lasting damage to the city. But the exercise was apparently very successful, with the invaders invading, the defenders defending, the medics mediccing and the support staff supporting. In what was designed to be a ‘war simulation zone’, all the players knew their role and acted accordingly.
Contrast their attitudes with those of the four players in this bizarre game of Monopoly. It became apparent very quickly in this game, that the top hat had no ambition beyond going round the board as many times as possible, as quickly as possible. He never stopped to buy anything, but just kept on rolling. Odd as that was, the dog behaved in an even stranger way, rejoicing every time he had to pay tax or a utility bill. Meanwhile the car attempted to keep out of trouble by sitting in jail all game, and the iron spent all his money building hotels on chance and community chest squares. Now to win at Monopoly you have to be a ruthless capitalist, crushing your opponents under your superior material acquisition, but none of these players grasped that – rather the top hat thought he was an athlete, the dog became a convinced communist, the car was a complete coward and the iron was simply a nut case. Unlike the cadets and soldiers in the Quayside exercise, the Monopoly players simply did not understand who they were or what they were meant to be doing.
And those two questions – who are we? and what are meant to be doing? – are vital questions to ask ourselves, both as individual Christians and as the collective body of Christ. If we turn in our bibles to the reading we have just heard, in verse 9 Peter describes the church as ‘a royal priesthood’, a single phrase which gets to heart of what it is to be and to live as Christians. So in the few minutes I have tonight I’d like us to explore the idea of ‘a royal priesthood’ with these two questions – what does it mean to be a royal priesthood? And what does it look like to live as a royal priesthood?
So firstly, what does it mean to be a royal priesthood?
To return briefly to military analogy, the ‘royal’ in the Royal Navy indicates two things – that it is the possession of the Queen, and also that it has been commissioned by the Queen. And the word ‘royal’ operates in the same way in verse 9–we belong to God and we are commissioned by God. But who exactly who belongs to this royal priesthood? Peter makes it clear in verse 10 that it is all those who have received the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. And this is a wonderful thing – for just as the whole world is invited to receive mercy in Christ Jesus, all those who take up that offer become the possession of God and part of this royal priesthood.
So that’s the royal part. What about the priesthood? Priesthood can evoke images of Old Testament Israel, where those descended from Aaron, the Levites, were appointed to offer sacrifices in order to mediate between God and humans. But the book of Hebrews makes it abundantly clear that Jesus has permanently fulfilled the necessity to make atoning sacrifice for human sin, and that faith in Christ is the qualification to access the living God, rather than a visit to an appointed priest. Peter thus can’t be suggesting that the New Testament priesthood is about providing access to God, so what does he have in mind? We get a hint in verse 5 of our reading, where he commands that the royal priesthood offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus”. But what exactly does that mean?
Well, to get a true idea of what the royal priesthood should look like, we have to go back to the Old Testament. But not to Israel’s priesthood. That priesthood operated as it did because the rebellion of Humankind meant that mediation through the sacrifice of blood was necessary to maintain relationship between a just God and a rebellious nation. But Israel’s priesthood was neither the first priesthood nor the model of what God intended priesthood to be. Rather, we need to go back to the creation-order itself. We see in the early chapters of Genesis and indeed throughout the Old Testament, God’s purpose for creating Humans as his image-bearers on Earth was that they would bring God’s rule to bear on Earth and gather the praises of the Earth to God. This is the true priesthood and the pattern of priesthood that we are to follow; indeed it was the design of creation that all humans would be priests, but this calling was surrendered by Humans as one of the consequences of rebellion against God. Wonderfully, the priesthood has now been restored to the church of Christ. So these “acceptable spiritual sacrifices” spoken of by Peter are all of the fruits of the church of Christ seeking once again to fulfil this priestly role of bringing the rule of God to bear on Earth and of gathering the Earth’s praise to God.
So what exactly does this mean for us? And how do we go about fulfilling this call? This brings me to my second question: what does it look like to live as a royal priesthood?
If we begin with our attitudes, the Epistles highlight three virtues that should especially mark the followers of Jesus and so should be distinctives of the royal priesthood. These are “faith, hope and love”, a trio exhorted by Paul in 1 Corinthians, Colossians and 1 Thessalonians. So as a priesthood we must have real faith in the goodness, promises and word of the God we are seeking to serve and praise, otherwise our efforts will at best be half-hearted and at worst a vanity parade. We must hope for the return of our king Jesus, as without hope of a perfect and united New Earth and New Heavens, we will neither have the vision to herald the reign of God nor the motivation to persevere in our priesthood. And we must love, for in commanding us to “love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and to love our neighbour as ourselves”, Jesus has established love rather than military might or philosophical brilliance to be the means by which His people should seek to live and make him known. So faith, hope and love are to be our priestly attitudes.
What about our actions? In short, the priestly call encompasses the whole life of the church, but there are four tasks in particular that scripture presents as central to this call. Firstly, is the task proclamation. If a king is going to be obeyed and worshipped, he must send heralds into the realm to proclaim his kingship. So we must boldly, unashamedly and urgently proclaim to the whole world that Christ Jesus is the King. Secondly, there is the task of humble service. Jesus leaves us in no doubt that the Christian life is one of putting others’ interests first and seeking their good ahead of our own. Indeed this is the practical fruit of the virtue of love, and highlights again that the priesthood is not to bring God’s rule on Earth through arrogance and muscle, but through a willing outpouring of our lives in service for the good of others and the glory of God.
Thirdly is the task to pray. Prayer is the supreme means that God has given us to seek to bring his rule upon Earth. We are appointed as intercessors to the king, and God has so ordered things that the welfare of all creation, its people, its cities and its nations, are dependent on our prayers. This is sobering when we consider the slowness and dispassion that is so often the experience of our prayer life. But let me balance this with an encouragement, in that I’m certain that without the faithful praying of this church over the years, that both our life as a church and the well-being of this city would be in a far worse state than they are. And let us take heart for tonight’s meeting, that by seeking the good of the Earth and the glory of God through our prayers, we are truly being God’s royal priesthood.
These three tasks - proclamation, humble service and prayer - come under the “God to Earth” dimension of priesthood, so what about the “Earth to God” dimension? Well this is where the final task comes into play, namely the task of praise. Praise encompasses all aspects of thankfulness and thanksgiving, and in our passage in verse 9 Peter exhorts the church to “declare the praises of him who brought us out of the darkness and into his glorious light”. In light of His glorious redeeming work, there is no limit on the type or amount of praise that should be rendered to God. Yet scripture does proscribe a special union between praise and music. We see this throughout the Old Testament and supremely in the Psalter, but also in the New Testament – through Paul encouraging both the Ephesian and Colossian churches to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, and through the inclusion in scripture of early church hymns, such as the ‘Christ the servant’ hymn in Philippians 2. The royal priesthood is thus charged calling every heart to give thanks to the Lord Jesus, singing praise to the Mighty King and leading the whole creation in doing so!
I’d like to conclude by exhorting us not to make the mistake of the Monopoly players, but rather to remember who we are, and what we are called to do. We should rejoice to be part of this amazingly-called royal priesthood and at having the creation-purpose of our humanity restored by the mercy of God. So tonight may we pray with desperate and longing hearts to see God’s Spirit move to transform people’s lives, that he may bring people out of their darkness and that they may bring Him praise. Let us give thanks for the growth he has granted us, but not to be satisfied until every tongue on Tyneside, and indeed throughout all creation, confesses that Jesus Christ is the Lord, to the praise of God the Father.
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Christian Free Schools - a good idea?
My church is in the process of putting in an application to open a new school, under the Free Schools legislation enacted by the Coalition government. It would be an all-through school (i.e. covering ages 4-18), open to all and with a curriculum founded on the Christian world view. This has led many in our congregation to think carefully about whether establishing such schools is a wise effort or not. While there are objections that need to be answered, my conclusion is that establishing such schools should be an absolute priority for churches and church groups across the nation. I will consider and respond to objections in a sequel post.
While there are doubtless others, I would propose six major justifications for seeking to launch new Christian Free Schools (CFSs henceforth):
1. CFSs mobilise the church to thorough and active involvement in education. The central truth of the Christian faith - that Jesus is Lord - demands that his followers (i.e. the church) seek positive involvement in all spheres of life, whether that be the grand pursuits of politics, scientific discovery and spiritual well-being, or more 'everyday' things such as cookery, sport and coffee mornings. Thus education - the instruction of a human into all truth and flourishing - must surely be close to the heart of the Christian call. The church must be actively involved in education if it is to fulfil its mandate of being 'Christ's body on Earth'.
2. CFSs return revelation and reason to the heart of education. It is not too much of a simplification to say that the whole weight of western thought (and consequent civil development) rests upon two pillars: Proverbs 1:7a - "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" and the philosophy of Aristotle. Or to put it another way, upon the dual strands of revelation and reason. Revelation in the sense that what we can know about the world we know because it has been revealed by God, and all our endeavours to understand the universe will warp, reduce and ultimately fail to make sense of things unless we keep God as an unmoving banner over it all; reason in the sense that we have been given rational minds able to assess moral, social and material questions with agreed and rational method. This marriage of the ancient revelation of God and Aristotelian method has marked Christian thought throughout its history. Sadly, these epistemological foundations seem little understood or practised in much of mainstream education. Instead there is a dangerously utilitarian drift that sees education’s core goal as teaching that which is needed ‘to get by in the world’: the skills to make money and the opinions that will keep us from offending. I’m not at all suggesting that education should be all theory and no practise, but when it all is utility that is not anchored in the wider development of the whole human within a cohesive framework of thought, we educate our children as if they were robots and not humans. This is a shameful error, and one which will reap negative social consequences. A free school has the freedom to teach the classical disciplines that are vital to rectifying this error – epistemology, logic, philosophy, reason and theology.
3. CFSs challenge the view that the state has ultimate authority over the education of its people. Throughout history the right and responsibility to educate a child has been commonly understood to rest with its parents or guardians; this of course does not mean that the parents have to be the sole providers of education, but they have the authority to decide what kind of education their child gets. Different ages have seen guardians send their children to a remarkable range of institutions or to none, and theirs is the ultimate burden to ‘make or break’ the child. This right and responsibility was challenged by both the right- and left-wing totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, and sadly became the mindset of many (including, critically, many in positions of power) in the social democracies that emerged after those dark years. That the state provides education is a positive to be celebrated – indeed fee-less Free Schools would not be possible without state support for education – but when that provision becomes, whether by design or by culture, a hegemony over the responsibilities of guardians rather than being subservient to it, we are in a dangerous place. Not that this has necessarily happened in every LEA-run school, but survey after survey is showing a growing gulf between parental aspirations and the on-the-ground reality of education, and a new wave of schools that offer something different and come closer to meeting parental aspiration must be seen as a social good, as it will encourage guardians to truly think through how their child ought to be educated.
4. CFSs are a powerful reverser of social deprivation. Free Schools are able to set their own admissions policies, and thus able to positively discriminate towards those from areas of relative social deprivation. There are no ‘catchment’ areas to speak of. By committing to taking in an over-sized proportion of those from less privileged backgrounds into a high-quality educational environment for a period of upto 14 years, a significant improvement in the well-being of those students (and indeed their families and communities) can be confidently forecast. It is a route out of the ‘post-code’ trap, where middle class families are able to monopolise the best of state-provided services through their mobility advantages over the poorer.
5. CFSs offer vital flexibility of curriculum, teaching personnel and method. This is at the heart of the Free School vision, with each school being able to propose their curriculum, their staffing strategy and pattern of school life with remarkable freedom. This gives wonderful flexibility for schools to cater to any in-demand style of school that simply does not exist in a particular locality, and to shape the school according specific local needs. For example, there are high levels of economic stagnation in the North East of England, so a new Free School could particularly work on the development of entrepreneurial skills and vision amongst its pupils.
6. CFSs allow the most powerful educational resource of all to be unleashed - the gospel. The gospel Jesus Christ is not only the most important thing for every human to know, but due to its transformatory nature it is also the deepest and most powerful source of social capital. A school whose staff, pupils, practises and philosophies are rooted in the gospel will experience the wonderful fruit that Jesus promises such a grounding will bring – a true community of love, a community where all are valued, a community of joyful discipline, a community with purpose, a teleos community. I’m sure most guardians in the land would jump at the opportunity to send their children to such a school free of charge.
So, I'm praying our application to open a Free School is approved, and that many more Christian Free Schools would emerge across the United Kingdom.
While there are doubtless others, I would propose six major justifications for seeking to launch new Christian Free Schools (CFSs henceforth):
1. CFSs mobilise the church to thorough and active involvement in education. The central truth of the Christian faith - that Jesus is Lord - demands that his followers (i.e. the church) seek positive involvement in all spheres of life, whether that be the grand pursuits of politics, scientific discovery and spiritual well-being, or more 'everyday' things such as cookery, sport and coffee mornings. Thus education - the instruction of a human into all truth and flourishing - must surely be close to the heart of the Christian call. The church must be actively involved in education if it is to fulfil its mandate of being 'Christ's body on Earth'.
2. CFSs return revelation and reason to the heart of education. It is not too much of a simplification to say that the whole weight of western thought (and consequent civil development) rests upon two pillars: Proverbs 1:7a - "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" and the philosophy of Aristotle. Or to put it another way, upon the dual strands of revelation and reason. Revelation in the sense that what we can know about the world we know because it has been revealed by God, and all our endeavours to understand the universe will warp, reduce and ultimately fail to make sense of things unless we keep God as an unmoving banner over it all; reason in the sense that we have been given rational minds able to assess moral, social and material questions with agreed and rational method. This marriage of the ancient revelation of God and Aristotelian method has marked Christian thought throughout its history. Sadly, these epistemological foundations seem little understood or practised in much of mainstream education. Instead there is a dangerously utilitarian drift that sees education’s core goal as teaching that which is needed ‘to get by in the world’: the skills to make money and the opinions that will keep us from offending. I’m not at all suggesting that education should be all theory and no practise, but when it all is utility that is not anchored in the wider development of the whole human within a cohesive framework of thought, we educate our children as if they were robots and not humans. This is a shameful error, and one which will reap negative social consequences. A free school has the freedom to teach the classical disciplines that are vital to rectifying this error – epistemology, logic, philosophy, reason and theology.
3. CFSs challenge the view that the state has ultimate authority over the education of its people. Throughout history the right and responsibility to educate a child has been commonly understood to rest with its parents or guardians; this of course does not mean that the parents have to be the sole providers of education, but they have the authority to decide what kind of education their child gets. Different ages have seen guardians send their children to a remarkable range of institutions or to none, and theirs is the ultimate burden to ‘make or break’ the child. This right and responsibility was challenged by both the right- and left-wing totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, and sadly became the mindset of many (including, critically, many in positions of power) in the social democracies that emerged after those dark years. That the state provides education is a positive to be celebrated – indeed fee-less Free Schools would not be possible without state support for education – but when that provision becomes, whether by design or by culture, a hegemony over the responsibilities of guardians rather than being subservient to it, we are in a dangerous place. Not that this has necessarily happened in every LEA-run school, but survey after survey is showing a growing gulf between parental aspirations and the on-the-ground reality of education, and a new wave of schools that offer something different and come closer to meeting parental aspiration must be seen as a social good, as it will encourage guardians to truly think through how their child ought to be educated.
4. CFSs are a powerful reverser of social deprivation. Free Schools are able to set their own admissions policies, and thus able to positively discriminate towards those from areas of relative social deprivation. There are no ‘catchment’ areas to speak of. By committing to taking in an over-sized proportion of those from less privileged backgrounds into a high-quality educational environment for a period of upto 14 years, a significant improvement in the well-being of those students (and indeed their families and communities) can be confidently forecast. It is a route out of the ‘post-code’ trap, where middle class families are able to monopolise the best of state-provided services through their mobility advantages over the poorer.
5. CFSs offer vital flexibility of curriculum, teaching personnel and method. This is at the heart of the Free School vision, with each school being able to propose their curriculum, their staffing strategy and pattern of school life with remarkable freedom. This gives wonderful flexibility for schools to cater to any in-demand style of school that simply does not exist in a particular locality, and to shape the school according specific local needs. For example, there are high levels of economic stagnation in the North East of England, so a new Free School could particularly work on the development of entrepreneurial skills and vision amongst its pupils.
6. CFSs allow the most powerful educational resource of all to be unleashed - the gospel. The gospel Jesus Christ is not only the most important thing for every human to know, but due to its transformatory nature it is also the deepest and most powerful source of social capital. A school whose staff, pupils, practises and philosophies are rooted in the gospel will experience the wonderful fruit that Jesus promises such a grounding will bring – a true community of love, a community where all are valued, a community of joyful discipline, a community with purpose, a teleos community. I’m sure most guardians in the land would jump at the opportunity to send their children to such a school free of charge.
So, I'm praying our application to open a Free School is approved, and that many more Christian Free Schools would emerge across the United Kingdom.
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