Faith Formation & the Discipleship of Students

Over the last year, College staff have been engaged in various working groups addressing key objectives in our Strategic Plan. One of those groups has been reviewing the College’s role in the faith formation and discipleship of students. The dictionary defines a disciple as a follower or pupil of a teacher, leader, or philosopher. In the Bible, we read that before Jesus began his public ministry there were other teachers, including John the Baptist, who had disciples. 

However, being a disciple of Jesus requires so much more; to be a disciple of Jesus is to trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus for salvation, to surrender all of your life to Jesus, to love Him above all else, to follow God’s will, and submit to His Word. It may also involve suffering and hardship for the sake of Christ as we set aside our own agendas and focus what it means to live a gospel-shaped life.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him, we have access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:1-5

Christian Education trains students to view the world through a lens of godly expectation, wondering not what they could achieve through their efforts and for themselves, but what God could achieve through their faithfulness as they follow Him in humble obedience and with an attitude of service and sacrifice. That is the mark of a disciple. 

The Westminster Catechism states,

“The chief end of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”. 

Humans have both the capacity and the responsibility to relate to God - to hear and respond to his call, to speak to him, to enter into covenants with him, to represent him in and to the world. Worship, therefore, is the true calling of a human being. In his book, You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith writes that God should be both the subject and the object of our worship; worship is therefore both about and for God. It is not for me or about meeting my felt needs; it is to and for God and emphasizes God’s divine activity. Worship is God doing something to us, where he creates in us a clean heart and transforms us into disciples through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Christian Education is about formation, the practice of fostering and generating in 

human beings' ways of relating to God and the world in word and action. It is about teaching our students how to worship God. Viv Stapleton the Deputy Principal, Director of Christian Foundations will unpack some of the ways that we do this in her article. I invite you to read this and to partner with us both in prayer and action as we seek to cultivate each student’s authentic faith, empowering them to serve others and respond to God’s calling in their lives.