Principal

Dear Friends,

Welcome to another great year at St Andrews Christian College!

We especially welcome all our new families and staff to the wonderful St Andrews community and pray that their time with us will be a great blessing for all.

New Staff for 2018:

LAB ASSISTANT – Christine Hooi

MUSIC Junior School – Helen Metcalfe

PE PRIMARY – Andrew Farmer

JUNIOR SCHOOL YEAR 1 (maternity leave position) – Gary Ong

IT TEACHER – Etiene Johnson

HEAD OF ENGLISH – Diane Cocking

ENGLISH/PSYCHOLOGY (maternity leave position) – Tianna Harris

PE/SCIENCE/HEALTH (maternity leave position) - Cailyn Holland

ART – Middle School – Marina Heading

CHINESE – 1st and 2nd language – Nelly Wang

FILM & MEDIA – Middle School - Charlene Lee

ART ASSISTANT – Natalie Tunstill

SPORT ASSISTANT - Olivia Rowland

We have welcomed a fantastic commencement to the new year and look forward to the many activities, events and solid learning, teaching and growing at the College.

A special congratulations and blessings to our various staff members who were married or had babies over the summer!

·        Mrs Emily Hill is now Mrs Law

·        Mr Ben Sheahan is still Mr Sheahan, but now has a beautiful wife

·        Mrs Lauren Gaschk (on maternity leave) welcomed a baby boy called Jacob

·        Mrs Karen Kirk (also on maternity leave) welcomed a baby boy named Asaph

·        Mr Daniel Idrees (past staff member) also married in December

Dedication Service

We held our Dedication Service this week in Rembrandts. This was a special time to come together as a community to acknowledge God as the Head of St Andrews Christian College and to pray together to dedicate everything that we do at the College to God, and for His glory and purposes.

At the Service we also launched our theme and biblical focus for the year:

Love God, Love Others

"And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

Micah 6:8

There was a story told of a politician who had his portrait taken by a photographer. Well the politician was not at all happy with the proofs and complained to the photographer: “This photo does not do me justice!”. The photographer replied, “ Sir, with a face like yours, you don’t need justice – you need mercy!”

Our mercy must be just and justice must be merciful.

Note the Bible verse from Micah, it says we are to ACT justly and LOVE mercy, not the other way round. A Christian community should reflect God’s nature in a balance of righteousness/truth (justice) and love/grace (mercy) and we can only do this if we are walking humbly with God.

Scott Sanders (CEO of Common GRACE) explains that this is like a 3 legged stool and all three need each other in balance to work.

The classroom must reflect God’s righteousness through use of codes of conduct that protects all students and is as fair and consistent as possible. But, if a teacher focuses on justice all the time, then there is a focus on rules and order and the classroom becomes very legalistic and harsh.

On the other hand if a teacher just shows mercy/grace all the time in the classroom, there are no boundaries and a lack of respect and a climate of permissiveness will prevail.

Therefore, we aim as teachers to have a humble walk before God, where we are serving Him and those around us.

For a Christian Learning community such as ours at St Andrews, to hold the three legged stool in balance (humility/justice/mercy) there needs to be a vision centred on Jesus Christ and a desire to love and worship Him above all others.

May we all be passionate in the pursuit of justice, extravagant in the practice of mercy and unshakeable in our devotion to God.

Blessings to all for a wonderful year!

Catriona Wansbrough

Principal