Week Four – Servant Working
SUMMARY: Students will work actively to heal brokenness and bring joy to individuals and to culture.
GOING DEEPER
Students should learn to serve others by working actively to heal brokenness and bring joy and shalom. “As individuals, we are called to make a difference in the world, not just in private personal behaviour. We are also called to the restoration task as communities of believers. As redeemed image-bearers, we should be making a difference in the culture.” (Donovan Graham)
Learning about God and His creation in itself is an act of restoration – as is showing hope, love, joy, peace, healing, overcoming, etc. Students need authentic opportunities in their learning to affect change, improve situations for people, build community, and meet needs. And the hope is that servant-working practice in school will create servant workers after graduation.
Being an image-bearer means having the ability and responsibility to discover, respond to, develop, use, and improve the world that God has placed us in. This is true for the student just as it is true for the construction worker, the scientist, the truck driver, the accountant, the teacher.
We are to improve the world? Us? God has given us the gifts of ideas, skills, materials, and awareness in order to do just that. That’s what we need to cultivate in our students and ourselves: the desire and ability to offer hope, healing, and restoration to this world and its people.
We are to be Christ’s salt and light. We can’t minister to a hurting world by pretending sin doesn’t exist and hiding in a make-believe world of purity and beauty untouched by sin. “If we withdraw into the Christian ghetto the world will be darker, more tasteless and rotten for our absence… If Christians are not there to stop the rot, no wonder contemporary culture has more to say about decadence and disintegration than health and wholeness” (Art and Soul 61).
Being “salt and light” means our faith needs to be expressed in our work. We all can help to heal brokenness and bring joy. Sometimes this will be a response to injustice, and sometimes it will be doing good things just for the sake of doing them. Sometimes these things will be easy for us to do and sometimes they will really push us out of our comfort zone – and both are great experiences!
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
Could be used for devotions or memory work.
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
SONGS
You can use these as part of your morning devotions or to play in the background during work.
ACTIVITIES
Ideas that you can connect to the learning that is happening or encourage in your student’s free time.
- Collect items for a local charity
- Make an “Inspirational” poster – ideas
- Put a sibling’s toys away
- Let a sibling go first
- Complete a sibling’s chores
- Send a kind email to someone in your class
- Thank your local Waste Management workers
- Provide a microcredit loan (Kiva)
- Learn your family’s love languages
- Write a “servant” themed poem – Ex. 1, Ex. 2, Ex. 3
- Pray for someone in your community
- Do something for a parent without being asked
- Organize a family movie night (make & serve snacks, clean up before and after, make tickets, etc.)
- Teach your teacher about an educational tech tool
- Send an encouraging email/letter to someone from your church that lives alone
DIGITAL RESOURCES
Digital books, devotion ideas, online resources, blog articles, etc.
Student Focused:
- Kindness Counts – Read Aloud (Div 1)
- A Chair For My Mother – Read Aloud (Div 1-2)
- Horton Hears a Who – Read Aloud (Div 1-2)
- The Invisible Boy – Read Aloud (Div 1-2)
- Do Something – Music Video (Div 2-4)
- The Giving Tree – Short Film (Div 1-4)
- A Servant Heart – Youtube video (Div 3-4)
- Live a Better Story – Serve Videos (Div 3-4)
Teacher/Parent Focused:
- Servant Worker: Making Smiles – Blog
- Jesus’ Example of Servanthood – Blog
- Growing a Servant’s Heart – Devotion & Prayer
- 100 Bible Verse: Having a Servant’s Heart – Digital library
- Kids Can Make a Difference – Organization
- The Girl Who Was Born Without “A Servant’s Heart” – Blog
- 35+ Service Projects for Kids – Blog
FORMATIONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCES (FLEX)
These are experiences that connect our learning/work to real people/problems (to go beyond our normal classroom walls). These are authentic opportunities for students to practice living the Kingdom story.
Check the website of/contact a local food service charity in your community (i.e., Mustard Seed) to see what is needed during this challenging time. Many of these organizations still need volunteers (e.g., delivery drivers, cooking teams, janitorial work, etc.) and have established safety measures for willing volunteers.
REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS/SENTENCE STARTERS
It is said that we don’t learn from doing, but from reflecting on what we do. Give students time and space to reflect on their experiences and learning this week.
- How did you use your passions/skills/gifts to help others this week?
- What does it mean to be “salt and light” in this world?
- Why should we serve others?
- Who is somebody that could benefit from your help beyond this week?
- When was the last time someone helped you? Tell me about that experience.
- Where in the Bible did Jesus serve others?
TEACHING FOR TRANSFORMATION (TFT)
RESOURCES FOR PARENTS & STUDENTS – Provided by Prairie Centre for Christian Education
