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In what ways has the learning about community relationships informed your understanding of your role and contribution? Reflect on and describe, how this concept of Community is evident and informs, or could inform, you in your role

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Community PowerPoint - 2025

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Why does Lutheran Education value community?
- God exists in relationship
- Humans were created to be in a relationship
- The Biblical story is a story of relationship
- In Jesus we see love and compassion for others

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Often when people ask us what we do, we talk about our occupations, our job. But what is the deeper reason that drives the reason I get out of bed in the morning? That is my vocation, a sense of calling in the world. Check out the video on the next post as we unpack the meaning of vocation

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Why might this matter to me?
Why might it matter to people around me?Why might it matter to the world?

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Full padlet to help with the e portfolio

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Full padlet to help with the e portfolio

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2025 Reflection Journal

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Valuing every individual as a unique person created and loved by God

Striving for excellence in teaching and learning

Nurturing the whole person, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically, socially so they may enrich the world

Caring communities whose core values are: love, justice, compassion, forgiveness, service, humility, courage, hope, quality, appreciation

Working in partnership with students, families and others in building relationships and community

Lifelong qualities for learners diagram

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Valuing every individual as a unique person created and loved by God Striving for excellence in teaching and learning Nurturing the whole person, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically, socially so they may enrich the world Caring communities whose core values are: love, justice, compassion, forgiveness, service, humility, courage, hope, quality, appreciation Working in partnership with students, families and others in building relationships and community Lifelong qualities for learners diagram

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CS Lewis speaks about the 'dynamic activity of love [which] has been going on in God forever and has created everything else'

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In the Trinitarian nature of God, individuality and communality are related in a beautiful life giving dance of creation. Whatever names we choose to use Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Holy Parent, Holy Child and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer and Advocate, the three aspects remain distinct while the identity remains one through mutual relatedness of giving and receiving. Back and forth together throughout time. Nadia Bolz Weber

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The Genesis account tells us that humans are created in God’s image. Over the ages there have been many interpretations of what that means. Some have said it human reason, or human creativity, or human freedom, or some other human gift that makes us image God. My own interpretation is that all of these things play a role, but that wee image God by virtue of our mutuality, our being-with, our being in-conversation. Tom Christenson

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In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther begins his explanation to the first article of the Creed with the words: ‘I believe that God has created me together with all that exists. God has given me and still preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason and all mental faculties.’ This is part of the theology of ‘continuing creation’ which sees God as active in the life of each person. It also emphasises that human beings are a special creation of God, the climax and crown of God’s creation (Ps 8:4-6).

Malcolm Bartsch

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What questions or issues does the concept raise for me and how can I explore my questions?

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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Love God in what is right in front of you

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Love God in what is right in front of you

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Richard Rohr Franciscan - discussing what the two great commandments: 1) Love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28-31, Luke 10:25-28) and the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus shows us that our “neighbour” even includes our “enemy” (Luke 10:29-37).

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Incarnation: Week 2

Love God in What Is Right in Front of You Sunday, January 17, 2016

The God Jesus incarnates and embodies is not a distant God that must be placated. Jesus' God is not sitting on some throne demanding worship and throwing down thunderbolts like Zeus. Jesus never said, "Worship me"; he said, "Follow me." He asks us to imitate him in his own journey of full incarnation. To do so, he gives us the two great commandments: 1) Love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28-31, Luke 10:25-28). In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus shows us that our "neighbor" even includes our "enemy" (Luke 10:29-37).

So how do we love God? Most of us seem to have concluded we love God by attending church services. For some reason, we thought that made God happy. I'm not sure why. That idea probably has more to do with clergy job security! Jesus never talked about attending services, although church can be a good container to start with, and we do tend to become like the folks we hang out with. The prophets often portray God's disdain for self-serving church services. "The sanctuary, the sanctuary, the sanctuary" is all we care about, Jeremiah shouts (7:4). "I hold my nose at your incense. What I want you to do is love the widow and the orphan," say both Isaiah and Amos (Isaiah 1:11-17, Amos 5:21-24), as do Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Micah, and Zechariah in different ways. The prophetic message is absolutely clear, yet we went right back to loving church services instead of Reality. I believe our inability to recognize and love God in what is right in front of us has made us separate religion from our actual lives. There is Sunday morning, and then there is real life.

The only way I know how to teach anyone to love God, and how I myself can love God, is to love what God loves, which is everything and everyone, including you and including me! "We love because God first loved us" (1 John 4:19). "If we love one another, God remains in us, and [God's] love is brought to perfection in us" (1 John 4:12). Then we love with an infinite love that can always flow through us. We then are able to love things in their "thisness" as John Duns Scotus says-for themselves and in themselves-and not for what they do for us. That takes both work and surrender, and the primary work is detachment from our selves-from our conditioning, our preferences, our prejudices, our knee-jerk neurological reactions. Only the contemplative and trustful mind can do that.

As our freedom from our ego expands-as we get ourselves out of the way-there is a slow but real expansion of consciousness so that we are not the central reference point anymore. We are able to love in greater and greater circles until we can finally do what Jesus did: love and forgive even our enemies. Most of us were given the impression that we had to be totally selfless, and when we couldn't achieve that, many of us gave up altogether. One of Duns Scotus' most helpful teachings is that we should seek "a harmony of goodness," which means harmonizing and balancing necessary self-care with the constant expansion beyond ourselves to loving others in themselves and for themselves. Imagining and working toward this harmony keeps us from giving up on impossible and heroic ideals. Now the possibility of love is always right in front of us and always concrete; it is no longer a theory, a heroic ideal, or a mere distant goal.

Gateway to Silence:
God in me sees God who is also beyond me.

Adapted from Richard Rohr Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2012), disc 2 ( CD, MP3 download).

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Love God in What Is Right in Front of You

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Incarnation: Week 2 Love God in What Is Right in Front of You Sunday, January 17, 2016 The God Jesus incarnates and embodies is not a distant God that

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Vocation Article1 Why your work matters to God

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Choose one or more of your School policies or key statements  (Eg Mission/Vision/Values, Grievance policy, worship policy, behaviour management, staffing policy, restorative practices, enrolment) to explore what beliefs about community are expressed in these documents.  Reflect on how evident they are and how that is experienced.

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(20 mins) Option 2: Values in Lutheran School Communities

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(20 mins) Option 2: Values in Lutheran School Communities

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In groups, discuss these values for Lutheran Education communities:

What does it look/sound/feel like?

Can you identify examples in your school community?

How would you rate it as evident in your community?

How could you enrich these values in your community?

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How do we makes sense of and work with the imperfection that exists even in a Christian community? What are the values that shape our life together? Choose from the following options to explore this further.

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(20 Min) Option 3: Jesus restores relationships

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(20 Min) Option 3: Jesus restores relationships

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In the Gospel of Luke 19:1-10, Jesus meets a tax collector called Zacchaeus. As a tax collector, he was a collaborator with the Roman authorities, corrupt and exploitative. Explore how this encounter profoundly transforms Zacchaeus. How do relationships change? How might this story inform our understanding of community?

Enter the Bible
https://enterthebible.org/passage/luke-191-10-jesus-seeks-zacchaeus

The Bible Project  (7min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26z_KhwNdD8

Money and Wealth in Luke (3min)
https://enterthebible.org/video/money-and-wealth-in-luke

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What Does "Simul Justus et Peccator" Mean?

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By whose righteousness will we be judged? In this brief clip, R.C. Sproul shares the very heart of the gospel as he explains Martin Luther's Latin phrase, "Simu

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'No man is an island' relates to our interconnectivity with ourselves and God.

Connection suggests relationships which ought to exist between us. What should be the characteristics of such relationships?

Are they conditional or unconditional, or transactional in nature? What is the challenge, what duties and obligations exist within these relationships?

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If we are raised up, then for what purpose? How do we lead a life and relate to our neighbour?

What is the extent of our obligations within community? What is in others that is of me?

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The Bible is a narative of relationships, successes and failure, human nature and in insight into the divine and our purpose.

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Humans created in the image of God to harbour good relationships

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Humans created in the image of God to harbour good relationships

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Humans have been created in the image of God. We have been made unique but at the same time carry the same spirit in all.

That is the why we connect with each other and have emotions and connectivity with each other.

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Ever wondered what God's calling is on your life? @mandyebayton of @cinnamonnetwork tells us what can steer us in the right direction.

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There is a tension that exists within each of us that affects our relationships and experience of community.

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I don't understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can't. I do what I don't want to -what I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking......

So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin.

St Paul in Romans Ch 7

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As you watch this clip, reflect on how this understanding helps us to manage when things are not ideal. How do we make sense and work with the imperfection that exists even in a Christian community?

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Telling the Truth About Ourselves | Have a Little Faith

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Martin Luther describes Christians as “simultaneously saint and sinner.” This both/and approach is a distinctly Lutheran understanding of who we are in God’s eyes.

Luther calls Christians “simultaneously saint and sinner” because he redefines “saint” as a forgiven sinner. We are called saints not because we change into something different but because our relationship with God changes as a result of God’s grace. Luther said: “The saints are sinners, too, but they are forgiven and absolved.”

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Sinners and Saints at the Same Time - Two Minute Lutheran

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Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber’s life lesson for the day:

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Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber’s life lesson for the day: