Angles the Magazine of AASSH
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Angles The Magazine of AASSH Anglican Academy and Secondary School Heads May 2015 Contributors Stephen Kurtz is an Anglican Vicar at Christ Church, New Maden since 2007. Paul Kennedy became Head of Holy Trinity Church of England School in September 2013. Bishop John Pritchard retired as Bishop of Oxford in October 2014. He acted as the Church of England’s spokesman for education. AASSH CONFERENCE 2015 Canon Dr Anthony Cane is Chancellor of ‘ Leadership that builds Chichester Cathedral. talent and lights fires’ is the Executive Director for Andrew Day rd th Northumberland Church of England Academy. 23 to 25 September 2015 Ramside Hall, Durham Dr Irene Bishop retired in 2014 as Head of St Saviour’s & Olave’s Church of England School in Southwark. She was awarded CBE in 2012 for Including guest speakers: services to education. • The Bishop of Durham, • Canon Rosalind Brown (Durham Cathedral) the Rt Revd Paul Butler • Revd Nigel Genders is Faculty Director of the Professor Trevor Cooling • Baroness Sally Morgan (Chief Education Officer and National Institute for Christian Education Research at • Professor Gerald Pillay General Secretary National Society) Canterbury Christchurch University. (Vice Chancellor Liverpool • The Bishop of Ely, Hope University) the Rt Revd Stephen Conway Alasdair Coates retired in 2014 from St Christopher’s Church of England School in Accrington. 3 Welcome to Angles May 2015 The theme of this year’s Conference was “Christ at the Heart of Leading we find en route. He pictures Jesus also having to adapt his own sense of Change”. It was a challenging theme. Generally we’re not too happy about mission as he travels on the road that leads to death and resurrection. change: it’s unsettling to find they’ve changed the goalposts, altered Elsewhere, Irene Bishop tells her own story of growing up against the the rules, and even re-designed the field. The great Conservative Prime odds, Bishop John Pritchard gives an anecdote about meeting the Minister Lord Salisbury summed it up. “Who wants change? Things are Messiah, Trevor Cooling challenges us to explore a Christian pedagogy, bad enough as it is.” and Paul Kennedy speaks of starting out as a new Head, and Alasdair But our Conference speakers were clear: Christ embraces change. As about life after Headship. Stephen Kurtz makes plain in his inspiring keynote address, everything The election is unlikely to stop the pace of change. But I hope you find Jesus did and said was about bringing about change so that “your will be in this edition of Angles plenty to challenge as well as encourage you on done on earth as in heaven”. Change lies at the heart of Christian hope. the journey. What does that say about the way we lead our schools? Canon Anthony Cane, speaking of the journey of faith at the Conference www.aassh.org.uk Eucharist, helpfully compares the rucksack of things we expect we’ll need for the road - our vision, pre-conceptions and plans - with the actual challenges 4 Making all things new: change and renewal in school, city and self By Stephen Kurtz 1. Introduction: The implementing that agenda. and Resurrection at its heart. Get cosmos is very different. The Bible that straight and it becomes much presents Earth and Heaven, rather But ask pretty much any Christian Challenge of Change clearer the Christian agenda is than being far away from one or indeed non-Christian what the why I am passionate about church ‘Your Kingdom come … on as another, as equally present realities Christian hope is that you are much earth schools and their unique potential, in heaven’. And from that point we that interlock and intersect. Earth is guaranteed to get one answer: and, as a former Church school then find loads of to this that dimension of present reality we ‘Going to heaven when you die’. connections pupil, teacher, governor and parent issue of bringing about change in most obviously experience; Heaven This confusion and vague thinking I believe in their unique power to our schools. is equally part of present reality but about the idea of Christian hope shape and change lives - not just contains the spiritual realities that results in Christian schools not being So how do we get this picture of the of pupils but teachers, support staff surround us all the time but which, nearly as effective as they could be Christian hope clear in our heads? and the communities in which they normally speaking, we don’t see. and missing trick after trick in terms Here are the basic building blocks… are located. Earth and Heaven are not faraway of integrating their Christian faith to First, we must shift from the way places but present realities. Churches are not especially noted every other aspect of school life. in which we often understand the for doing change well. But the truth Once we’ve got that clear, we can What I’ve come to realise (and relationship between heaven and is that the leadership of any Christian then see that the whole of the chiefly with the help of biblical earth. The Enlightenment gave us organisation - be it a church or a Bible is about God’s project to scholar Tom Wright) is that ‘going a cosmology that said that if God school - is actually all about being bring these two realities of heaven to heaven when you die’ is, at best, and heaven exist at all they are far agents of change, specifically the and earth more fully together. The inadequate short-hand for the removed from the earth, with God change of . story of Israel in the Old Testament new creation Christian hope presented to us in the having pretty much left us to our own shows God starting the process Bible and doesn’t get anywhere near devices. That remains the assumption This phrase in the title: ‘Making all that will lead to this. So the Temple its full richness. And that if we can of a lot of people, including, I think, things new’ occurs in Revelation in Jerusalem is established as that see what is there , it changes most western Christians. Even 21 and the biblical theology of new instead special place where heaven and everything. So what is there instead? charismatic Christians when they pray creation deals with the true nature earth intersect and God’s presence of the Christian hope. This theology for God to intervene are unwittingly The Biblical picture of the Christian can be found. At other points in can dramatically shape both the buying into that paradigm. hope is that of New Creation, of the Old Testament story the veil agenda of our Christian schools a New Heavens and a New Earth But the of the between heaven and earth is drawn and the way in which we go about biblical picture 5 back and people like Jacob or the more biblical understanding Elisha or Isaiah are able to see those of the Christian hope - of ‘new spiritual realities that are around creation’, of ‘new heavens, new them but normally hidden. Things in earth’ - that integration suddenly the story of Israel of course go badly becomes much easier and more wrong but that hope remains of God natural. How might this be true in fulfilling his plan by coming in person our Christian schools? to restore that creation, to bring together, fully and finally, heaven and In the first place it gives theological earth so that, as the prophet Isaiah depth to the desire for people to says ‘the earth shall be filled with develop their full potential. Most the knowledge of the LORD as the schools want this, but what gives waters cover the sea!’ Christian schools a huge advantage is our vision of the resurrection. For Christians this supremely occurs Resurrection is about people with the coming of Jesus Christ. becoming one day, fully and finally That’s why Jesus so often spoke what God made them to be. So, about bringing the kingdom of St Paul and others in the New words, to make us agents of that changes everything about the way heaven or God, bringing God’s Testament call upon followers of new creation, agents of this Godly we run our Christian schools. sovereign rule to earth Jesus to do everything possible to as it was in change - people in and through . That’s what Jesus’ healings allow the Spirit to change them in heaven whom this new life continues to and other signs were all about - 2. How do we respond to the present towards that person that break into this world. they were signs the life of heaven this re-cast picture of the God is one day going to make them breaking into the earth. The supreme fully and finally in the New Creation. The Christian hope is that God will Christian Hope? sign of God’s future breaking in one day complete the process At the school attached to my church through Jesus was his resurrection of new creation. Romans 81, It’s my belief that this view of we’ve recently gone over to the from the dead when in his very Corinthians 151, Thessalonians 4 Christian hope changes everything strap line ‘Becoming the People God person God’s new creation broke and Revelation 21 tell us that Jesus because of the clarification it brings made us to be’. Everyone in school into this world, changing it forever. will one day return, the dead will to the Christian agenda. If a school - pupils, staff and support staff - are When Jesus ascended into heaven be raised with those belonging to understands the Christian hope to encouraged to discover and foster forty days later it was so God’s Spirit Jesus given new resurrection bodies be that of ‘going to heaven when their unique gifts and talents as could then be everywhere bringing precisely in order to enjoy to the full you die’ it will struggle to integrate they work towards becoming that more of God’s sovereign rule, more that creation that has simultaneously its Christianity with the other person God will one day make them of his new creation into the world, been totally renewed and restored.