Throughout my time as a teacher I attended many staff meetings and not all of them stick in my memory! There were themes and broad ideas I recollect but perhaps there is only one that I can recollect any details from.

It was a meeting where we were being prepared for a looming visit by OFSTED inspectors. In order to help us be better prepared an advisor from the county council had been brought in to inspire us all and to help us be better. Now I’m sure he told us many excellent things but there was one particular thing he told us that sticks – or at least it is how I remember it.

 He said that no child ever learnt unless they knew what the objective of the lesson was. His direction was that as teachers we should write on the board at the start of the lesson what the objective was and at the end revisit this with the children. Now I didn’t think this was a bad idea – and would often use it – however what I questioned was the bold statement that children only learnt if teachers did this.

I thought back on my time at school and realised I learnt lots of things without anyone explicitly telling me what the objective was – I leant to read, count, make Cornish pasties and enough about history to get a degree without anyone telling at each step what the objective was.

As I remember I challenged the bold statement in the meeting, perhaps promotion hopes ended there and then. My point was though that as a teacher it was important that I was clear on what the learning objective was. Why was I doing this lesson about castles, the English Civil war or Roman town planning. I needed to understand what it was I was hoping the children would learn. (And if they did it was because I was a great teacher and if they didn’t it was because they didn’t listen!! -I jest)

Over the last year or so I have been praying and reading about how we might articulate our purpose/objective here in Old Felixstowe Parish at this time. What are we about and hoping to achieve?

Reflecting on scripture, reading and shared conversations we have come up with the following statement that seeks to articulate our objectives.

In Old Felixstowe Parish we seek to:
Live, show and tell the love of God.
Becoming more like Christ and drawing others to Him.

Over the next few weeks we will explore what this means and this week we started with the call to become more like Christ. What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ?

I’ll write more at a later date as we explore the objectives we are as we seek to be faithful to what God has called us to at this time.

Your thoughts are always welcome.

Chris