A Scary but Exciting Future

Last week Barry and I met with the Beyond Me Foundation in the city centre of Sydney. We were there to discuss the continuing developments in the building of the Kokoda High School in PNG that they are extensively involved in. You will remember from an earlier BLOG that this is the school that the Adventists have been invited to operate once it is built.

Our discussion was frank and open and they are a delightful Christian group to work with. One of our concerns that we voiced was how we would continue to staff such a premier institution. We would be looking for quality teachers capable of operating a school continually under the scrutiny of passing trekkers – anything up to 900 a day at the height of the trekking season.

The implications are rather challenging. If we do it well then we will all benefit from the excellent PR. But if we fail, then it will impact badly on us all as well. Quite frankly it is scary. We have no doubts that we can find the teachers, but the impact on the rest of the country will be significant as well.

As a church system, we operate a resource thin culture. I suppose the gospel commission ensures this will happen. PNG isn’t the only place that operates a resource thin system. Here in Australia and New Zealand and across the Pacific we have the same problem. We face a critical shortage of Adventist teachers to staff our schools. This is brought about by a number of factors. We have a growing system, especially along the eastern states of Australia and across the Pacific. We are dealing with a different demographic of new employees. Generation Y see employment and life quite differently to the Baby Boomers and Generation X. The quality of school life isn’t like it used to be with unreasonably high levels of accountability, competitive development and delivery of curriculum and increasingly higher expectations from parents.

What is the answer? First there is no simple solution. Managing growth is one possible though slightly negative solution. I’d like us to consider looking more positively at the problem though. I wonder how many of your students will become future teachers in our system? I wonder how many more would head down a teaching career path if they were seriously encouraged to do so?

I am sure that there is so much more we could do to promote teaching as a ministry and calling from God. Our personal lives should reflect that it is a calling worthy of the time and effort. Each of our staff should be encouraging each student to seriously consider whether God is calling them to teaching ministry. And this attention should not be left until the final year of schooling. I believe that even primary teachers have a part to play in all of this as well. Dreams sown in childhood often have a time of reaping later in life.

Please encourage your staff to encourage their students to consider teaching ministry as a life calling from God. We run Adventist schools for a purpose. This purpose becomes increasingly difficult to maintain if Adventists are not present to carry this out. We need not be ashamed of our schooling system. Others along with Governments are recognising that we operate a quality system. Let’s do all we can to ensure we will be able to keep it that way, especially in the future.

News about the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific.