I’m encouraged how many people were challenged last Sunday about seizing the opportunity we have to teach the gospel in our public schools. Especially when the need is so great. It’s something I’ll be throwing into the discussion at Leadership Team tonight as potentially a key part of our SCPC ministry strategy for the next few years. Wouldn’t it be great to play a significant part in ensuring every public school kid hears the gospel during their years at primary school? For those of you who missed Rossie’s challenging intro to the prayer focus on School Scripture on Sunday, here’s what she said:

“Local churches are able to approve volunteers who spend 30 minutes a week teaching children in our local public primary schools about Christianity.

- what a great mission opportunity here at our doorstep, to teach children who’ve never heard the gospel about Jesus.

- what a great opportunity to correct misunderstandings about what God is like and what the Bible says.

- what a great opportunity to reach the families of these children, with (at least) a positive impression of Christianity and (at best) a clear understanding of the gospel message.

You might be surprised to learn that the greatest threat currently to this ministry being able to continue, is a lack of SRE (Special Religious Education) teachers. If we’re not able to provide teachers for most/all the classes in a school, it becomes difficult pragmatically for the school to timetable scripture classes.

Here in Lismore we’re seeing this played out. As it stands, from 2008, some of our local schools will have no scripture classes because there are no people to teach them. There are many teachers finishing up this year, for various reasons - most are elderly people who’ve taught many classes each week for many years, leaving many gaps.

We’ve been asked by Roy Cowin, who co-ordinates SRE in Lismore, to pray about this desperate need and to appeal to you to let you know that there is a real need for teachers. It’s vital that we provide appropriate teachers who can clearly present the gospel to these kids.

If you’d like to know more about this ministry, please speak to Pete Thompson ASAP or you can speak to me if you need to know more. There are many others here @SCPC who have been and still are involved - as a church we provide the bulk of people willing to teach.”

Ros Cree