Our Christian Values – Love, Forgiveness, Hope, Faith

Listen to us sing about our values in our school song, “We’re Growing and Learning Together”

 

Why did we chose our values? What makes them important? And what makes them Christian?

Love

blankLove is a very important value to us as a school. Love underpins everything that we do. It is very much ‘the why’ of who we are. Love is evident in our relationships with each other and in our actions to support our community and our world. We see it in our interactions at school and home, feel it when we are together, and experience it through how others act towards us. We can grow and learn together because we know that God loves us.

What makes love a distinctively Christian value? Because Christians recognise that God is love, and love comes from God (1John 4:7). Whilst love is important in almost every culture and religion, the Bible tells us that God loved us first. We are therefore able to love in the true sense of the word because God loves us. As we receive and experience God’s love, which is unconditional and for everyone, we can then love others. Christians believe that it is by understanding God’s love for us that we truly love others. It is with this in mind that St Mark’s choses love as a value.

We see love shown in the Christian narrative in many ways. Christians believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection were all because God loved us and wanted us to be made right with Him again. This was the ultimate expression of love. Almost every Christian story has at the heart of it the love of God. For example, the Passover, Abraham and Isaac, The Good Samaritan, Calming of the storm and so on.

At St Mark’s we develop our value of love through: our worship times together; sharing stories of how God and Jesus show love to us; modelling positive interactions and encouragement; supporting those in need, both at school, in our community and in our world; and many other ways.