SRE finishing strong in 2020
Like most ministries this year, our primary Special Religious Education (SRE) has been interrupted by lockdown. Yet, God’s word cannot be stopped!
Our SRE lessons were able to start back in schools from late July to early August. The introduction of covid-safe protocols has changed some of the way our volunteers have taught in the classroom. Like church services, we have not been able to sing or to give hand outs to students. Sadly, this year we have been unable to celebrate Easter or Christmas with our customary SRE assemblies, which are normally a highlight. Yet our SRE teachers have risen to the challenge.
I spoke with some of our SRE teachers, and this is what they had to say:
“It was so exciting when a girl in Year 2 told me that her family don’t believe in God, but through SRE in believes in and follows Jesus. She was very excited to show me the cross pendant she asked her parents to get her for her birthday.”
“As a very tentative first-time scripture teacher (the last time I taught scripture was too many years ago) I was amazed how short 30 min is. My students barely had time to get bored and more often than not we ran overtime. My class (Year 5) has been a lot of fun and my biggest problem has been more on how to tame the enthusiasm than on keeping them engaged.” Dale Hancock
“In my year 4 class, I have 20 students who have been learning how meeting Jesus changed people, like Zaccaeus the tax collector. Some of them attend church with their families. Some of them only ever have the Bible taught to them in scripture. SRE is such an amazing opportunity!”
I (Leah) have been encouraged by some of the interactions I have had with schools. I have appeared in a school’s Zoom kindergarten orientation for parents to speak about SRE. At another school, one school staff member expressed to me that they thought SRE was very important for children as they faced so much uncertainty in the world.
Pray for our SRE teachers that God will continue to give them strength and boldness to speak the gospel clearly as we finish for the year.