“Rooted” Check-In:

The days are flying by here in the Middle School and a lot has happened in the past month. It is easy to get caught up in all of the special events (which we will highlight later in this post) and forget what is happening day-to-day here in our middle school. There are countless opportunities, everyday, to point kids to Christ. As I observe in the classroom, I see the beauty of God’s creation represented by the complexity of a protein as students are encouraged to consider how amazing God is in Mr. O’Bannan’s Life Science class. I see the U.S. Constitution being taught in Mrs. Hilderbrand’s History class and the connection being made to our ultimate authority, God’s Word. Our goal is to constantly point kids towards Christ with the hopes that God will open their eyes to see his beauty, deepening their faith in him, and, as a result, helping them to become more rooted in him. It is an amazing privilege to be able to do this and we are so thankful that we serve a God who is able to change students’ hearts and lives.

Teen Closet Clothing Drive:

Aside from pointing students towards Christ in our daily interactions with them, as a middle school, we want to provide opportunities for students to deepen their faith in Christ by living it out. One recent opportunity we gave students to serve was running a clothing drive. Some eighth grade girls in Mrs. Ricks’ leadership class came up with this service idea and we let them run with it. It was amazing to see how many middle school students participated in donating clothes! All of the clothes were donated to Teen Closet, an organization that gives new or gently used clothes to kids in need. We trust that our middle schooler’s generosity and service will be a blessing to this wonderful organization.

6th Grade Service Day:

Speaking of service opportunities, we had our second “Service Day” in the middle school this past month, this time sending two 6th grade teams out into the community. Our first team went back to Windriver Place (the same location we sent our 7th graders) and served the residents there by engaging in conversations and playing games with them. The staff at Windriver Place has expressed how much this seemingly simple gesture has meant to their residents. The second team went to Life Services and helped with some outside facility clean up and leaf-raking. I was amazed at how hard our 6th graders worked and was so pleased with their positive attitudes. The staff at Life-Services was extremely appreciative of our service. We were thrilled to be able to serve them and look forward to serving them again in the spring. We have told our students that you are never more like Christ than when you are serving, so we really do cherish these opportunities for our middle schoolers.

Veteran’s Day Chapel

Just recently we held our annual K-8 Veteran’s Day Chapel where we were able to honor our amazing Veteran’s (you can read more about this event here). I wanted to highlight a couple elements of the event that were specific to the middle school. Each year at our Veteran’s Day Chapel, we hold a writing contest for our middle school students. The prompt this year was “What makes America Great?” Every middle school student wrote an essay to answer this prompt and as a staff we chose the top students who then read their paper at the chapel. This year we had four winners, Evelynn Forim (8th grade), Henry Birnbaum (7th grade), Abby Strandy (6th grade) and Olivia Greenup (6th grade – Olivia was unfortunately sick for the event). It was a great opportunity for the students’ work to be put on display and a good opportunity for them to get out of their comfort zone and speak in front of a large group of people. After this event, our 8th grade students had the amazing privilege of hearing from a 99-year old WWII veteran. The students were able to ask questions, hear stories and get perspective from someone who lived and served through one of the most important times in our nation’s history.

We are very blessed at Northwest Christian to take part in so many wonderful events which all point us back to Christ. We pray that through all of these different avenues, our students will continue to see Christ as glorious and continue to become more rooted in him.

All for the glory of Christ,

Scott Ferguson

MS Principal