About GCCS
Our students are involved in a number of activities of a religious and, often, specifically Christian nature. These include, but are not limited to, activities such as:
- Classroom prayers that are spoken aloud by the teacher and/or the students;
- Regular lessons, projects and tests aimed at developing and assessing both Old and New Testament knowledge;
- Frequent whole-school chapels which involve singing songs of Christian worship, prayers, and listening to speakers give lessons about Christian living;
- Memory work of Bible passages that are assigned and tested weekly; and,
- Integration of Christian philosophy into entire curriculum.
Being a Christian school, all students will be exposed to teachings on many matters of Christian faith and morality.
Diversity Statement: These teachings below are offered to students alongside our commitment to love and respect with regards to diverse opinions, summarized in the following statement:
As a Christian learning community, we strive to love and respect all people in a world of diversity and difference, training ourselves to honour the image of God in everyone through our words, actions, and policies and procedures. We acknowledge our differences with civility, accommodate diversity where appropriate, and pursue reconciliation where we have failed to live up to this commitment.the school’s curriculum would make statements and actively teach on many matters of Christian faith and morality.
Within our community of faith, some of these teachings are as follows:
- The God of the Bible is the One and only God, revealed as a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (Romans 1:19,20; Matthew 3:16,17; Matthew 28:16-20; John 1; John 17; Luke 1:26-38 )
- People are made in God’s image and declared “very good” by their Creator. As such, human life is sacred from the moment of conception and all people are to be honoured and loved because of God’s image in them. (Genesis 1:26,27; Psalm 139).
- We are called to seek a personal relationship with the Father, that can only be obtained by trusting in the sacrifice for our sins made by the Son, and by trusting in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 22:37-40; Acts 1, 2; Acts 4:10-12; James 4:7-10) We are simultaneously sinful, broken people, sometimes arrogant and proud in our successes, but other times crushed by pain and failure and the despair or self-centredness it can breed. We don’t always do what we should, and what we should do, we sometimes neglect to do. We need saving, and we need to mature (Jeremiah 17:9; Rom. 3:23).
- The Bible as the written Word of God is the Truth by which the Holy Spirit enlightens our understanding of God, the world and ourselves. It is the infallible authority by which God directs and governs all our activities. (2 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 4:4)
- Children are a gift from God and are to be educated, nurtured, and inspired in right relationship to their Creator, their neighbour and the environment. As a school body, we have a duty to care for students in our classrooms. (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy. 6: 6,7; Mark 12:29-31; Ephesians 6:1-4)
- Christians are expected to set examples for the use of God’s gifts in a manner that demonstrates the renewing influence of the Holy Spirit, as evidenced by the fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control). (Galatians 5:22; 1 Peter 4:7-11). Above all, the mark of the mature Christian is faith and hope, but most supremely, love (Mark 12:28-34; John 13:35; 1 Cor. 13).
- Marriage is an exclusive union of body, mind, soul and spirit between a man and a woman that is recognized by the church or state. Marriage is held as a holy and binding covenant that reflects the relationship between Christ and His church. Sexual union belongs exclusively within marriage. (Matthew 19:4-6; Genesis 2:21-25; Hebrew 13:4; Ephesians 5:31-32). GCCS recognizes the different evolving convictions of marriage and sexual minorities within the church today. Our staff will continue to teach the biblical view as understood here, but will acknowledge there are other views within our school and within the church today.
- Creation is the object of God’s love and care, and the subject of all things studied in school. God created perfectly, but through man’s disobedience, all of creation suffers and groans in sin. In spite of the pervasiveness of sin, creation is a marvelous revelation of God’s power and majesty, and God has promised that it will be made new. In the meantime, we are called to be good stewards of creation, including our bodies and the natural environment. We are also called to share our wealth from creation in response to the needs of others. (Matthew 10:29; Luke 12:6; Romans 8:22; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Genesis 2:15; 1 Timothy 6:17; Luke 10:30-37)
- The responsibilities of citizenship include respecting the laws of the land, and engaging in healthy political discourse when we disagree with policy or those laws that contravene God’s law. This discourse includes advocating for justice for the disadvantaged citizens, e.g. widows and the orphans (1 Timothy 2:1,2; Matthew 22:15-21; Romans 13:1-7; James 1:27; Matthew 23:13-15)
- God’s gift of Christian community needs to be nurtured through fellowship and discipleship on a regular basis in order for there to be spiritual growth. We need to have respectful relationships with other Christians and with our community at large. (Hebrew 10:24,25; 1 Corinthians 12, 13; Romans 12:17,18; 1 Peter 3:15). See our School Diversity Statement.
- There is more that unites Christians than divides them: we seek to shift our identity from being rooted in Self or other idols to being rooted in Jesus Christ alone. While being one body of Christ, we do come as different parts of that one body. In this light, our teachers do not make prescriptive statements on denominational theological distinctives such as specific forms of sacraments, e.g. baptism, communion, or eschatology. (1 Corinthians 12:12,13; Galatians 5:6)