Narrabeen Baptist Church has a thriving ministry into their local schools through Special Religious Education (SRE). The church directly supports and runs scripture in five of their local schools, and many others from the church teach in other schools.
SRE is place for students to question, explore and discover the Christian faith and make informed decisions for themselves. “This is my ministry,” explains Carol Cook, SRE Coordinator for Narrabeen, “and it’s such a worthwhile ministry – I can’t think of anything more important that I can do”.
Carol Cook started attending Narrabeen Baptist in 1992 and became involved in scripture around 2000. She has now been coordinating the SRE Teachers from Narrabeen Baptist for twenty years. Her role involves inducting new teachers, helping with accreditation, ordering materials, and being on call for questions or problems.
“The schools are very supportive,” says Carol, “we have a good history with them. If we were trying to get started these days it might be harder, but since we’ve been in contact with these schools for so many years, we’ve proven ourselves.”
“It’s such good form of community engagement in a post-Christian world,” explains Kieran Degan, Associate Pastor for Children and Families, “as teachers, students, and the community meet the Christian teachers, they meet Jesus”.
Carol and her team use the GodSpace curriculum in the SRE classes. “I think the content of GodSpace is great,” says Kieran, “one of the best things about it is how adaptable it is. It doesn’t take hours and hours to prepare – it’s all there on one page. And it’s always getting better.”
Carol has always loved the story telling aspect of SRE classes. Gathering the kids on the floor in front of her, she would get a student to help her put the corresponding pictures up on the wall while she told the story. Carol still finds a way to weave storytelling into her classes whenever possible.
When Carol’s son, Tim, was studying construction at university, she asked him to come in one week to help in a class. Carol introduced him as her “helper”, and one student replied, “at last, a cool scripture teacher!”. Tim loved it and ended up helping in the class for the whole year. The next year, he started teaching his own class, which he continued doing this until he finished his degree.
When Tim started working, he discovered that he didn’t enjoy working in the construction industry and quickly decided that he would rather be a teacher. Now, he teaches at a local school and is the SRE liaison contact for Carol and her team.
“It would be good if all young people taught or helped with scripture,” reflects Carol, “they may not know they’re gifted in that area. But it can be a challenge to get younger people to come and sign up.”
Before becoming a pastor at Narrabeen, Kieran was a fulltime SRE Teacher. Many stories have stuck with him from this time. He recalls teaching Jack from year 7 to 10, reflecting that he was a nice kid who did his work, but wasn’t really engaged. Two years ago, Jack showed up at Narrabeen Baptist. He enrolled in Christianity Explored and came to faith. Now, Jack heads up their young adult’s ministry and serves at their summer kids’ program.
Kieran now knows that Jack had a semi-Catholic background but had a negative view of faith. He didn’t come to faith during SRE, but when people opened the bible later with him, he’d developed a positive view of the Bible from the years he’d spent in SRE classes.
“It was like the soil had been prepared for the seeds of the Gospel,” reflects Kieran.
Carol has no plans of retiring from her role. “This is such an important ministry. It’s my purpose to be creating this space for children in my community and I’ll continue for as long as I can.”
Please pray for Carol, her team, and the thousands of SRE teachers going into NSW primary and high schools each week to share the Gospel with students.
