Convocation Greeting
“Good evening everybody. I’m Nathan Gill, Academic Dean and high school history teacher at Chapel Field.
It’s truly a joy to see you all assembled here tonight. It’s hard to believe, but it was already a year ago that we met in this same space to celebrate Chapel Field’s “renewed vision” for Christian education.
The guest speaker at our "symposium," Dr. Christopher Perrin, challenged us to root ourselves even more deeply in Christ, embracing the centuries-old insights and traditions of classical, Christian education.
Our purpose tonight, through worship and thanksgiving, is to rededicate ourselves to that noble, God-given calling. It’s only right and fitting, then, to remind ourselves WHAT that calling is, and THE PURPOSE for which we’re assembled here tonight.
To do that I’ll read the school’s mission statement:
“Chapel Field’s mission is to partner with parents to cultivate a joyful community of students who love the truth, pursue wisdom and virtue, and live for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
There are a few things to note here:
First, Chapel Field is a partnership: we cannot do our work without the support of you parents, both your time, your financial sacrifices, and the way you reinforce our teaching in your own homes as you disciple your children. We do not take that lightly and are grateful to God that we have you to labor along side us.
Second, we seek to cultivate students who “LOVE the truth” - not students who merely “know” the truth. It's an easy thing to understand the truth, a difficult thing to so love and cherish it that you would be willing, if called upon, to sacrifice your life for it. Yet that is what we're called to as Christians.
Similarly, we aim to train students who PURSUE wisdom and virtue - not merely understand what wisdom and virtue are, but whose hearts are aflame with desire for it - students who have given their minds, hearts and bodies as "living sacrifices for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The 2nd century Church Father Irenaeus once wrote that “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
As we worship together tonight, may we each of us resolve to be fully alive this year in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to use the blessings he’s lavished upon as at Chapel Field, to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,” trusting that as we enthrone him in our hearts, all lesser, earthly things “will be added unto us.”
Dr. Nathan Gill serves as Academic Dean and Chairman of the History Department at Chapel Field.
