Farewell to our 2011 Grade Seven Class

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Eagle's Nest School Grade Seven Class singing a hymn to the congregation

(PREAMBLE: Let me welcome the 80th follower to this blog. I wish I knew the name but I failed to figure that out. I am technologically challenged! The good news, at least for me, is that we are slowly reaching 100,000 views. I know that is nothing for some blogs because that is their daily readership. I should not despise the days of small things. So, I am watching the counter very closely.)

Every year just before our Grade Seven pupils sit for their final primary school leaving examinations, we hold a special service for them and their parents. The aim of this service is to provide the church with an opportunity to meet with the children and their parents, because 80% of them are not members of our church.

Misheck Kumwenda leading in worship

It is also a good opportunity for the members of the church to meet the teachers because, again, most of the teachers of our church school are not members of Kabwata Baptist Church. They are members of sister churches. Hence, this once-a-year service provides a window of opportunity for all who are involved in the school to meet with the members of the sponsoring church, and vice versa.

In the midst of a secularised society, the provision of Christian education goes a long way to arrest the galloping atheistic horse that has destroyed what once was the Christian West. The foundational truths of God and his world need to be the moorings to which all the disciplines of education are anchored.

Chilambu Filakati doing the Bible Reading

Once the poison of secular education is injected into the primary infrastructure of the worldview of children, it destroys the development of their thinking from that point onwards. Their world remains totally disjointed and ultimately meaningless. It is in order to play a small part in arresting this trend that we have started and developed the Eagles Nest Christian School.

This school is part of the church’s evangelistic efforts and comes under our children’s department. Through the school, we continue to labour hard to introduce children in the neighbourhood to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and to a Christian worldview. The school also provides us with a vital interface with many parents in our community. We often use these opportunities for evangelistic purposes.

Mrs Honester Kumwenda, the Headteacher, introducing the school staff

Hence, whereas most Christian schools aim to bring the children of Christian parents under the influence of Christian teaching, when we started this school, we deliberately went into the community to invite those who are not members of our church to bring their children to our school. This is why even now 80% of the children in our school come from non-Christian homes, or at least from homes where the parents or guardians are not members of our church.

It would be difficult to tell how many of these children come to genuine faith in Christ by the time they leave our school at the end of Grade Seven because they do so before they become teens. We have since baptised a number of them later in life. We have no doubt that the time they spend in Eagle's Nest School is used by God to put precious truths in their hearts that later germinate into saving faith.

A parent, Mr Katoto, thanking the church for the ministry of Eagle's Nest School

For me, this farewell service remains special. I have never forgotten how I wept when we had our first farewell service a few years ago. The children had become so precious to me that at one point when I looked into their faces during the worship service the thought of parting with them gripped me with grief. I wept like a baby. I have grown up now and do not cry any more. However, my prayer continues to be that God will claim these young souls for his own in due season, so that, if we do not ever meet on this side of eternity, we will do so in heaven. Amen!