Ben Hung, Director of Inter-School Department
benhung@fes.org.hk
The most important feature of Instagram’s “Your Story” is that it is “24-hour limited”, your story will automatically disappear after one day. It would not be exaggerating to say that this is one of the “more comfortable” ways of sharing amongst young people in recent years. Perhaps it reflects their life pattern and shape in the midst of constant change.
In his book, The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen used “articulate the movement of the spirit” to depict the knowledge and narratives that move between the everyday and the spiritual, and as a peer proposal to respond to a generation that lacks a vision. If the two “movements” are visualized together, “how to discover and speak of God’s presence in everyday life” becomes a point of dialogue with young people’s lives, which is also the concern of our Inter-School Department in the new school year.
During the pandemic, our ministry was deliberately kept in a more open and spontaneous mode of response. As the schools resume their normal routines, most of the faith communities are in the “reboot” stage. Taking on board the observations and experiences of the past, we hope that in the new school year, we will take “listening” as the foundation, ” integral spiritual formation” as the horizon, and ” addressing current contexts” as the point of entry.
In the coming year, we will be focusing on the following four elements as the focal point for nurturing young disciples and the core of our ministry design:
[Emotional] Emotional Connection
Through school fellowship/ inter-school platform to promote the listening movement, students will be able to unpack and embrace their authentic emotional state, to create a culture of listening among peers, and to turn listening into hospitality as the beginning of resonance with the Word and the fulfillment of mission.
[Rational] Critical Thinking
We will establish and facilitate Bible study communities on secondary school campuses. By combining the elements of Bible study such as experience, synergy, and situational dialogues, students will be guided to engage in dialogues with the Bible from multiple perspectives and in a personal way, thus broadening the contact between the Bible and their lives. In a complex and ever-changing world, allowing faith to become a critique resource that is in-the-world but not of-the-world, engages and leads students in their daily lives.
[Internal] Self-understanding
Using the book “Self-Understanding for Personal Well-Being” as the conceptual framework for life education, we will explore the self in terms of desire, identity, and quality, and through reviewing and organizing life stories, we will discover our own “”already existing”” gifts, and transform them into our unique creativity and possibilities. Through the searching and confusing process of secondary school life, the program will inspire the imagination of living out one’s calling.
[External] Social Concerns
With “compassion” as the symbol of the believers’ community, we not only bless each other in the campus fellowship, but also strive to connect different social organizations and diversified groups to promote students’ understanding and experience of life exchanges with the underprivileged, and then challenge students’ understanding of the integral mission of the gospel, so that faith is not left to personalization, but also extended to the care of the campus and the community.
Today, even though we are gradually getting back on track, it does not mean that our mind, body and spirit will recover instantly. The three-plus years of the pandemic are still to be digested by this generation of secondary school students. In the coming year, we hope to be able to “articulate the movement of our spirit” emotionally, rationally, internally, and externally. At the same time, as walking with the students is at the heart of the secondary school ministry, we desire to be associated with the gradual restoration of the secondary school campus in the Lord, while not forgetting to be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. After all, “the movement of our spirit” points not only to the daily changing of the world, but also to the work of the Holy Spirit in it. May the Lord provide us with guidance.