I love the culture of inclusion at Circle of Hope. I love how we expand our love and community and incarnational faith to our children in a variety of ways, from a tribal parenting mentality to modeling our children’s plan after our cell model! (If you’re not familiar with the cell model, you should see the section of our site dedicated to that as well!)
The children thrive on these details of how we live our faith, and it is so exciting to see their hearts open to God and each other. Nothing proves that to me more than giving them an open-ended project to work on as a team. It can be something silly (once, given freedom to create, they designed a village run by dinosaurs instead of humans) or something reflecting the heart and faith of our most recent time learning together (at Marlton Pike, we have a large drawing posted in our elementary room that the children created as their interpretation of heaven! It has some interesting and insightful concepts embedded in it, along with all the precious ideals of young children.)
Each week at Marlton Pike, we read Ephesians 3:17-18 together, and no two weeks do I hear the same response from the children as to what they feel this means. I love it! They are seeing how the Bible is alive and applicable for themselves, but we always make our way back to how we are to work together in love because of Christ’s love for us. In a world where people often take on a “trust no one” mentality, it is great to see these children learn to work inclusively as a family united in Christ’s love.
–Amy K, writing