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No doubt second grade teachers elsewhere face the same challenge. Students eager to answer lean forward, strain one arm high, and wildly wave a hand. Too impatient to wait their turns, they butt in, interrupting classmates or the teacher.
You might expect a teacher of unruly youngsters to review polite manners or simply command the kids to zip their mouths. But when the second grade teacher at said, âThis is a justice issue,â her students in Hoboken, New Jersey, knew what she was talking about.
Thatâs because justice was âa big-word themeâ in what other Christian schools might call âchapelâ but Mustard Seed calls âcommunity worship.â Since it began in 1979, the urban school has intentionally planned daily worship that builds the community and flows through studentsâ and teachersâ lives.
The teacher asked the children how they could create a more just classroom, so that all members would have the time they need to speak. They decided to tally every time anyone interrupted. It was a class tally mark, with no names written on the board. Their goal was to decrease tally marks and have a more just classroom.
The just classroom story comes from Shanna Pargellis, who helped found the school and is Lower School coordinator and curriculum coordinator. She says that when Mustard Seed began, they chose to use the term âschool family,â rather than âchapel.â âWe wanted children and parents who come to feel like they were part of a bigger family, the family of God,â Pargellis says.
They began to notice, however, that on the yearly application, some parents were listing Mustard Seed School as their familyâs place of worship. âIf you say school family, it gets very focused on the school. Community worship is a more transferable term. For children who donât come from a family of faith, we wanted to lay the groundwork for them to continue the worship experience in a church,â Pargellis says.
As the school website explains, âCelebration and worship are woven into the fabric of day-to-day life at Mustard Seed. Students' life and learning are rooted in the richness of knowing that God loves them, understands them and that they belong to God. As God's children, they learn to know and care for God's world and God's people.â
Daily worship lasts about 20 minutes. The Lower School, kindergarten through third grade, meets for worship first thing in the morning. The Upper School, fourth through eighth grades, meets near lunchtime. Community worship includes everyone in song, prayer, Bible reading, and interactive messages meant to deepen faith and encourage community.
Several times a year, the entire school meets for celebrations, annual traditions based on Jewish feasts and Christian liturgical seasons. Pargellis says that when teachers ask alumni for Mustard Seed memories, they often comment on worship. âTheyâll say, âOh, I loved Pentecostâ or âPassover was a great thing.â â
Mustard Seedâs community worship uses repetition to build a common visual and spoken language of faith. When children and adults gather for community worship, the time might begin with teaching a new song or celebrating a birthday. âBut before we start our first song and our responsive reading, we light a Christ candle,â says Christine Metzger, the head of school.
Pargellis adds that lighting the candle shifts people âinto a different modeâbeing reflective, listening, and being present to God.â
91ÁÔĆćers focus on a section of Scripture, printed on a prayer card, for a month. âThatâs one way to get the Word into the heart,â Pargellis says. From day to day, worship leaders change how they use the prayer card for responsive readings:
Every monthly theme includes a visual. During the justice theme, community worship focused on Micah 6:8. âWe had a clothesline up front and added a phrase or a word or two every day. We built the whole verse and memorized the verse, but we also took it apart.
âFor our hospitality theme, we set a tablecloth with beautiful place settings. Every day, when we heard a story from Scripture about hospitality, we would put place cards on the table with the names of people we were learning about. Whoever was leading worship could look at the table and reflect and remind ourselves of earlier stories before,â Metzger says.
In the Lower School, teachers end each day with a classroom reflection meeting that ties back to that morningâs community worship. âThey might repeat a song or Bible verse. There may be a question posed earlier that the teacher picks up on. They talk about what went on in the classroom that dayâwhat was good, what was hard, struggles they had. The day ends with a prayer,â Pargellis says.
Upper School classrooms often do an early morning recollection of the previous dayâs community worship.
Visuals, prayer cards, monthly themes, and the Christian year provide structure for Mustard Seed community worship. Thereâs also plenty of room for individual voices.
Lower School teachers rotate turns for planning and leading worship for a week at a time. Upper School teachers work in pairs to do a week of worship and get paired with a different partner for later weeks.
Teachers choose community worship music to match the theme. âWe sing some traditional hymns of faith because the texts are so rich and itâs part of the heritage of the church. We sing what we call world music and often sing in different languages. We have a worship leader in the Lower School whoâs Cuban and a great guitarist so weâre singing a lot of contemporary music,â Pargellis says.
Besides asking students to lead responsive readings and play instruments, teachers plan interactive segments of community worship. They may involve students in drama, interview students, or alternate small group discussions with reporting back to the larger group.
Community is a key concept at Mustard Seed School in Hoboken, New Jerseyâso much so that what other Christian schools might call âchapelâ is called âcommunity worshipâ at this interdenominational urban K-8 school.
As each school year begins, daily community worship focuses on âwho we want to be as a people and how our Christian faith influences our life together,â explains Shanna Pargellis. She helped found the school and coordinates its Lower School and curriculum.
She and Christine Metzger say community worship helps Mustard Seed students connect faith to the classroom, playground, and life in their families, churches, and the world beyond.
Children get age-appropriate experiences in community. âForgiveness is part of the language here. We teach children very early on that you say, âIâm sorry,â and the other personâs responsibility is to say, âI forgive you,â â Pargellis says.
Community happens in specific settings, which is why Mustard Seed recently used the theme of place in community worship. Upper School students, in fourth through eighth grades, usually sit together by class. During the place month, each student sat by kids from other grades. The leader would read Scripture related to place and have students interact.
âOne day a leader read a passage about a place of refuge. She shared a place that was a refuge for her. She had students spend five minutes jotting down thoughts about places of refuge where they meet God.
âWe gave them a few minutes to quickly share their place of refuge in small groups of three students from different age groups. We brought students back together and the leader asked people to share placesânot something theyâd written down but what theyâd heard somebody else say,â Metzger says.
Students mentioned meeting God in school, the art room, at church, and in bedrooms. They shared freely because, as Pargellis notes, older kids often donât want to focus on themselves.
Metzger says teachers âare very mindful in how to hook students on the worship topic.â Teachers often use props from classrooms, perhaps kindergartenersâ clothespin doll self-portraits or a towel or toy donated for a school service project. Teachers may ask students to re-enact a playground incident.
âWeâve used a student planner as the year begins to talk about how new it looks and how the year ahead is like a fresh slate. At the end of the school year, a community worship leader might borrow a studentâs planner thatâs a little beaten and has been used quite well. Heâll talk about how many pages are left and how far weâve come.
âOur community prayers always include something for our school, a concern in our country or world, and prayers for people we care about who need prayer for their mind, body, or spirit. We end with the Lordâs Prayer,â Metzger says.
As do many Christian schools, Mustard Seed draws students and teachers from a range of churches. Some families choose the school more for its educational philosophy than its faith stance.
âWe have families who do not come from a faith background. Weâre very clear with them in the interview about how we claim whatâs central to usâChrist and the Bible. We expect every family to come to a community worship time so they can experience fully that we pray in the name of Jesus. We read from the Bible. We sing our faith together. These are expectations for every student, not something you can be exempted from,â Pargellis says.
Family members are always welcome at community worship, and often up to 25 parents attend.
When Lower School students, kindergarten through third grade, focused on place, they looked at places in the Bible where people encountered God.
âWe built up to the key truth that God is always with us wherever we are, whether itâs in a pig sty or, like Jonah, on a boat. We came back to the idea of place at the end of the year to ask how our sense of worship place had changed,â Pargellis says.
Teachers from various backgrounds talked about where they worshiped as children. They interviewed parents from different churches. An Egyptian parent from a Coptic Orthodox church brought icons and other worship materials. Parents read the benediction from Numbers 6 (âThe Lord bless you and keep youâŚâ) in their native language.
âWe heard it in Chinese and Spanish and all sorts of languages,â Metzger says. âIt let us bring diversity of faith into the school and yet use the key thing that holds us together, the Bible,â Pargellis adds.
Prayers and service projects link Mustard Seed community worship to the world beyond their walls. The sharing goes both ways between the school and metro Jersey/New York City community.
Mustard Seedâs annual Las Posadas celebration, based on a Mexican Christmas tradition, re-enacts Mary and Josephâs trip to Bethlehem. Costumes, candles, and a mariachi band draw Hoboken residents outdoors in winter to a city park.
Because community worship at Mustard Seed is so child-centered, staff members rarely invite local pastors to give the message. âInstead of putting them on the spot and saying, âYouâve got 10 minutes to fill,â we engage pastors in a conversation or interview. We set it up so they know their role. Often they bring something from their church,â Metzger says.
Local clergy do lead worship at staff meetings before and after the school year, during which every student is prayed for by name. âA staff member works alongside them, but they bring in their own liturgy and lead from their own tradition. It exposes us to different expressions of Christian tradition, which is helpful,â Pargellis says.
Metzger says that lighting a Christ candle and singing the alleluia before Scripture reading are community worship traditions imported from nearby churches.
Read more about Mustard Seed School and its . A teaching manual, , explains the schoolâs educational philosophy written by , a former MSS teacher. This press release details the schoolâs annual Las Posadas celebration, open to the public.
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