Spiritual Formation

Developing students' understanding and belief in the Lord is at the heart of every day at Boyd-Buchanan School.  Daily Bible instruction, weekly chapel services, service-based learning, and retreats provide students with a solid spiritual footing to meet life's challenges with joy, courage, and wisdom. 

As a school, wishing to develop our student's love for the Lord we seek to:

• Emphasize the importance of spiritual formation in everything we do. We know this intellectually, but sometimes that which is not spoken often does not get emphasized as much. We desire to foster an environment from the top down in which spiritual formation is talked about, emphasized, and a major component of every decision and direction taken
• We seek to be a community that incorporates spiritual formation into every aspect of our school. To aid this effort, we are creating a spiritual formation committee from the various schools which will be tasked with helping create a common focus and direction for us spiritually. This will include, but not be limited to, shaping a common language around spiritual formation, setting some goals and points of emphasis, researching and developing practices to incorporate spiritual formation into teaching methods, helping create a common goal from prek3 to graduation, and finding ways to help Boyd Buchanan be a greater spiritual presence in Chattanooga for Jesus Christ. The work of this committee will eventually lead to professional learning communities focused on spiritual formation, training or professional development opportunities for teachers to continue to learn, and events or opportunities to help make an impact for Jesus in Chattanooga.
• Create spaces to fill our teachers spiritually. We recognize teaching is demanding. It is tiring to teach content matter at a high level. At the same time, we desire for our teachers to pour into our students in ways that help our students see and experience the love of Christ in their lives. The only way our teachers can do this, is if we continue to fill our teachers spiritually. We are starting to create opportunities for guided spiritual formation practices for our teachers to participate in, to help fill them spiritually so they can continue to pour into our students the love of Christ on a daily basis.
• Prioritize service learning. Information is important. Knowing the stories of the bible and how to interpret scripture is vital to discipleship. However, we recognize, that students do not learn the same way they did in previous generations. We want to place our students in situations where they can live out faith through service to others, and in doing so, hopefully, their hearts will be pricked to desire to learn more about god. (hands, heart, mind) thus we are implementing a spiritual learning component in our school. Students have always been required to conduct service hours, but we have transitioned to making it a part of every school day, so students can serve alongside their teachers and fellow students. As students learn to love others, it will hopefully make bible instruction more relevant.

Ongoing Emphasis

• Evaluating the current curriculum to maximize the spiritual formation of students

• Continuing to grow opportunities for service in the community

• Evaluating chapel opportunities making sure they are as effective as possible.

• Continuing discussions with departments (athletics, student life, fine arts) to find ways we can all work together toward our common goal of spiritually forming students to walk with the lord both now, and into the future.