The Heritage Herald

Week 4 - Friday 18 August 2023

A message from our Principal

Dear Families 

As you might imagine, there has been a huge focus this week amongst HCS staff on preparation for tomorrow’s 40 Year Thanksgiving Service and Gala Day. This is a direct outworking of our school value “Serve in Community” and is a lovely representation of the character of the HCS staff as a whole. I am thankful to God for Emma Schmidt who has been a driving force for the day. I am also thankful to the many families who have already contributed to the event in various ways.  

I am particularly thankful for the families who began the school in 1983.  Their story includes the sacrifice of money, time, and skills to build the school to what it is now. Recently I heard that the founding families each paid a year’s worth of school fees, before the school opened - to ensure that the school was resourced when it did open - and then they paid the school fees for that year to pay for their children’s education. Their story has become our story. Other stories include the purchase of land with money donated by families and the building of the first classrooms in the junior school by one of the fathers of a founding family for just the cost of the materials. This indicates the passion of these wonderful people to have a school that was able to explicitly honour God and to educate their children in such a way that they knew the truth about who God is and who they are: uniquely and wonderfully made in the image of God and loved by Jesus. 

On Saturday we will be celebrating this. We are also celebrating all the families that have since joined the Heritage Chrisitan School community. Thank you to all of you who continue to sacrifice to ensure your children are “Inspired for lives of transformation through excellent, authentic Christ-centred education.” If that sounds like a vision statement, that’s because it is! This year the School Board, on behalf of Hastings Association of Christian Education, announced the reinvigorated vision for the school. I say reinvigorated because the vision of our school is entirely in line with the original vision of the school. I am truly thankful for this. It is inspiring for me as teacher to think that this work is for our young people to become transformed by God’s eternal truth and to be transformers of society through their service and actions. 

John Maguire, in his article entitled “A Biblical Framework for Education”, makes the point that “[people] are first and foremost religious beings”. His argument is based in the Christian doctrine of Imago Dei – humans are created in God’s image. Maguire explains that because creator God has made us so, mankind has a desire to worship. You don’t have to look far to see this worship played out in society. We see the worship of the body, sun, wonderful experiences, money, sexuality, power, strength, and even sporting icons and national teams to name a few. Sadly, the worship of these created things always lets us down. Bodies age, the sun burns, wonderful experiences are transient, we never have enough money, we are unsatisfied, the powerful mistreat, and our sporting teams lose. 

Because man will naturally desire to worship, it is so important that they worship the right thing. Our school seeks to Honour God in all we do. That means teaching our young people to do likewise. As we consider the 40-year history of our school, it is good to reflect on what those original families wanted for their children and to ensure we are committed to the same: inspiring students for lives of transformation and service through excellent, authentic Christ-centred education. 

I’m praying for a rich week of learning and a wonderful day of celebration tomorrow. Please come and say hello, it will be great to see our families there. 

Matt Cohen  

Principal 

Heritage Celebrates 40 Years!

We are excited to be hosting the 40 Year Celebrations of Heritage Christian School.

 

We look forward to celebrating this Saturday, as a community and praising God for His blessings over our School. This year's focus is to honour the past and shape the future as we strive to develop highly capable students of Christian character, ready to serve and enrich the community for the glory of God. It would be our desire that we, as a school community, would be a part of this special occasion together. We also will invite our founding members, previous Board members and Principals along with previous staff and our alumni students, and we encourage anyone in our community to extend this invitation to anyone connected with Heritage.

 

On Saturday 19 August, from 11am we will gather for a Thanksgiving Service in the Woolshed at the school. This will be a time when we will honour God and those who have faithfully served the school over the last 40 years.

 

Following this service, from 12:30-4:30pm, we will host a gala afternoon on our school oval, together we will enjoy live music, fun activities for all ages, and a school tour. There will be food and refreshments available for purchase.

 

If you would like to attend this event, please RSVP via the link below.

 

RSVP Heritage 40 Year Gala

 

Please see invitation and follow us on Facebook for any updates on this event.

Recent Events

Year 9 and 10 Lifechanger Workshop

Recently Years 9 and 10 enjoyed participating in engaging and interactive workshops focusing on self-identity, teamwork, communication, overcoming challenges, and building community within the cohorts. Year 10’s workshop focused on finding their calling: personality tests, values and beliefs, communication and teamwork skills, and personal leadership skills.

 A big thanks to Kieran from Lifechanger for sharing his experiences with bullying and resilience throughout the workshop. 

CSSA North Coast Zone Basketball Championships

On Friday, Aug 4, 5 teams from Heritage enjoyed a day at the Port Macquarie Indoor Stadium playing basketball against fellow Christian Schools from our zone. Schools from Ballina, Tweed Heads, Grafton, Nambucca, and Coffs Harbour travelled to Port for a great day of competition and fellowship.

Students from years 6-12 competed all day and showed Jesus’ nature in their competitive and respectful words and actions. Our Heritage teams played extremely well, with some great results finishing well up on the ladder.

 A special mention to:

~Deb, Howie and all the refs

~All the Heritage student bench volunteers

~Clay and the provision of the courts

~Carl and the café

~Mr Mason for his mastery of the draw/QR code and his logistical skills to keep the day flowing.

~Mrs Keast, Mrs Cato and Mr Hickey for coaching their teams.

~Mr McAfee, with his extremely generous offer to feed 100 students and coaches from Pacific Coast and Richmond Christian schools who stayed overnight. He served up hamburgers/nachos and apple crumble for dinner and then backed up the next morning with bacon and egg rolls for them all for brekky. What a servant’s heart and dead-set legend!

 

A huge congratulations to the winning teams:

Open Boys- Coffs Harbour CCS

Open Girls- Coffs Harbour CCS

15&U Girls- Richmond CS Ballina

15&U Boys- Coffs Harbour CCS

Primary- Pacific Coast Tweed Heads

 

Until our next Sporting event 😊

Mick Baldwin

 

Spain 2023 Heritage Christian School

Over the July holidays a group from Heritage CS ventured to the other side of the earth- Spain! We had an absolutely awesome time!

The journey began from Port Macquarie on our Qantas flight to Sydney where we boarded a Qantas A380 Airbus to London via Singapore. From London, we travelled on Iberia to the capital of Spain- Madrid. After a long journey, it was fantastic to have our feet in Spain!

Our 2-week adventure saw us stay in Madrid, Granada, Cordoba, and Cadiz for 2 nights each, with a 4-night stay in Sevilla. Each of these places was unique, yet common in regard to the friendliness of the locals, the spectacular food, beautiful facades and architecture, and the summer heat.

We experienced pure Spain through museums, cathedrals, palaces, tapa hopping, shopping, siesta, fiesta, flamenco, Paella cooking lessons, city-bus tours, walking the old Latin quarters, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, touring a Bullring, dining, shopping centres and meeting some of my Spanish friends and their families.

We travelled between cities via the high-speed Spanish train, reaching speeds of 300 km/hr. Friendships were created between the travellers that will allow us to reminisce for years to come.

God blessed us with a safe, fun, educative time that created fantastic memories that will remain with us forever! 

Some quotes from travellers:

Where was your favourite place? I think Cordoba...loved the little laneways and everything being so easily accessible.. Although Sevilla was also incredible and was great to have the extra days to really get a good feel for the place.. Also loved the laid-back vibe of Cadiz at the end. (Jenny)

 

It's really hard to criticise any part of the trip because I think the whole experience was great thanks.

Overall trip  10/10! (Rick)

I brought back some Spanish hot chocolate- ‘Cola Cao’. My Advanced and Intermediate Spanish Year 9s were the first at school to enjoy this yummy beverage  😊

I will publish details about the information night for Spain 2024 real soon….watch this space! 😊

Mick Baldwin

Courage to Care

The Courage to Care presentation held on Wednesday August 2, was a fantastic opportunity for our senior students to hear from Annie and her team. Annie was a WWII holocaust survivor who spoke on the power of being an ‘Upstander’ and not a ‘Bystander’.

The Courage to Care team shared real-life cases from a historical lens, and our students were introduced to stories of rescue and survival from the Holocaust and the remarkable acts of courage that enabled them. This demonstrates how ordinary people are capable of extraordinary acts and that everyone can be an Upstander.

Our students were captivated by what they heard and later workshopped where they could display Upstanding behaviour in and out of school.

Live with Integrity in Junior School

Mark 12 Awards for Week 4

Heritage Christian School

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Educating | Nurturing | Empowering