Maranatha Christian School: Christ Centred Education – My Utmost for His Glory.

Our school website states that Maranatha Christian School is a Christian community in partnership with home and church where students are inspired to discover and develop their God-given gifts, abilities and character for a life of service to the Lord in contemporary society.

Also, that Maranatha is a growing non-denominational Christian School, delivering high quality and exceptional Christ-centred education to one community across two campuses in Melbourne, with the motto “My Utmost for His Glory”.

When parents attend enrolment interviews with their children, it is explained to them that Christ-centred education means more that teaching Bible as a subject. Being Christ-centred also impacts how we teach every lesson and experience every activity and event in the life of our community.

Like in many schools, Maranatha staff are keen to create positive experiences for our students to engage in. These can take the form of incursions and excursions, camps and stay-lates, Mother’s Day afternoons, Father’s Day breakfasts, Grandparent’s days, sports days, school productions, music and arts events, etc – all celebrating our community and providing meaningful and memorable experiences.

At Maranatha our focus is to run these events in Christ-centred way and live out our motto: “My Utmost for His Glory.”

Recently I observed one of our Junior School teachers enact this Christ-centred education during the Year 1 Stay-late earlier this term, and with his permission, I share this with you.

Year 1 Stay-late 2025

The Year 1 Stay-late is designed to be a memory making experience for our Year 1 students. This year our Year 1 students form our Officer Campus joined our Year 1 Endeavour Hills students for an afternoon and evening of fun and fellowship. How exciting – staying at school until 7pm! Students loved spending time together undertaking numerous activities and sharing the evening meal together at school on a Friday night.

After the evening meal, the students gathered together for the Stay-late devotions with Mr Barnes. Mr Barnes came prepared, with his gardening shirt, gloves and some gardening equipment as he shared with the students the following message:

Mr Barnes asked the children how does a tree grow fruit? After hearing lots of great ideas from the Year 1 students he explained that for a tree to grow fruit, it just needs to be a healthy tree.

The next question was, well then, what does a tree need to be healthy? And Mr Barnes also compared a tree growing into a healthy tree to us growing as a healthy Christian.

Just like trees need water and nutrients, we need God’s truth from the Bible for us to grow.

Just like trees need light from the sun, we need to be connected to God’s son through prayer.

And like trees need to be pruned, we need to cut out sin in our lives to grow with God.

Thank you, Mr Barnes, and all our Maranatha staff, for creatively using celebrations and events at Maranatha to teach out students to be Christ-centred and to live out our school motto: My Utmost for His Glory.