One of the most important characteristics found in servants is a “heightened awareness” of the needs of others.  This is also a primary skill found in people who have the gift of hospitality…and those who are going to be best suited to “welcome others” into the kingdom of God.  Since Jesus gave EACH OF US the mandate to serve and welcome people, this should be a high value in your school.  Certain people do seem to naturally “look out for the needs” of others, but this is a characteristic and/or value that can also be taught!  A school that has a “culture of servant-hood” will produce students that become effective witnesses in the world!  

One way to “teach a heightened awareness to the needs of others” is to create a “Secret Servant” program for the school year. 

GOALS OF A “SECRET SERVANT” PROGRAM

A “Secret Servant” program should have the following 3 goals.  Other goals can be added as desired.

1)      Help the students to recognize needs around them and take action as a servant; thus recognizing the joy which is found in serving and helping others.

2)      Help students observe, point out and encourage acts of servant-hood in other students.

3)      Provide the motivation and encouragement for the students to serve as witnesses of Christ’s love by demonstrating acts of servant-hood to their neighbors (with parent’s permission of course).

STEPS TO SET UP A “SECRET SERVANT” PROGRAM AT YOUR SCHOOL

1)      Set up a free wordpress.com blog site for your school which will be a website that can provide both a picture and text “log” of the activities of the Secret Servants.  Perhaps this is something that you will ask the middle school computer instructor  to administer with the help of the students.  The blog site can be “linked” to your current school website for easy access from your school website.

2)      At the beginning of the year, announce that throughout the year the teachers (or the principal---or whomever) will be taking pictures of students who are caught being “secret servants” (helping each other without being asked.)  For example, a picture might be taken of someone who holds the door open for a teacher or another student.  Or, a picture might be taken of someone who picks up a book off the floor for another student, etc. 

3)      Encourage students to “catch” their friends doing “secret servant” activities.  When they catch someone being a “secret servant”, they can either draw a picture that shows what they saw the other student doing, or they can write a couple of sentences that describe what they saw and publish that on the blog.   Provide some prize or reinforcement for students who turn in a picture or who write a couple paragraphs after catching a student acting as a “secret servant” to keep the excitement up for the program. 

4)      To further reinforce the concept and to connect the school with home, you can send a note home with parents, suggesting that they also capture pictures of their kid(s)  serving their neighbors as secret servants.  Parents can email the images to the school for inclusion on the blog site as well.  (Set up an email address which is just for this. For example  Servants@Yourschoolname.org OR if you can’t add any more email addresses to your own domain, set up a free yahoo or gmail account YournameschoolServants@yahoo.com)

Let them know the Secret Servant blog site will be developed all year long.   Students should be encouraged to write comments that they would like added to the blog site (after getting them grammatically corrected and approved by the teacher) that relate to the experiences they have as secret servants.   Each week, before all the pictures are added to the website the Principal might choose 4 pictures that will be printed and put on a bulletin board that focuses on the Secret Servant theme to serve as a daily visual reminder of the value. 

You might consider creating a business card that students can leave at the neighbors when they do an act of servant-hood.  That business card could encourage the neighbor to check out the blog site to see more about the Secret Servant program (and incidentally, more about your school) By the way, you can get 250 free business cards and a great deal on larger volumes by visiting this link http://www.vistaprint.com/frf?frf=198373926346  There is a great, easy to use design site and the quality is great!  We use this company for nearly all our printing.

Blog sites are usually indexed routinely by the major search engines so, as an added benefit, the Secret Servant  blog site can be effective in helping people find information about your school on the web.  (Be sure that you do a good job of cross-linking the blog site to the important “recruiting” information on your regular site so that people can learn more about your school when they stumble on the blog site.  Also be sure to create some links on the site for each of the following topics:

            What are Secret Servants?

Where is “Your School Name” Christian school? 

Can I visit?

            About the authors (Use this to talk about your students and show how impressive they are)

            About the editors (Use this to promote the middle school computer instruction program)

            About the staff (Use this to promote the exceptional faculty at the school)

            How can I get more information about “Your School Name” Christian school?

Let us know if you decide to host a “Secret Servant” theme at your school.  There are lots of Bible passages that could be used to further develop the theme throughout the year.  It would be neat to share your ideas with other schools across the US and Canada, so do get back to us with your plans, ideas, templates or devotionals!  Let’s build a community that shares! 

P.S.

The tool for this month is the “secret servant” story page.  Students who catch someone being a Secret servant can complete the form and turn it in so the information gets added to the blog site.