Together we're awesome!

Smithville Christian High School's spiritual life director Gord Park introduced this year's spiritual life theme at this week's chapel: Build the body.

Using the image of an athlete building strength in his or her physical body, Park told students that last year's theme was to encourage one another, taken from I Thessalonians 5: 11. "Therefore encourage one another."

This year's theme is from the same passage. It explains why we need encouragement and why we need to be encouraging, Park said: it's to build up the body. "Therefore encourage one another, and build each other up."

"We together are a single body," Park said. "You are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it," he said, citing 1 Cor. 12: 12. "Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ." Working together "we have the opportunity to be incredibly strong," Park said. "We can be the body God has called us to be."

But building the body is also about building up the individual man or woman God called you to be, he said, which takes discipline. And it's about letting God be at work in the lives of the people around us -- giving them the freedom to be what God calls them to be.

Quoting 1 Peter 2:5, Park said the reason for all this emphasis on the development of strength is to give glory to God. "You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

Park said throughout the year chapels will focus on various ways we need to build up our bodies -- both individually and as members of school groups, teams and the entire student body.

"Individually, we're okay. Together, we're awesome," he said. "What is bringing us together is not our interests, it's God."

This morning's chapel also featured worship led by a student praise team, who led students and staff in singing enthusiastic versions of My Redeemer Lives and Days of Elijah.

 Everyone is invited to next week's chapel, on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m.