By Mr. Paul Triemstra, OCS Principal

In this blog I wish to highlight some of the things that make OCS a uniquely Christian school.  One of the ways to do that is to highlight some of the core values that OCS declares.  Our first core value states that, “The Bible is foundational to how we grow in learning, understanding and living in God’s world.”  

What this means more practically is that the Bible, God’s story to His people about His world and His redemptive work, is the touchstone for all our endeavours at OCS.  Jesus Christ is at the heart of the biblical story, and it is critical that the students know and love Him.  Our curriculum is based on the teachings and principles of the Bible and the school culture and behaviour of our staff and students reflects our desire to follow Christ’s example.  We believe that it is essential that the life-giving word of God is deeply rooted in the lives of our children so that the students understand that what they think about God and themselves will impact their future choices and decisions.  

So the Bible directs our relations to one another, our worship in class and in chapel, and in our studies.  We believe that it is the essential counter-narrative to our dominant cultural narratives.  Even though the gospel has impacted many aspects of our culture which we should be grateful for, what the Bible calls “the world” is constantly drawing us to live in ways that run counter to the life giving truth contained in The Word.  One way to look at what we are doing at OCS is to imagine that we are constantly working with students to fit the spectacles of scripture for each of them.  To stretch the metaphor, our teachers are gospel optometrists.