For use in councils/boards of schools who value or connect to the characteristics of the Uniting Church (or are just exploring them). It may take you about five minutes to read aloud at the start of a meeting. There is a video version of this reflection located at the bottom of this page.
Chair’s introduction (optional script):
“As part of our meetings this year, we’re taking a few minutes at the start to pause with a short reflection. It’s not a sermon or a lecture, just a chance to notice a story or idea and see what it might open up for us as a board. The goal isn’t to answer big questions on the spot, but to give us some shared grounding before we dive into the business.”
Why this reflection?
As the year draws to a close, many boards are deep in review mode, checking plans, assessing results, preparing reports. It’s necessary work. But the end of a year can also invite a different kind of accounting: not just what we’ve achieved, but what’s been born in us. What kind of culture, tone, and imagination have we nurtured through the year’s decisions?
These reflections are a small invitation to see governance as a form of community practice, where leadership is less about control and more about readiness for what life might ask next.
What’s the story this month (one that many Uniting Church communities of faith are hearing)?
The Gospel reading Luke 2:1-20 tells the familiar story of Jesus’ birth, yet when we pay attention, it unfolds with surprising texture. A young couple far from home. A crowded city with no space for them. A child born not into stability but into uncertainty. And messengers who bypass the powerful and speak instead to shepherds, ordinary workers on the margins, about good news arriving in an unlikely place.
The story is gentle on the surface, but it carries a quiet boldness. Hope does not appear where logic would predict; it arrives where there is vulnerability, displacement, and openness. The centre of the story is not power, but receptivity.
Where else this idea shows up:
Across traditions, the idea of saying yes to life, even when outcomes are uncertain, appears again and again.
- In Buddhism, the practice of beginner’s mind invites people to meet each moment unclenched, without pre-judgment, open to what might arise.
- In Sufism, the heart is understood as something that can be widened. Openness itself becomes a spiritual discipline, making space for transformation rather than resisting it.
- In the Quaker tradition, communities gather in stillness, waiting for truth to emerge. Discernment is not pushed; it is received.
Each of these traditions suggests that renewal, personal or institutional, begins with receptivity.
What this might mean for school boards:
Boards often think in terms of plans and risks, but not all leadership begins with a plan. Some of the most meaningful leadership begins with attention, with noticing where something new might be gestating.
The Christmas story hints that institutions, like people, can become vessels for something larger if they stay porous, ready to hear voices from the margins, ready to reimagine familiar patterns.
Two Uniting Church characteristics resonate here:
- Embracing diversity of faiths, cultures and languages – real listening gives shape to new possibilities. Schools that welcome a range of perspectives honour the chance that truth might emerge from unexpected places.
- Spiritual development and wellbeing – openness is not just procedural; it begins in the interior life. Boards that nurture reflection, depth, and attentiveness often become more receptive to emerging insights and more grounded in wise discernment.
These characteristics suggest that governance, at its best, doesn’t just manage what is, it makes room for what could be born.
A few questions to sit with
Not for immediate answers, but perhaps to accompany this meeting:
- Where might something new, something not yet fully visible, be trying to emerge in our school’s life?
- What does courageous receptivity look like for a board or council?
- How do we remain open to voices that may seem small but carry large possibility?
