nurturing servant leaders in religious education - Scholarly ...

CES was a way in which the purposes of the garden could be enhanced, much like the
role of the gardener.
The participants generally felt uplifted by their time in the CES. Volunteer teachers,
even though they had different responsibilities than directors and were not
compensated for their time, still saw similar benefits for their participation in the
organisation. It seemed participants recognised the CES in the greater context of a
way of life, not as the particular assignment they filled. They all felt stronger as
leaders for their time in the CES and each expressed this openly.
Water: Knowledge
Water is necessary for life to continue. It feeds the plants and ensures their health and
survival. Without it plants will die, the soil will become barren, and the purposes of
the garden defeated. Water feeds not only the plants, but the gardener, the soil, and
the animals and insects that live in and visit the garden.
The desire for knowledge on the part of directors and volunteer teachers was high.
Volunteer teachers expressed that they were as much learners in the classroom as their
students, and teaching institute gave them a way to increase in their own knowledge
of the Gospel. The thirst for knowledge was consistent, and learning ways to improve
service was considered as central to using knowledge in effective ways, or showing
wisdom.
Newman, in his early work The idea of a university (1902) argues for the educating of
the whole person, a liberal education that expands all the faculties of a human as a
whole person. This education would be administered under a group of leaders sure of
their contribution in the realm of knowledge. For, he contends, knowledge is part of a
great circle of truth, which if students cannot partake of all of it, they will in the
university setting “be the gainers by living among those and under those who
represent the whole circle” (p. 101). This theory has been largely dismissed in the
thought of individualism, that which would see individual plants as separate from the
influences that make up its existence.
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