Carly Rodammer

The Love Mandate: “Love the Lord your God…..Love your neighbor as yourself!” (Matt. 22:37-38). Carrying out the love mandate looks like reflecting and modeling the love of Christ to my students. I want my students to know how deeply they are loved and cared for by me. I also want to lead by example and strive for my students to see how I love and rely on the Lord in all things. In addition, I want to equip my students to show love and admiration to our great God creatively through writing, worship, and art. The second part of the mandate, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” I will live out by creating a classroom environment with plenty of opportunities to love others, in and outside of our class. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Keeping this in mind, the love mandate is ultimately an opportunity to honor and glorify God for His great sacrifice to us.

The Mission Mandate: “Go and make disciples….teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:18-20). The most important role I have as a teacher is to clearly communicate the gospel to students, and for them to then be able to share the greatest love story with others. My prayer is that my class grows a love for being the hands and feet of Jesus by being obedient to our calling to make disciples. I will encourage and model sharing Jesus with others, as this is the most loving thing we can do as believers and followers of Christ.

The Image Mandate: “Let us make man in our image…Be fruitful…fill the earth…subdue it…rule over every living creature…” (Gen. 1:26, 28). Finally, I will carry out the image mandate by communicating to students the beautiful truth that God created each of us in His image. I want to show my students that we were all made special and uniquely by him. The second part of this verse talks about the blessing and calling we as humans have to take care of the earth and creation that God has given to us. Spending time in God’s creation and caring for our world around us at home, school, and in our community are ways that we can reflect God
back to him as a mirror because we are made in His image.

In conclusion, I thank Jesus for the opportunity to work at a place  with the mission of equipping students to impact their world for Jesus Christ. What a beautiful and powerful mission.