Chapel & Service Learning

Chapel and service learning

At Good Shepherd, we live by the five tenets that frame our Episcopal identity:

Common Prayer
Intellectual Discipline
Welcoming Community
Respect for Others
Compassionate Service

It takes an intentional focus on these tenets in all aspects of what we do. Chapel and ongoing service learning opportunities are two of the ways we bring these tenets to life for students.

Chapel

Good Shepherd Episcopal School is an outreach of The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd and enjoys a healthy and fruitful relationship with the church. As an Episcopal School, we have a reverence for faith and reason, along with a sense of duty to serve others. This is rooted in the Episcopalian tenets, but is inclusive of all beliefs and backgrounds.

The connection of our spirituality is Chapel, a place, a program, and a sanctuary for students, faculty, and staff of all beliefs and backgrounds. Chapel is where our entire community comes together to nurture the spiritual beings we are and to encourage one another on our journeys of faith. Our chaplains regularly go into classrooms and explore the messages more deeply with smaller groups.

Early Childhood: Attends Chapel twice weekly and incorporates Godly Play into their daily schedule.

Lower School: Attends Chapel three-times per week, and a monthly Eucharist.

Middle School: Attends Chapel four-times per week, and a weekly Eucharist.

All parents and guardians are welcome to join their children at Chapel and attend any Early Childhood and Lower School Birthday Blessings, as communicated by homeroom and advisory teachers.

Service Learning

We seek to foster a giving spirit with our students, so we are very intentional in how we help them serve their world. To do so, we embrace service learning in two ways:

An annual project that the whole Good Shepherd community supports. We rotate these projects between a global focus, a national focus, and a local focus. These projects are typically chosen by the chaplain team.
Ongoing community giving, driven by a grade level or class and often led by students and teachers. Our middle school Service Leadership club takes on additional giving projects and initiatives.

Our focus is on service learning rather than community service. Here at Good Shepherd, service learning embodies a broader process that involves students more deeply. Through this process, GSES students learn to identify service needs and become empathic, create a purpose and goal for the service, work for the good of others, and then reflect on the experience. This deeper and broader experience of service learning equips our students to make a real impact on the world.

Prayer Request

At Good Shepherd, we celebrate life’s joys and bear one another’s burdens and sorrows in fulfillment of God’s command to love one another as God loves us. We seek to connect and provide a network of care in times of need. We invite all members of our school family and larger community to submit requests for prayer or thanksgiving at the link below. Our Chaplains, the Rev. Dr. Eric Liles, and Rev. Stephanie Moncrieff, are available as needed for support.

Prayer Request