BCC’s Spiritual Life Team is an integral part of residential programing. In addition to offering more traditional (and optional) religious education and services, they are also in charge of community service, mentoring, and special holiday celebrations for the residents and BCC’s staff.
Promoting positivity through the Holy season of Lent
What choice did you make at the start of today?
What mindset did you have getting out of bed?
Your mind is a powerful force. When you fill it with positive thoughts, positive actions will follow.
The power of positivity: 40 days of positive living and thinking – a campaign launched by the Spiritual Life team this month – is an opportunity for youth, staff and volunteers of the Board of Child Care to practice BCC’s core values of safety, integrity, empathy and impact with intentionality.
“The forty-day period corresponds to the Christian season of Lent,” says Rev. Dr. Stacey Nickerson, Director of Church & Community Engagement. “It is a time of preparing for the celebration of Easter by self-examination and growing in one’s relationship with God and neighbor. While many people of the Christian faith give up something negative, it is also an opportunity to commit to adding something positive throughout the period of Lent.”
Participants were given a one page chart to help document their daily actions, or even to simply check off that they had completed the exercise for that day.
Baltimore celebrates Black History Month
Shawn Elbert, Spiritual Life Coordinator on the Baltimore campus, has been holding a very special Monday evening event. Affectionately dubbed “Monday Man Cave” by the campus, each evening has a theme. For the month of February, participants watched Selma, the chronicle of Dr. Martin Luther King’s campaign to secure equal voting rights during a 1965 march to Selma, AL and Many Rivers to Cross, an African-American-based documentary from Professor Henry Lewis Gates. Reflection and discussion on the historical relevance on today’s social environment followed each viewing.
“Black History Month is American history. It’s a part of every person and therefore, it becomes our shared history,” Elbert says. “The kids asked great questions and engaged each other in discussion in a very respectful way. They really modeled the behavior and attitude they’ll need outside of BCC.”
Residents offer sweet treats to staff
In February, the Spiritual Life team coordinated construction of Valentine’s Day gift boxes by a dozen residential program participants for staff who serve them in the lower campus cottages and upper campus houses.
Boxes filled with chocolate-covered strawberries and pretzels were delivered to childcare workers, social workers, case managers and unit supervisors, and to the food service team from Sodexo. Another box went to the Health Suite.