Headmaster’s Convocation Address, 2025

By Jeff Philbrick

Hello Jesse Remington High School Families! 

Wonderful to see everyone tonight, whether this is your first or many Convocations. New Families, we welcome you to the Jesse Family tonight. 

Convocation 2025 is our formal beginning to an awesome school year. In this word you hear “vocation,” the noun form of vocare, the Latin root of “to call.” Tonight we start our calling together. 

And in this calling, this very special calling everyone has a role:

• Student Role – do the work! You are in the Vocare.

• Parent Role -Support the doing of the work!

• Teacher Role – Provide the work to do! 

And yet, the purpose and direction of this journey are really the most important thing! 

Students, Families, Faculty, we need to recall that JRHS is an oasis. It is a place set apart, set aside, green and lush and healthy and strong. And yet, JRHS is set inside an impoverished, hurting, divided, confused, misdirected culture. It is a culture that does not acknowledge the values of work, play, study, God, family, history and more. Those things we call dear. 

Given this, our purpose is pretty clear. Students, we plan to train you within the walls, so you can go affect life outside the walls. We aim to raise you up, so we can send you out. We seek to strengthen Jesus in you so you can give Jesus away to those around you.

In the list of JRHS favorite words or expressions is “Kingdom Advancer.” A JRHS graduate is one of these. One who knows, loves and serves Jesus in innumerable ways! Let us point out alumni in the room – the Advancers – please stand.  We appreciate you being here tonight. 

Just an hour or so ago, I had a wonderful experience with some former students, now Kingdom Advancers. The Class of 1998 built a time capsule into Shiloh Chapel, and this evening, members of the class gathered to reminisce and enjoy what their 18 year old selves had put in the capsule. A piece of particular interest was this bottle of pure maple syrup, what we call “God’s Secret Delight.” This bottle was made in the winter of 1998. 

I want to introduce and propose a new favorite Jesse word: “osmosis.” Some of you know this word is inspired by the wonderful and generous conservation grant we received this past winter, allocated to our maple project. We will be learning and using “reverse-osmosis” this year. Consider this definition: reverse osmosis is the opposite of the natural process of osmosis. In normal osmosis, water moves from an area of low solute concentration to high concentration to equalize levels. Reverse osmosis uses external pressure to force water from the high-concentration (impure) side to the low-concentration (pure) side through a membrane, which separates the contaminants from the water, thereby leaving a much more pure substance.

This all has relevance to our everyday thinking and living. Consider a parallel. Students, we want you to be VERY aware, and VERY careful of cultural and moral osmosis – the slow, painful and destructive tendency of the equalizing forces of the culture and you. Without a clear plan to combat cultural osmosis, (and intentional parents, teachers, coaches, mentors), you run the strong likelihood of becoming absorbed into the culture, you become one with it. And this is perhaps most graphically illustrated when you think of the youth who grew up in 1930’s and 1940’s Germany. 

At the Maple House, we are going to learn to take the less pure, saturated sap, and with some pressure (and knowledge, and time) we are going to make it more pure, more attractive, and more valuable to our purpose of making maple syrup, a product we call, “God’s Secret Delight.” 

Let this serve as a parallel, a picture, of what the mission of JRHS is able to do for every student. The mission is the force, adeptly applied to every situation at our academy, bringing our students from a less pure to a more pure substance. We want our students to become “God’s Secret Delight” in the morally bankrupt culture we find ourselves in. 

Students – those in the Vocare – it is all about Directed Change. We want to help you become a different person tomorrow than you are today. Imagine for a moment life without change! Same body, same mind, shoe size, waist size, hair, pimples, strength – everything without change! Now that’s an unpleasant thought isn’t it?

At JRHS, we are quite proud and clear on this direction of change we have every intention of influencing you towards. 

The Graduate  - In the form of a graduate, what does this “God’s Secret Delight” look like? From our Outcome Statement, or Portrait of a Graduate: 

“We seek to mold students into effective leaders for Jesus Christ. We do this by instilling in students a strong Biblical worldview and providing them with a unique and varied set of academic and interpersonal experiences that stretch boundaries and build character. JRHS aims to create students that exhibit personal Spiritual Formation, a Biblical World View, a strong foundation of Academic Formation, Productive Relationships, varied Skill Development, and a high level of Personal and Professional Development. Students go out into the world ready to represent the Kingdom of God with confidence, competence, and the love of Christ.”

Students:  we are going to challenge and train you in what you worship, and what you steward. In a very real sense, JRHS is like a “reverse-osmosis machine,” and for the past three decades, we have been that appropriate pressure, to move you forward to something far greater than you are today. 

Faculty: do you realize, and have you counted the responsibility we have?  These beautiful, young and impressionable beings are before us, searching for what is True, Beautiful, and Valuable. We would do well to be on our knees every day pleading with God to show us the Way. 

Parents: our responsibility is huge, and our time is limited. God has entrusted you with Andrew, or Emma, or Emily, or Josiah, or Meredith, or Nathan, or Tim…Let us meditate on the reality that God chose you to prepare this dear one, and is asking you to give him or her back to God as a ready and valuable asset in Kingdom work. You don’t get to keep this gift, but when we get it right, it literally is the “gift that keeps on giving.” 

Let’s get this RO Machine Working!