During the 10:30 a.m. service on Sunday, the Rev. Andrew O’Dell invited all students and teachers to come forward for a blessing before the start of the new school year. (He asked school nurses to come forward, too––Mrs. Ellen O’Dell obliged and stood front and center!). 

Heavenly Father, we pray your blessing on these students, faculty and staff as they begin a new school year. Keep them ever-mindful that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, and that following you is better than chasing after selfish goals. Help them to take failure not as a measure of their worth, but as a chance for a new start. Give them strength to hold their faith in you, and to keep alive their joy in your creation; And make them, we pray, ambassadors for the Gospel of your son Jesus: so that wherever they go, and whatever challenges they face, this world might come to know you through them; for we ask these things in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen.

Adaptation of the prayer "For Young Persons," from The Book of Common Prayer, page 829.