The Central Coast is changing! We have all been amazed at the very recent and dramatic drift north from Sydney to the Coast. For those like my daughter, who is wanting to buy her first house it has been devastating as she has seen her hard-earned deposit quickly become insufficient to buy a house she could have afforded a year ago. For those of us who own our homes, we are pretty pleased at the capital growth.

But there is another change happening and it has been happening for a while. The ethnic make-up of the Coast is also being transformed. For a long time, this has been a very white (or sun-tanned) area but that is changing. The ethnic diversity of Sydney is now beginning to take place here.

Green Point Christian College has a smattering of non-Western European ethnicities, but we are seeing a growing number of applications from people from a wider variety of backgrounds. I think this is a very good thing. Our students need to have a greater understanding of the amazing diversity of the world in which we live. If you have been privileged, as I have, to grow up in a different culture or have lived for any time in part of the non-Western world, you will know how valuable that is to your own worldview and appreciation of both other cultures and your own.

I was born and grew up in the Solomon Islands, surrounded by Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian peoples and speaking Pidgin English. I have lived in Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia so have experienced a range of different cultures. I have learnt to live with Aboriginal and Maori people and have enjoyed travel to southern Europe, many parts of Asia and Central America.

These experiences and my interactions with people from other races have helped to shape my view of humanity and the world. It has taught me to value the diversity of cultures in the world and to love and appreciate my own. It has helped me to understand both the commonality of our humanness and our very significant differences.

As the Coast changes, we need to embrace the opportunity it offers our students to learn about others, their different religions and worldviews and to appreciate this variety while also appreciating their own culture. As a school, we want our students to be secure and confident in their identity and to embrace the identity of others not as something wrong or strange, but as something interesting and unique.

The Scriptures teach us of a God who created a very diverse world and who enjoys variety. There is only one area in which God sees no difference and that is in the offer He makes of salvation from sin; of a fresh start to enable reconnection with Him as our Creator. The Apostle Paul, writing to a very mixed group of people in Galatia said, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The offer of salvation sees no ethnic, or gender or geographical or historical differences – it is open to all.

Phillip Nash