About the Rite Journey at Rehoboth #
The Rite Journey is designed to partner with parents in guiding adolescents into adulthood. Developed in South Australia, the Rite Journey programme is now used in Australia and internationally by many schools. It provides the opportunity for students to participate in a challenging and thought-provoking personal and social development programme in separate boys and girls classes, timetabled for two periods weekly over the course of the year.
Learning how to be an adult male or female in any society requires guidance, mentoring, and a great many conversations. In our society today, young people often turn to their peers, the internet, and the media for knowledge and guidance. The Rite Journey at Rehoboth is an opportunity to be intentional about guiding students and encouraging them as they begin the journey to adulthood within their God-given community and based upon Biblical principles. Students will be required to have important conversations about what it is to be a respectful, responsible, and godly man or woman in our society.
As your child journeys through the year, they will explore four themes (1 Corinthians 13:13):
- Relationship with Self (Identity)
- Relationship with Others (Love)
- Relationship with God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Faith)
- Relationship with the World (Hope)
We hope that the discussions they are having at school may also stimulate conversation in your homes.
As the title suggests, a unique feature of the programme is the journey of several distinct steps that students will experience. The year is designed to be a ‘launchpad’ for your student into the long journey to adulthood. We have developed a series of memorable events aimed at honouring and guiding your child’s transition into young adulthood.
The staff coordinating the Rite Journey programme are:
Key Dates | Rehoboth | Description |
Mentor form returned (31 Jan 2023) | Support | Students are supported by a mentor. The mentor is to be an adult of the same gender as the student who is willing to help with guidance and support. The student and mentor will undertake the Endeavour Project together and should meet for at least 4 hours a term for four terms (16 hours total). |
Rite Journey Overnight Camp and Programme Launch (9-10 Feb 2023) | The Calling | Students show gratitude for their childhood and are called on their journey towards adulthood. |
The Response | Parents/Carers join the students for an opportunity to learn, reflect, and look forward. | |
Rite Journey Camp Pingelly (20-22 Sept 2023) | The Solo | Students undertake a large challenge outside of their comfort zone (a solo overnight camp) aimed to help them reflect and learn more about themselves. |
Ongoing (TBA) | Challenges | Students undertake challenges throughout the year that help them acquire different skills, knowledge, and resources and extend their confidence. |
Celebration Evening (Week 9 Term 4 – TBC) | Reflection | Students reflect on what they have learned and experienced over the year. |
Celebration | Students are celebrated and honoured at a gratitude ceremony marking the end of the programme. |
To mark the beginning of the Rite Journey programme, students will participate in an overnight camping experience at Point Peron Campsite in Rockingham on 9 February 2023.
The camp includes a ceremony asking students if they are willing to participate in preparing for adulthood and to signify this by choosing a behaviour or item they wish to leave behind as part of childhood (1 Corinthians 13:11).
Students will be issued with a Call to step forward and begin the journey to becoming young adults, intentionally seeking to be equipped and supported on the road to maturity. Parents are then invited to spend some time individually with their child, sharing a small supper and talking and praying with their child.
This will be one of many opportunities for parents and staff to partner together as a community to spur the students on to maturity. Specific details of time and place will be sent out at the beginning of the 2023 school year.
An integral part of the Rite Journey is the relationship your child will develop with an individual mentor.
Parents and students together need to give considerable thought and prayer to an appropriate mentor who is the same gender, holds a mature faith in Christ, and might be willing to devote a couple of hours on a regular basis to conversations and activities across the year in a one-on-one relationship with your child.
The mentor may be a relative, but not the child’s parent as part of the purpose is to give the student another adult to speak into their life alongside their parents.
Adult mentors play an important role in the development of children into responsible, respectful, and resilient young adults. Having contact with respectful and responsible adults is an important learning experience in their journey to understanding and seeing what a godly man or woman might look like and how they might behave.
It is also evident that in today’s world, face to face interaction is declining between young people and adults, hence we are attempting to create an environment where some of this valuable interaction can occur.
The role of the mentor is to:
- develop a trusting relationship;
- support parental values;
- help in developing social skills;
- share in celebrating milestones (including those within Rite Journey);
- listen to the student’s dreams, ideas, and concerns;
- speak truth and encouragement where appropriate;
- promote the discovery of individual potential; and
- help the student to complete a Rite Journey Mentor Project of approximately 16 hours over the course of the year.
Included in this pack is an information letter for the potential mentor so that they are fully informed of the purpose of their role.
The mentor selection form needs to be completed and returned to school before the commencement of Term 1.
To facilitate interaction with their mentor, we ask that each student undertakes a passion project which is completed with their mentor’s guidance.
The project may be building something, creating something artistic or musical, learning a new skill, or refining a current skill. There will be an opportunity to display the project at the Celebration Evening at the end of the year.
It is our hope that the project and the time spent together will be an opportunity for the student to discuss issues that are raised within the Rite Journey course with their mentor. Students will receive details about the project at the beginning of the program.
The Solo is an overnight camping experience where students are supported to spend time by themselves in reflection and with God in a meaningful way without the distractions of each other and technology. During this time, they will write a letter to themselves about the type of adult they would like to become.
See also Prayer Vigil.
Rite Journey | Rehoboth | Content | Topics and Key Questions |
Part 1: Who Am I Really? | Relationship with Self: Identity | This section asks the question who am I really? Using the guidance of Psalm 139:14 and Genesis 1:27 students will look at who they are and their identity in Christ. | Identity in Christ |
Part 2: How Do I Get On With Others? | Relationship with Others: Love | Students will consider their emotions, thoughts, and values and how they affect their interactions with others (1 John 4:7-21; John 13:34-35). | Emotions and feelings |
Part 3: Is There Something More? | Relationship with God: Faith | Students will consider some of the deeper questions in life as they prepare for the Solo challenge (2 Corinthians 5:7; Hebrews 11:1). | Faith and truth |
Part 4: What is my purpose | Relationship with the world: Hope | Students reflect on what they have discovered about themselves throughout the program as they consider what is their purpose (Jeremiah 29:11; Ephesians 3:20). | What is important to me? |
Category | Challenge | Description |
Identity | Endeavour Project | A year-long passion project that the student undertakes with their mentor. The purpose is to discover something more about themselves. Students will present/display their projects at the Celebration Evening. |
Identity | Overcoming Fear | Students will undertake a physical challenge (bouldering, abseiling, ropes course or similar). |
Faith | The Journey | Students embark on a solo overnight experience to help them reflect and learn more about themselves. The solo will be a part of a larger camp experience, but the emphasis will be on spending approx. 12 hours by themselves. |
Faith | Easter | Students will experience the ‘Good Friday Walkthrough’ at Red Door Community Church, an interactive experience retelling the real story and meaning of Easter. |
Love | Community Service | Conducted as part of the Endeavour Project and as advised during the year. |
Love | Love Attack | Find a way to practically love people close to you. |
Hope | Letter to self | Students will write a letter to themselves describing the person they want to become, the goals they have and the things the want to stand for. |
Hope | Life skills | Students will learn a new skill that could help them later in life (e.g changing a tyre, making pottery, crocheting a blanket, tying a tie). |
As our Year 9s embark on their solo overnight experience for the first night of the Rite Journey camp in Week 10, they will be reflecting on the kind of man or woman they hope to grow into and writing a letter to their future selves about those goals. Students will also be encouraged to follow a short Bible study looking at their identity in Christ and God’s faithfulness in all seasons of life. Other than that, students will be alone without devices and other forms of entertainment, a rare opportunity to be disconnected from the World, to be still and hopefully to know our God.
For some students, this will be a welcome and refreshing opportunity, a follow-on from their own personal Bible study and reflection and prayer time. But for a lot of our students, it will be a challenging time of sitting with choices, consequences, circumstances, and problems. For some it will be lonely. For some it will be scary.
Psalm 139 gives us lots of images of the ways in which God is always close to us, and we know that this is the truth for our Year 9s while they are on camp. Nevertheless, it is a vulnerable time for them wherever they are on their journey with God and therefore we ask you to again partner with us in covering each student and their classmates with prayer throughout the solo experience.
The hours from when they set up their tents, throughout the night and as they wake and are called to worship and a time of devotion together in the morning, we ask our Rehoboth community to take a stand in prayer for our children by committing to pray for them in 10 minute allocated slots. Parents, staff and previous Rehoboth Rite Journey students will be able to choose an available time slot and will be given the list of student and staff names, and a prayer guide for anyone who would like some specific prayer points.
We also ask that before camp begins that you keep this prayer vigil to yourself so that we can let the students know in the morning when we’ve joined together again that people have been praying for them throughout the night to reflect this part of God’s character and function of Christ’s body.
Downloads #
Solo Camp Prayer Vigil #
As our Year 9s embark on their solo overnight experience for the first night of the Rite Journey camp in Week 10, they will be reflecting on the kind of man or woman they hope to grow into and writing a letter to their future selves about those goals. Students will also be encouraged to follow a short Bible study looking at their identity in Christ and God’s faithfulness in all seasons of life. Other than that, students will be alone without devices and other forms of entertainment, a rare opportunity to be disconnected from the World, to be still and hopefully to know our God.
For some students, this will be a welcome and refreshing opportunity, a follow-on from their own personal Bible study and reflection and prayer time. But for a lot of our students, it will be a challenging time of sitting with choices, consequences, circumstances, and problems. For some it will be lonely. For some it will be scary.
Psalm 139 gives us lots of images of the ways in which God is always close to us, and we know that this is the truth for our Year 9s while they are on camp. Nevertheless, it is a vulnerable time for them wherever they are on their journey with God and therefore we ask you to again partner with us in covering each student and their classmates with prayer throughout the solo experience.
The hours from when they set up their tents, throughout the night and as they wake and are called to worship and a time of devotion together in the morning, we ask our Rehoboth community to take a stand in prayer for our children by committing to pray for them in 10 minute allocated slots. Parents, staff and previous Rehoboth Rite Journey students will be able to choose an available time slot and will be given the list of student and staff names, and a prayer guide for anyone who would like some specific prayer points.
We also ask that before camp begins that you keep this prayer vigil to yourself so that we can let the students know in the morning when we’ve joined together again that people have been praying for them throughout the night to reflect this part of God’s character and function of Christ’s body.