Fist Bump Benedictions

I can’t make it twenty feet in my school without being interrupted. Not by emails or emergencies, but by outstretched fists—small, insistent, full of expectation.

It started casually. On one of my first days as Head of School at Cornerstone Christian Academy, I offered a quick fist bump to a student in the hallway—a lighthearted way to connect without slowing things down. He smiled. The next day, another hand was raised. Then three more. Now, it’s a ritual. Every hallway, every classroom door. Little fists stretch into the air like petitions, and I respond. Always.

And if I miss one? I hear about it. They turn around, hold their ground, wait, and I go back. Every time.

What began as a spontaneous gesture has become a pattern. I fist bump my way through the day, from the parking lot to the cafeteria, from a morning walk to afternoon dismissal. It is not in my job description, but I’ve come to believe it is one of the holiest parts of my work.

In a world where children, especially children in underserved neighborhoods, are too often unseen or mistrusted, the fist bump says, “I see you. I know you’re here. You matter.”

There’s a passage in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is approached by children. The disciples try to send them away, but Jesus intervenes: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Mark 10:14). I’ve read that verse dozens of times. But now I live it—in the hallway, in the smallest interruptions, in the repeated reach of a child hoping for connection, and I try not to hinder them.

Faithfulness often begins with repetition. Paul reminds us, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up”. The fist bump may not seem like spiritual labor, but practiced daily and without hesitation, it builds something. A rhythm of dignity. A subtle but consistent message that someone notices and cares.

It’s also a faith of the body. Christianity doesn’t float above physical life—it roots itself in it. Jesus washed feet. He laid hands. He healed with touch. “He touched her hand, and the fever left her,” Matthew writes (Matt. 8:15). Ours is a gospel that moves through skin and breath and gesture. When a child raises their hand toward mine, I try to meet it not just as a routine, but as a quiet extension of that tradition.

The longer I’ve served as Head of School, the more I’ve come to see leadership not as a posture of authority but as a practice of availability. I attend meetings, approve budgets, write strategic plans—but the hallway remains the truest test of how I’m doing. I could have the most polished school improvement plan in the city, but if I don’t stop for a child’s outstretched hand?

I’ve also come to see that children don’t just want connection, they expect it. Not out of entitlement, but out of the deep human hope that the adults in their lives will be consistent. That someone will return their gaze, respond to their presence, remember their name. The fist bump has become the proof. And it has made me think: how often does our faith rest on the same hope? That God, having reached us once, will reach for us again?

Another day, I watched a kindergartener help a classmate student line up for dismissal. She held his backpack steady, whispered something to calm him, and then turned to me with her hand raised. It was all instinct. Kindness, then fist bump. A pattern she had internalized. I gave her the bump, and she moved on. But the tenderness of it stayed with me. The ritual had multiplied. The habit had become hers, too.

“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act,” Proverbs 3:27 tells us. Most days, it is in my power. And these students, day after day, call me back to that truth. Their hands remind me that goodness is not always a matter of grand action. Sometimes it’s a simple willingness to stop.

I doubt most of them remember these interactions by the end of the day, but I do. Because in their small interruptions, I glimpse something of divine patience. How many times have I stood waiting, hand metaphorically raised, hoping to be seen?

Leadership, like faith, is about returning. Returning to people, to promises, to patterns of care we didn’t know were holy until we lived inside them long enough to see what they had made. So, I keep going. Not with authority or answers, but with the kind of attention that says, “I see you still.”