Priority of Kingdom Education Begins by Starting Christian Schools
- SBC
DALLAS - The proud parents of a newborn listen intently as the
pastor prays for their commitment to raise their first child in
the admonition of the Lord. Overwhelmed by the responsibility,
they are eager to rely upon experienced parents and other church
leaders for encouragement.
In the preschool years those parents faithfully take the growing
toddler to Sunday School, encourage him to play and learn alongside
other children at Vacation Bible School, and videotape his first
choir presentation. Each night one of them reads a simplified
Bible story and listens as he offers a prayer thanking God for
the day's blessings.
In the protected world that revolves around their home and church,
the young parents confidently keep the pledge they made five years
earlier. As they take the next step toward formal education, the
choices are more complex. The once common assumption that most
every five or six-year olds will move from being at home for most
of the day to spending half of their waking hours in a school
building has changed.
Many Christian parents are re-evaluating the path that best prepares
their children to know Christ and serve him throughout their lives.
Some will continue to find public schools to be a viable educational
option that offers academic challenge and reinforcement of worthy
character qualities in their children. Many godly teachers influence
the next generation through their commitment to train young minds.
A growing number of parents continue the educational process
by homeschooling their children, utilizing a wide range of curriculum
choices and cooperative education with likeminded parents. Government
surveys placed the number of homeschoolers at 850,000 in 1999,
although experts say it could be twice that many. Educational
testing results indicate that home-educated children typically
surpass the scores of students in other types of schools, earning
the attention of college recruiters.
A third alternative is found in the private and Christian educational
institutions that make up one-fourth of the nation's schools,
attracting 11 percent of the student population. Private school
enrollment has risen 10.6 percent in the last decade - keeping
pace with growth rate for public schools. Seventy-five percent
of that growth can be attributed to the astounding 46 percent
increase in conservative Christian schools, according to Council
for American Private Education's biennial private school survey
drawn from U.S. Census Bureau studies.
Christian leaders are challenging churches to establish these
schools as a way of achieving the Great Commission, while parents
find such schools to be an educational option that upholds their
own values. Academics, discipline, a more positive environment,
and smaller student-teacher ratios in Christian schools are characteristics
that appeal to parents as they seek to
fulfill those commitments made when their children were born.
Texan Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, issued
a call as president of the Southern Baptist Convention for SBC
churches to plant new schools to develop young disciples through
education. As members of the SBC Executive Committee gathered
in Nashville for their fall meeting, Graham applied the
denominational emphasis known as Empowering Kingdom Growth to
the educational context.
"I think it's time that Southern Baptist churches and associations
and groups of churches look more seriously at establishing kingdom
schools, Christian schools," Graham said. He told the Florida
Baptist Witness that Christian education must start earlier than
at the college and seminary level. He urged Southern Baptists
to train up a new generation of leaders "who understand
their faith, who are able to communicate their faith and to live
their faith in whatever their career or calling."
Prestonwood Academy draws 1,059 students to its Plano campus
situated next to the church Graham pastors. He is well aware of
the "many wonderful public school teachers and coaches"
and doesn't see kingdom schools as a reaction to public schools.
Instead, the choice of public education, Christian education or
homeschooling should be a "matter of prayer" for each
parent "as it
fits the need and the place in life for that child," he said.
"The world is too much with us and so, while we are not
trying to cocoon our children, we don't want to put our children
in a position to fail. I think Christian
schools put children in a position to succeed spiritually."
The director of Christian school resources for LifeWay believes
the church is losing its most valuable asset, its children. Drawing
on research by George Barna, Glen Schultz told a New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary audience that only seven to eight percent
of people identifying themselves as Christian today are biblical
in their understanding of life. He looks to the generation now
sitting in America's classrooms to decide whether society is headed
for either spiritual revival or moral anarchy.
Schultz said the education children are receiving in many classrooms
might contribute to their failure in achieving the Great Commission
of the church. "We're betraying our children," he said.
""We've prepared our kids to go to college and get a
good job. We're not preparing them to think and act from a biblical
perspective."
Research suggests that 70 percent of the teenagers attending
a church youth group will stop attending church within two years
of high school graduation, he said, half of them never coming
back. He cites the way in which Christians have allowed their
children to be educated as the problem.
"The end result of all education is a worldview," Schultz
said. "That worldview is either man-centered or God-centered.
We tell our kids to love the Lord, get good grades and do well
in school. Many schools teach things like evolution, directly
refuting our biblical view, yet we tell them to get good grades,
and therefore they end up believing these philosophies."
Waiting until kids go off to a Christian college is too late,
Schultz argued. "By the time a child reaches age 18, that
child already has formed a general worldview
upon which he will build the rest of his character and life,"
he said. "Children are God's homework assignment to parents,"
he added. "When I'm through training my
child, I'm handing Christ an arrow to use on the spiritual battleground."
Viewing education as a means of passing on our heritage to the
next generation, Schultz said, "I just don't find in Scripture
where we should allow the unsaved to explain life to our children.
You can't have Christian education without the Bible, and that
means unsaved teachers and a secular education cannot properly
prepare our children for eternity."
With society becoming more and more ambiguous about morality
and the place of spirituality within the confines of the classroom,
Schultz said Christians should step up to the plate and start
talking about how the church will instill those values in the
children. That involves more than just giving children a replica
of secular schooling within the confines of the church.
To Schultz, it's the difference between modifying behavior for
the short term and focusing on forming beliefs based on God's
Word that will prepare a child for life.
"Whether they are in Christian schools or in public schools,"
Graham said kids "see plenty of the world." By looking
more seriously and aggressively at establishing schools that participate
in the
discipleship process, Graham believes the tide could be turned.
"Kingdom education is like planting an orchard," explained
Ed Gamble, the former headmaster of First Baptist Church of Orlando's
First Academy who now leads the Southern Baptist Association of
Christian Schools based in Frisco, Texas. "The big crop is
down the road. We teach children to function in the kingdom, not
to just be good little girls and boys."
Keeping that biblical assignment of training children in the
hands of the parents is tough, Gamble admitted. "Historically,
professional educators are the pros," he said. In an interview
with the TEXAN, Gamble elaborated. "God did not give professional
educators children. He gave children to parents and they are the
ones whom God holds accountable for the way their children turn
out."
He encourages parents to draw from a host of godly influences
for help in educating their children. "We're asking them
to participate by mentoring, nurturing and creating an extended
family. You need someone else looking out for your kid when you
aren't around. When we kingdom educate our kids, then everyone
is expected to join in that in a biblical way," he said.
Some critics of public education go so far as to urge parents
to remove their children from such schools in order to send a
message to government entities and educational leaders. As a former
high school teacher and administrator, Schultz is concerned that
many of these groups spark debates that will erect barriers and
further polarize participants.
The point is not to simply shift students from one school setting
to another, he said, but to grasp the reason for emphasizing the
Bible as the basis of learning. "I don't tell all parents
what to do," Schultz said in an earlier Baptist Press interview.
"They have to search the Scriptures. It's up to them. We'll
give them the resources to help. But we're fooling ourselves to
think that we can overcome what's done in six hours a day, five
days a week, in one Sunday school class."
Others argue that Christian parents should keep their children
in public schools as a means of adding salt and light to the culture.
"I think it's out of context to keep our kids in a system
where they'll develop a secular mind-set and tell them they're
salt and light. You've got to train them. Just because a five-year
old is saved, it doesn't mean you send him into spiritual battle."
Gamble argues that the process of integrating learning into faith
is better achieved in a Christian school. "It is more difficult
in algebra than English literature, but in math you talk about
order, which can be illustrated scripturally. What if we teach
children both to balance their checkbooks-scholarship-and also
to use their resources in ministry and missions-wisdom? This is
the integration of learning into faith rather than faith into
learning. Faith is the base."
Gamble predicted, "The Christian school movement in our
churches is going to take the denomination by storm in the next
10 to 15 years. By the end of that time it will be as unusual
to find a church that is not sponsoring or supporting a Christian
school and a home school network as it is today to find a church
that does not have a Sunday school program," he insisted.
"This movement and the home school movement together are
going to radically reshape the way America does school in the
next two decades."
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This article is available online at:
http://www.sbtexas.com/readNews.asp?article=94
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Contact Information:
=======================================
Southern Baptists of Texas Convention
PO Box 168585
Las Colinas/Irving, TX 75016
Office:
1304 W. Walnut Hill Lane, Suite 220
Irving, TX 75038
Phone: 972.953.0878
Fax: 972.870.1986
E-mail: sbtexas@sbtexas.com
Internet: http://www.sbtexas.com/
The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention is partnered
with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC):
http://www.sbc.net/
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CEANet readers who agree with Tammi Reed Ledbetter are
encouraged to send their thoughts, prayers and praise,
etc., to sbtexas@sbtexas.com addressed to the attention
of Gary Ledbetter, Editor.
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||| Related Web Sites |||
Christian Education Awareness Network (CEANet):
http://tinyurl.com/3o2n
Exodus Mandate Project:
http://www.exodusmandate.org/
Foundation for American Christian Education:
http://www.face.net/
Nehemiah Institute, Inc.:
http://tinyurl.com/7ga0
Rescue 2010:
http://www.nace-cee.org/rescue2010.htm
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