What makes a Christian school Christian?

Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”

The Christian school is an educational community which in belief, word and deed testifies to this truth. Further, grateful proclamation is given to the redemptive reality that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. As a learning community, such truth is not only proclaimed, but taught, understood and cultivated in and among faculty, students and parents.

In partnership with the home and the church, the Christian school pursues for its students the fullness of God’s created intent for each child. Doing so with excellence, we give good testimony to the character of our great God while also doing the highest good for our children.

In direct contrast to today’s educational landscape, the believing educator has a world to share with his pupils which ‘holds together’ in the unity of its Creator. We are not subjected to the withering irrationality and creeping hopelessness of a world of utter fragmentation.

Our children are growing up in a world which wants to tell them that the world is all there is. You live as happy as you can, and then you die. Or maybe there’s something called spirituality, and you pretty much make that up for yourself. To grow up and succeed, you learn how the world works and you learn how to play the system.

In a nutshell, that’s why teaching kids from a Christ-centered worldview matters so much. Our children are being taught a worldview, or maybe several different ones. They will grow up seeing the world through a certain set of eyes.

Our children can believe there is real truth, a sovereign God, sacrificial love and honor that’s worth paying a price for. Or they can practice living as if they are the gods of their own lives. Then hope will be a trick, and faith will be folly and love will be a cotton candy dream. And life may have some happy spots, but it won’t have meaning, and it will bring a lot of suffering, too.

And the all-powerful, yet all-loving God who made and saves us will be denied the glory that is due Him in our children’s lives. Sin will win that battle. Never the war. Christ has made that victory clear. But in the lives of our children, sin and the will of the Prince of this world will win a pitiful, yet horrific battle for those young lives.

Again, that’s why teaching our kids from a Christ-centered worldview matters so much. Teaching and loving and nurturing them that way in our families, in our churches and in our schools. No chinks in the armor. No mixed messages about some mixed up idea of truth that can be split up and changed with the circumstances.

These are the distinctive works and high calling of the Christian school.