One of the more audacious positions of Providence Church (CREC) is that it does not speak adoringly of public education. Our Book of Memorials says the following:
“Government schools tend to be, by decree and design, explicitly godless, and therefore normally should not be considered a legitimate means of inculcating true faith, holy living, and a decidedly Christian worldview in the children of Christian parents. Therefore, we strongly encourage Christian parents to seek alternative ways of educating their children, whether by means of Christian schools or homeschooling. In cases, where Christian education is an impossibility, parents must be active and diligent in overseeing the education of their children.”
In my southern context, most evangelical churches have a host of children populating local public schools. And as I understand it, opposing public schools is not the sort of topic that grants pastors awards in local ceremonies.
Now, mind you, we are not speaking here of the responsibility to bear witness by some mature Christian adults who sense a calling to instruct and minister in that environment. Indeed, I know many who do great work in the public corridors. I bless them with every ounce of my being.
What we are arguing against is the intentionality of sending covenant children to learn under almost always ungodly curriculums. The responsibility God places upon parents to provide a Christian education is too abundant (Deut. 6, Eph. 6), which means that indoctrination is a means of grace to our children. We teach in order to inculcate a particular form of training for our local collection of arrows (Ps. 127-128); the kind that pastes on their foreheads all thoughts of Jesus applied to the earthly terrain of Mathematics and Moravian culture. You may say, “But education is neutral; we can just train them when they get home at night.” Well, I applaud your enthusiasm, but there are intellectual corpses all over the Red Sea of those who followed that logic.
Of course, no education is foolproof. Education A does not necessitate Godliness A. But Christian Education A offers a type of godliness in learning, logic, and leisure that benefits the cause of Christendom. Now, I have been advocating for this for over 15 years. Back then, it wasn’t that popular, but in our day, some have come to the obvious conclusion that such opposition to public education is the right one because the Democrats are eager to give transgender students the option of choosing their bathrooms and locker room and are enforcing mask mandates on little children. If this caused you to jump on the Christian education train now, I am grateful. Whether for pragmatic reasons or not, do it. And the hope is that pragmatism becomes dogma. Find your local Christian school or homeschool co-op in your town and go for it with every Herculian strength you have left.
In our congregation, we try to live out these principles by dedicating some money to help parents follow what we believe to be biblical and true about education. So, if parent A says, “Look, you all are speaking from a position of luxury. We can’t afford to put our children in a Christian school or to bring mom back home to homeschool,” we offer some economic encouragement to aid members to make that decision much simpler. But the one thing we wish to also do if you think this is still an impossibility is to help you –assuming you inquire–to look at your financial priorities on the table and analyze whether that iPhone 12 pro-max is really worth more than a semesters’ worth of books, or whether that middle-age crisis vehicle is really as important as a faithful education for your offspring.
Obviously, there are some nuances to this conversation and some exceptions, but the bottom line is that the longer you look at the exceptions and nuances, your answer will always be the same. But if you begin to look at the principle as the thing you pursue doggedly, the exceptions and nuances suddenly become lesser things than they were just a day or two ago.
And speaking of nuances, if a family desires to keep their kids in the public school system for whatever reason but still love our body enough to endure my occasional meanderings about the dangers of public schools, they are welcome to join our church as members, so long as they eagerly seek the well-being of the body and are not divisive. In my estimation, what we are after is not adherents of Christian education, but adherents of Christendom who believe Christ died to make us whole as students and servants of the kingdom. Christian education best serves that purpose.
Pastor Steve Hemmeke has done a fine job in putting this together and I commend it to you as you begin this Lenten journey.
We are grateful for the efforts of the host church who provided a spectacle of hospitality and abundant life. Not a day went by when I did not stop to reflect and meditate on the artistic beauty of our God. Lake Tahoe was simply magnificent.
