I am approaching my sixtieth birthday, and half of those sixty trips around the sun have been in Christian education.  I have earned an advanced degree in the field and have served as a consultant to a number of Christian schools both here in the States and in Eastern Europe and Russia.  I have written numerous articles on the subject and taught seminars promoting its existence and development.  No one has to convince me of the crucial nature of our young folks receiving Christ centered instruction that provides the framework for a biblical view of God and the world.  Scripture is full of reference supporting this, both in our lives and the lives of our children.

And then along comes Deuteronomy . . . not a book one would naturally “study”.  It’s a narrative about the children of Israel, their history and the law restated.  Restating the law . . . how exciting!  The very title means, The Second Law”. Not something I could get real thrilled about, nor anticipating sinking my teeth into.  So when it came time to pick our school’s year verse, the suggestion of Deuteronomy was a stretch.  It was the Shema that did it.  I was having a conversation with one of our school moms this Spring.  She asked me, “Bill, have you selected a year verse as the theme for the coming school year?” I told her “No” and she encouraged me to read Deuteronomy, in particular chapter 6:4, and see what God would show me.  I hate when that happens.  I’m supposed to pick the year verse, not someone else . . . but I reluctantly looked at it anyway.  It has changed my perspective in many ways, too many to recount or retell here.  My summer was chiefly a time of reflecting on that verse and the surrounding thirty-four chapters.  It took me on a trip into the formation of a people of God, by God.  It told me how vital it was that we be sure that we “keep the law”, not legalistically or Pharisaical, but spiritually and generational.

What it DID was secure, confirm, and clarify for me what this ministry of Christian education is all about in the grand scheme of God’s purpose . . . PASS IT ON!  The entire book is an Old Testament prelude to the good news of Christ in the New Testament.  It’s Moses laying out the law a second time, and also stressing the call and responsibility to be sure that the next generation gets it.  “Hear (Shema), O Israel, the Lord our God, He is God alone.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength . . . Impress this on your children”. And from that point forward, the book proceeds to confirm that there is no greater duty and no greater work than to teach God’s children the wonders of God’s work in the lives of God’s people! This work is reemphasized in Psalm 78, where Asaph challenges the people to “tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done . . . so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children . . .”

So why aren’t all our Christian schools filled to capacity and funded abundantly?  Because we do not see it as a priority.  It sounds nice in Scripture and we believe it is true, but relegate it to forty-five minutes on a Sunday morning, or a three day youth retreat, perhaps even a whole week of DVBS . . . all of which is good and right, just not complete.  The wonders of God that Moses and the psalmist speak of is a consistent, daily teaching that demonstrates God at work in the world, not just how we “feel” about God or “where we are in our Christian walk”.  It’s about “seeing” the laws of God, the statutes, principles, and precepts as they relate to learning and the world in which we live.

Moses knew that in quite a realistic sense.  He had been called to lead God’s people out of bondage and slavery and into the Promised Land.  An eleven day trip turned into a forty year journey . . . a journey that would see a whole generation pass, and a journey that Moses himself would not get to complete.  So passing on the “declaration of dependence” was something that, for the Israelites, lay at the very root of parenting and educating the young ones.

I believe there is no other issue, quite as important, that is before us as a Christian nation, as a body of Christ, and as the family of God than this discipling of the next generation in a biblical worldview.  I beg you to look around you . . . study the times in which we live, survey the landscape of our young people, and search inside your own heart and mind as to what God wants for his people that is echoed in Deuteronomy.  There might be a revival brewing in the reading and implications of this amazing book.  It’s worth passing on . . .

Now this is said, not to boast or to sound like I’m mimicking Rick Steves.  In all these places, I found myself awestruck, silenced, and inspired to prayer and meditation toward God.  If the truth be told, I found myself worshiping unlike I experience much of the time in church these days.  Why?  What’s the difference?  Was it the atmosphere, being in a foreign country, or the fact that I was humbled by the majesty displayed?  Being a student and teacher of history, I guess it could have been that I was caught up in the sheer “ancientness” of it all, something we just do not have in our adolescent America.  But the more I pondered this the more I realized three things that made these experiences of worship:  liturgy, mystery and revelation.  In all these settings I found that there coexisted ritual, wonder and reverence . . . and I could not help but worship.

The other day I had a deja vu moment while walking through our Christian school.  I was strolling around, greeting the students and teachers, absorbing what was going on in the classrooms.  Suddenly, I was overtaken by the same sensation . . . that I was in a sacred place.  That’s right, it felt like I was standing on holy ground.  I was.  You see, we need to view what we are doing in the hearts and minds of young people as an act of worship.  Oh sure, we have our daily devotions, Bible lessons, weekly chapel . . . we might even sing a bit, but a Christian education IS more than that.  It’s a daily worship service, just like in York minster.  And here’s why,

• There is ritual.  Without ritual, education would be a free-for-all.  The classroom teacher establishes a routine, helping students to organize their thoughts and responses.  And in so doing, orders their steps in their faith/learning journey.  School is filled with ritual and liturgy.  We learn math facts, grammatical rules, natural laws, verb conjugation, chronological events, and warm-up exercises.  The distinctive of a Christian education, like in church, is that the teacher points all these to a Creator God and His Beloved Son who holds all things together.  Frederick Buechner says that ritual is rehearsal for the real thing.  We speak of what we do as “educating for eternity” and so it is.  A truly Christian education is ordering life to worship God on a daily basis, preparing students, not only for life here and now, but for the not yet.  The Christian teacher leads worship through the liturgy of life in the classroom.
• There is mystery.  Much of what we study in school is filled with wonder and kept in secret.  Our role as Christian teachers is to assist our students in unlocking some of that mystery, pondering on some, and accepting some as only belonging to God.  The writer of Ecclesiastes says it so well ~ “He has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end”. We wonder about the cosmos, about a leaf, about a novelist’s intention, about a war, a plague, and a formula (see Job 38-41 for a more detailed list of questions).  We also learn about Christ, God’s grandest mystery, and the One who has hidden within himself “all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom” (Colossians 2:2-3).  The Christian teacher leads the search to unlock the mysteries of life in the world of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
• There is revelation.  God is in the revelation business.  He has spoken to us through His word, and by the Word made flesh.  He has also made Himself known through His creation and also by His Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:6-13).  The amazing and sobering realization for us is found in these words of Jesus himself ~ “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children . . . for this was your good pleasure”. We as Christian educators become vessels of God’s good pleasure as we point to, explain, open and help them discover the revelation of God.  In the Christian classroom the word of God is spoken, displayed, modeled, discussed, explained, applied, and integrated into all that we can learn and know.  The Christian teacher leads the journey of revealing what God has said to us about life, the life that is truly worth living.

A recent personal experience confirmed these three as distinctive qualities of Christian schooling.   A mom came to see me and asked if she could share about her 5th grade son beginning with us.  They are new to our school and she wanted me to know that after one week, he came and told her, “Mom, I can’t believe how great this school is.  I can’t believe that we can know so much about God in so many ways than just church!” We cried together, prayed together . . . and, I realized afterward, worshiped together.

This is why we must gain a fresh (new?) appreciation of our Christian schools and the individual classrooms as places of worship.  No, the Christian school should never replace the church, but rather is an extension of all our churches.  It should be the educational arm of EVERY church that seeks to worship Christ in spirit and in truth.  Thomas a’ Kempis, a medieval monk, wrote in his classic The Imitation of Christ,  “Without the Way there is no going, without the truth there is no knowing, and without the life there is no living”. It is disconcerting enough that we have lost so much of true worship in church, emphasizing form over function and experience over liturgy, mystery and revelation.  When it comes to education, we have strayed miles away from this in allowing our children to be taught of a foreign culture in the state schools, where none of what I have written here finds any basis.

It’s time for the body of Christ to get a grip . . . to reconnect worship in church with worship at home and worship in the education of the next generation.  The Christian community MUST come to terms with where we are as a people of God in this respect, and where God would have us proceed.  The Christian school stands at a crossroad with the Church in determining the voice we will have in our society in the future.  One significant aspect of that is seeing the classroom of the Christian school as truly sacred ground.

Maybe we should have the students take off their shoes . . . ?

~Bill