Champions in Christian Education

My school is facing a challenge. The parents who choose to send their children here have been changing for some time now.

Half a century ago our school was a tight-knit community of Dutch immigrant families who were dedicated to the ideal of Christian Education. The fact that they stepped out in faith and built the foundation upon which our schools are laid is incredibly admirable. I look back on my parents and grandparents willingness to sacrifice with amazement. At the same time that tight-knit closeness had some unhealthy undertones as we looked down on outsiders and those Christians would not or could not send their children to our schools.

Our community is changing, much of it for the better. We now see so many different types of believers who come through our doors. This expansion of our Christian community is a joy to behold. 

At the same time it comes with a concern. How do we ensure that the deep Christian nature of our schools created by those founding fathers and mothers is not diluted or lost? Consider the example of the YMCA or places like Harvard, which all started as distinctly Christian institutions but now are not.

In order to address this issue, our school has chosen to keep attendance and membership in the governing body of the school separate. 

Attendance

All Christians are welcome to have their children attend our school, in fact we even have non-believers attending. Although those non-believers have to sign on to allowing us to indoctrinate their children in the faith. (Many of them don't quite realize how deeply our faith is woven into every corner of our school!) We have a chance to "Leak Christ" into many of these lives. These families are also a blessing to us bringing so much more diversity and opportunity into our school!

Membership

However, membership in our governing body is intended to be for those who are "Champions of Christian Education". We want to see those who are believers in Christian Education to be the decision makers and guardians of what God has given us.

In my mind there are two components that help identify these believers in Christian Education:

1. They are Christians in word and in deed. They are not perfect, as none of us is this side of glory, but they strive to live as Christ has called us to.
2. They are passionate about the cause of Christian Education. These are the people who meet night after night throughout the year on committees, who volunteer on Saturdays at school events, for whom  this endeavour is a calling. Not all Christians are called to this mission, nor should they be.

As we work through these governance issues it is my hope and prayer that the changes we have made will ensure that 50 years from now my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to attend, work at, and volunteer in Christian schools like this one which are dedicated to the glory of God.

Dove Commercials - Not what I expected

So last night my wife called me over to the computer to show me a Dove commercial that was making the rounds of Facebook. This one.

At first I thought, "Wow, what a powerful message. I ought to use that in the Sex Ed unit I teach."

But then my wife sent me a link to this post the next morning while I was preparing for devotions in class.

Suddenly my opinion of the video was completely different.

Here's what bothers me most. I like to think of myself as an intelligent, perceptive, and critical thinking Christian, but I fell for the hidden messages in the video.

How are we to teach the discernment that we wish to see in our children when we don't always have it ourselves?

So, today, I threw my lesson plans for my Bible class out the window. Instead, we watched the video. Then we spent some time discussing it. The students had lots of praise for the video and pointed out the positive message that it was ostensibly aimed at. Then I had them go read the blog post rebuttal. After, we watched the video again. We spent some more time talking about it. The students had a very different reaction.

I hope that lessons about discernment of modern media sank in.

I did the best I could. I leave the rest in God's hands.

Who's with me?

"Perfection is not attainable but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence"

- Unknown Irish Coach

Last week, we had  a power flicker that took out our wireless network and with it went my lesson plan. So I went back to the old style of teaching. "Chalk and talk". I stood at the chalkboard for 30 minutes writing and speaking. The students sat there and wrote down what I put on the chalkboard. It was the first time in years that I've done that. It felt comfortable. It was easy to do.

How much did the students actually learn?

Last week, I was browsing Twitter and came across this blog post on "Weird Leadership"

One sentence in it struck me.

"Get off your butt and find a problem bigger than you."

I don't like "Chalk and talk", along with a whole bunch of other things we do in school.

God calls us to perfection. There has to be a better way.

I don't have answers, just a big target.

Who's with me?

I cried when I read it: Gaming, Grace, and God

I cried when I read it. You see, my  mom had cancer too.

I am a gamer.

Board games, card games, dice games, video games, and more. If it's a game I've probably tried it. I spend more hours than I care to admit playing games or thinking about games. We even had to raise the amount of insurance we have on our house to cover the value of the game collection I've been building since I was thirteen.

When I was updating my LinkedIn profile recently I asked for feedback from a number of people I respect. One of them said, "the hobbies or interest section of your linked-in profile mentioned about computer games a few times--you might consider cutting that back to 1 mention of that--especially if older people are looking at it.  They may view that a little negatively.  "

There's a negative view of gaming out there. Mind you, if you watch this video made from recordings of people playing games, you might understand why. I certainly find it a little disturbing. 

It's also certainly true that games can be a waste of time or a distraction. I know I've certainly spent enough time and money on them.

And yet there's an entire conversation happening around the gamification of education. You can find it on Twitter by searching for "#gamification #edchat". You can find it on blogs. There's even a website dedicated to it. I'm experimenting with it in my minecraft project that I've been reporting about here.

There's a lot of value in games. You  might even want to read the book that Kevin Schut, an old friend of mine, wrote entitled, Of Games and God. 

But what made me write this post is the story of a game being worked on now. I found it in a blog post on Facebook.

I cried when I read it.

This post.

The game is here.