1. Is the school’s philosophy and statement of faith consistent with yours?

2. Is there a loving, nurturing environment?

3. Are the teachers degreed in their subject areas?

4. Does discipline have a biblical focus?

5. What curricula are used? Are they current?

6. Are music, art, and physical education provided?

7. What extra-curricular activities do they offer?

8. How are special learning needs handled?

9. Do the students use their Bibles for study?

10. What is the doctrinal focus? (denominational? non-denominational?)

11. How do the students live out their faith?

Train Them Up
Recent studies by The Barna Group of Ventura, California, reflect widespread concern among adults in America that our children are not being adequately prepared for life. Those surveyed were most satisfied with ‘intellectual’ preparation, though just 18% found even that acceptable. Far fewer, only 8%, thought that our children have received the moral and spiritual foundation necessary for life. Yet we are commanded in Deuteronomy 6 to teach our children diligently – “when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up”. Certainly parents carry the primary responsibility for raising their children, but shouldn’t the people your child is with every day at school reinforce and support the important truths you are sharing at home?

In his book Transforming Your Children into Spiritual Champions, George Barna asserts, “The reason why Christians are so similar in their attitudes, values and lifestyles to non-Christians is that they were not sufficiently challenged to think and behave differently – radically differently, based on core spiritual perspectives – when they were children.” Do your children learn to share in school simply because it’s ‘fair’? Or do they learn to truly value others above themselves? Are they learning behaviors or developing a living, personal relationship with the Creator of the universe?

©NCA 2007 All rights reserved.
Barna quote © The Barna Group

Why Christian Education?
When our children leave school to enter the world of work, we want them armed with the truth of a Christian worldview.

Public schools may have competent instructors, bright students and beautiful facilities, so why pay extra to send your child to a Christian school? We choose to educate our children in the light of God’s truth for the same reason we choose to live our lives there. Learning and living successfully require God’s wisdom, strength and guidance.

In school, especially, our children are handicapped in their learning if the teacher cannot present–or perhaps doesn’t even know or understand–truth. There is no truth but God’s, and secular instruction often distorts the facts. From Charles Lyell’s geological strata which, in fact, do not occur anywhere on earth, to U.S. history stripped of its foundation in a shared belief in God, secular texts offer carefully scripted deception as fact. When our children leave school to enter the world of work, we want them armed with the truth of a Christian worldview. We want them to know the real facts of science and history.

The living witness of Christian teachers is another crucial element of effective education. Seeing these adults live out their relationship with God daily, in small things as well as large, is invaluable experience and needed preparation for our children to practice their own developing faith. Children spend seven hours a day for twelve or thirteen years of their lives in school just to get a high school diploma. Consider 180 days x 7 hours a day x 12 years of training and witness compared to regular church attendance alone which typically provides 52 Sundays x 1 hour of Sunday School x 12 years. The math for this equation is startling.

Consider a Christian school:
• We want our children to live all day in His presence.
• We want our children to experience the fellowship of Christian peers.
• We want our children learning truth.
• Exposure to other Christian adults reinforces what mom and dad are already teaching.
• Learning how to evaluate data from a Christian worldview is essential to true understanding.
• Not because it’s safer–a committed Christian faith is never safe!