A late addition to the American TV diet is the CBS quiz show “The New Price Is Right.” Contestants chosen at random from the studio audience compete for fantastic prizes. The contestant who comes closest to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price of the prize under bidding without going over, not only wins the prize but goes on to compete for bigger and better prizes.
While recently watching the contestants rush to their positions at the game-board, it struck me that the current RCA-CRC merger talks are, to say the least, being rushed! The prize of merger/union, a most worthy prize (goal) in itself, appears to loom so large on the horizon that no matter what the price, the price is right because this is a new game.
But is the price right?
Among the many vital issues that remain as real obstacles to a marriage of our two denominations, now or in the future, is that of Christian education. And I am not convinced as yet that the price of union is right if it means the loss of support for our Christian schools. Unfortunately I have served in communities where the RCA churches and ministers not only gave NO support whatever to the local Christian schools but were even hostile in their attitude. In other communities the level of cooperation between the RCA-CRC churches and ministers in the local Christian school(s) has been not only a blessed reality but vital to the existence of these schools. In an area such as Fort Lauderdale where there is only one small Christian Reformed Church, with support given to a Christian School with grades K–12, such support would be not only most welcome, but necessary! However, such support is sadly lacking!!
All at a time when the news media continues to have much to report in recent months on the continuing crisis in American education; witness:
– the fact that God has been removed from the American public-school classroom by a small but very vocal and effective minority. The consequent problem in today’s education is, at root, the problem of today’s society; it is “glutted with its own secularism.”
– in the classroom students are presented with a wide range of ideas, cafeteria style, and all under the guise of freedom—so that the religious sanctions which were formerly normative in our national life have been effectively and consistently removed.
– in large, populous states like California battles are being waged between opposing forces on the score of what scientific explanation will be given for man’s origin. A lawsuit in Washington, the California controversy, and new archaeological discoveries have refueled the old debate as to whether man is descended from amebas or whether he is created by God. A minor victory has been won in California in that evolution will now by decision of the State Board of Education be presented as “theory” and not as established “fact.”
– children throughout our country are being denied the basic right to education through paralyzing strikes and endless negotiations. And this has only compounded the financial crisis facing the nation’s schools—so that the shift from black to red financing has become the common rather than the exceptional outcome of annual operations.
These and many—many other factors have brought about or created a national revival of interest in “private-schools,” our Christian Schools among them. One national statistic shows that 225 private schools are being organized each year in our country. What has been a way of life for several generations of Christian Reformed, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic people has now attracted the attention of families from many evangelical backgrounds. Parents who sense that secularism does NOT educate are turning in ever larger numbers to our Christian School doors!
The case, however, for the Christian School must rest on the most positive Biblical foundation that we can glean from the Bible! We do NOT rest our case for private-Christian education on defects or weaknesses in public schools, though these may be motivating circumstances for some parents to make the transition of their children from public to private education. Whatever defects are to be found in secular schools remain the concern of every citizen, so that we who support a private Christian school remain vitally interested in and involved with the school down the street supported by our tax-dollars, etc. No, the case for private-Christian education must rest upon a principle, a privilege and a promise.
1. First, the principle: That principle, according to the Scriptures, is that education is to be defined as a task to be accomplished, and as a process to which the pupil is to be subjected. Select the Scriptural given you prefer: “Train up a child in the way he should go . . . .” – “Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” – “Teach them the commandments of the Lord”; and many–many others just like these—they all amount to essentially the same thing! This is the God-ordained TASK in education. Hence, the education process begins with the Sovereignty of God. Always in our Christian thinking and living we must come back to God, the Living and Sovereign God, Creator of heaven and earth, Creator of man in His own image, etc. For it is in God that “we live and move and have our being.”
And from God the Covenant of Grace appears and with Him it originates. That tremendous gulf that sin originated and that subsequently existed between the Righteous God and unrighteous man, could only be bridged by Divine arrangement. By Divine arrangement, His image-bearing creature may have fellowship with Him, the Lord of life, wisdom, and truth. That is an arrangement in covenant by which life may be lived in fellowship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ and the grace of God.
Central to this “Covenant arrangement” is the Christian family and home, the original and basic unit of social life. In the Christian-covenant home children are looked upon specially; not as the biological union of two cells but as the immediate creation of God. “Whose are the children with thee?” Esau asked Jacob after their years of estrangement were ending. And we answer as Jacob answered his brother, “These are the children whom God gave me.” Our children belonging to Him, having come from Him, and one day to return to Him, we as parents dedicate ourselves to the task of seeing that God’s children on loan from Him are educated and trained in His fear and in the knowledge and experience of the love of Christ. Training must be offered for mind, body, and soul.
This explains, I think, in the dehumanizing atmosphere in which we live constantly, why the Christian School has become a refuge for all parents who wish to retain the “personhood” of their children. It provides for the restoration of personal-human values so that our youth may be as Paul Tournier puts it, “whole persons in a broken world.” Indeed, a matter of principle!
2. But we must never in our discussion of Christian education loose sight of or overlook the Privilege that we have! Seven centuries before Christ was born the prophet Isaiah pointed to that privilege in chapter 54, verse 13 of his prophecy, “And all your children shall be taught of the Lord.” For me that underscores the privilege that I have and that we all have as Christian parents in having the home, the school, and the church working not at opposites but harmoniously together. A happy trio joined together in one common enterprise.
So this is a great day for the Christian Schools! But it is also a day when we must know without any fuzzy thinking exactly what makes a “Christian School” and why we still want such a school for our children, our grandchildren, and all growing citizens of the Kingdom of God. We do NOT look upon the Christian School as a public school with the addition of a part-time Bible department; nor where prayer is added at the opening and closing of the day, and a weekly chapel exercise. These “additions” so to speak do not necessarily make a school “Christian.”
What should distinguish the Christian School from every secular-public institution is the basic world and life view which must permeate every course of study. Whether it be Bible or mathematics or history. And at this hour in American history it is the only school I know of that can and does give that kind of education with a world-and-life view! It is the only school since the Supreme Court decision of better than a decade ago that can present man’s origin as KNOWN, not speculative, etc.
3. And to all kingdom workers the promise is given, “And great shall be the peace of your children.” What a promise! It needs no explanation! But that promise of the Lord is worth everything!
Is it any wonder, therefore, that at this time of crucial negotiations between our two denominations we cannot afford to surrender an institution that has meant and continues to mean so much to us all? No, the price of union is NOT right if it undersells the Christian School which it cannot under present circumstances help but do.
Garrett H. Stoutmeyer is pastor of the Christian Reformed Church of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
While recently watching the contestants rush to their positions at the game-board, it struck me that the current RCA-CRC merger talks are, to say the least, being rushed! The prize of merger/union, a most worthy prize (goal) in itself, appears to loom so large on the horizon that no matter what the price, the price is right because this is a new game.
But is the price right?
Among the many vital issues that remain as real obstacles to a marriage of our two denominations, now or in the future, is that of Christian education. And I am not convinced as yet that the price of union is right if it means the loss of support for our Christian schools. Unfortunately I have served in communities where the RCA churches and ministers not only gave NO support whatever to the local Christian schools but were even hostile in their attitude. In other communities the level of cooperation between the RCA-CRC churches and ministers in the local Christian school(s) has been not only a blessed reality but vital to the existence of these schools. In an area such as Fort Lauderdale where there is only one small Christian Reformed Church, with support given to a Christian School with grades K–12, such support would be not only most welcome, but necessary! However, such support is sadly lacking!!
All at a time when the news media continues to have much to report in recent months on the continuing crisis in American education; witness:
– the fact that God has been removed from the American public-school classroom by a small but very vocal and effective minority. The consequent problem in today’s education is, at root, the problem of today’s society; it is “glutted with its own secularism.”
– in the classroom students are presented with a wide range of ideas, cafeteria style, and all under the guise of freedom—so that the religious sanctions which were formerly normative in our national life have been effectively and consistently removed.
– in large, populous states like California battles are being waged between opposing forces on the score of what scientific explanation will be given for man’s origin. A lawsuit in Washington, the California controversy, and new archaeological discoveries have refueled the old debate as to whether man is descended from amebas or whether he is created by God. A minor victory has been won in California in that evolution will now by decision of the State Board of Education be presented as “theory” and not as established “fact.”
– children throughout our country are being denied the basic right to education through paralyzing strikes and endless negotiations. And this has only compounded the financial crisis facing the nation’s schools—so that the shift from black to red financing has become the common rather than the exceptional outcome of annual operations.
These and many—many other factors have brought about or created a national revival of interest in “private-schools,” our Christian Schools among them. One national statistic shows that 225 private schools are being organized each year in our country. What has been a way of life for several generations of Christian Reformed, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic people has now attracted the attention of families from many evangelical backgrounds. Parents who sense that secularism does NOT educate are turning in ever larger numbers to our Christian School doors!
The case, however, for the Christian School must rest on the most positive Biblical foundation that we can glean from the Bible! We do NOT rest our case for private-Christian education on defects or weaknesses in public schools, though these may be motivating circumstances for some parents to make the transition of their children from public to private education. Whatever defects are to be found in secular schools remain the concern of every citizen, so that we who support a private Christian school remain vitally interested in and involved with the school down the street supported by our tax-dollars, etc. No, the case for private-Christian education must rest upon a principle, a privilege and a promise.
1. First, the principle: That principle, according to the Scriptures, is that education is to be defined as a task to be accomplished, and as a process to which the pupil is to be subjected. Select the Scriptural given you prefer: “Train up a child in the way he should go . . . .” – “Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” – “Teach them the commandments of the Lord”; and many–many others just like these—they all amount to essentially the same thing! This is the God-ordained TASK in education. Hence, the education process begins with the Sovereignty of God. Always in our Christian thinking and living we must come back to God, the Living and Sovereign God, Creator of heaven and earth, Creator of man in His own image, etc. For it is in God that “we live and move and have our being.”
And from God the Covenant of Grace appears and with Him it originates. That tremendous gulf that sin originated and that subsequently existed between the Righteous God and unrighteous man, could only be bridged by Divine arrangement. By Divine arrangement, His image-bearing creature may have fellowship with Him, the Lord of life, wisdom, and truth. That is an arrangement in covenant by which life may be lived in fellowship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ and the grace of God.
Central to this “Covenant arrangement” is the Christian family and home, the original and basic unit of social life. In the Christian-covenant home children are looked upon specially; not as the biological union of two cells but as the immediate creation of God. “Whose are the children with thee?” Esau asked Jacob after their years of estrangement were ending. And we answer as Jacob answered his brother, “These are the children whom God gave me.” Our children belonging to Him, having come from Him, and one day to return to Him, we as parents dedicate ourselves to the task of seeing that God’s children on loan from Him are educated and trained in His fear and in the knowledge and experience of the love of Christ. Training must be offered for mind, body, and soul.
This explains, I think, in the dehumanizing atmosphere in which we live constantly, why the Christian School has become a refuge for all parents who wish to retain the “personhood” of their children. It provides for the restoration of personal-human values so that our youth may be as Paul Tournier puts it, “whole persons in a broken world.” Indeed, a matter of principle!
2. But we must never in our discussion of Christian education loose sight of or overlook the Privilege that we have! Seven centuries before Christ was born the prophet Isaiah pointed to that privilege in chapter 54, verse 13 of his prophecy, “And all your children shall be taught of the Lord.” For me that underscores the privilege that I have and that we all have as Christian parents in having the home, the school, and the church working not at opposites but harmoniously together. A happy trio joined together in one common enterprise.
So this is a great day for the Christian Schools! But it is also a day when we must know without any fuzzy thinking exactly what makes a “Christian School” and why we still want such a school for our children, our grandchildren, and all growing citizens of the Kingdom of God. We do NOT look upon the Christian School as a public school with the addition of a part-time Bible department; nor where prayer is added at the opening and closing of the day, and a weekly chapel exercise. These “additions” so to speak do not necessarily make a school “Christian.”
What should distinguish the Christian School from every secular-public institution is the basic world and life view which must permeate every course of study. Whether it be Bible or mathematics or history. And at this hour in American history it is the only school I know of that can and does give that kind of education with a world-and-life view! It is the only school since the Supreme Court decision of better than a decade ago that can present man’s origin as KNOWN, not speculative, etc.
3. And to all kingdom workers the promise is given, “And great shall be the peace of your children.” What a promise! It needs no explanation! But that promise of the Lord is worth everything!
Is it any wonder, therefore, that at this time of crucial negotiations between our two denominations we cannot afford to surrender an institution that has meant and continues to mean so much to us all? No, the price of union is NOT right if it undersells the Christian School which it cannot under present circumstances help but do.
Garrett H. Stoutmeyer is pastor of the Christian Reformed Church of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.