Why Christian Education?

This is the question I attempt to answer every year at re-enrollment time, and I try not to beg. Nevertheless, I always feel my soul begging, and it’s not because I’m overly concerned about enrollment numbers. It’s because I am profoundly concerned about the state of our families, our nation, the Church, and our young people, and I believe firmly that Christian education has a large (often seemingly overwhelming) role to play. I recently heard Dr. Alan Pue, author of Rethinking Discipleship, give these statistics: The average teen spends 47 hours a year in church, 7 hours a day on media, 15 minutes a day in conversation with their father (if he lives in the home), and 7.5 hours a day, 180 days of the year in school. This is a sobering statistic because the question isn’t “is my child being discipled by someone else?” The question is “by whom is my child being discipled?” Historically, most secular education has served as a passport to privilege (how can I get a good job and make the most money?) and has served to mold a child into the image of the surrounding culture. As the surrounding culture becomes increasingly selfish and anti-Christian, this becomes a dangerous reality. Christian education, on the other hand, exists for the purpose of teaching a student how to think and act like a Christian as revealed in Scripture. This is a fundamental difference, and one that speaks to the point of any education at all. The goal of Christian education is not to produce students who can quote Christian content, but to produce students who understand what they have been taught and can put it into practice. This takes time and commitment, but we must not fail! The problems we face simply cannot be solved without bringing God into the conversation, and this is why Christian education matters. Our world desperately needs people who know how to think and act according to the Truth.