The teacher must have a sufficiently winning personality that his students would want to be like him— not merely want to know what the teacher knows— and parents must not allow endless, irrefutable competition against the teacher to swindle the student’s heart away.
If we step outside of our current historical moment and listen to the wisdom of the past, we might find a healthier alternative. For thousands of years, figures like Plato, Cicero, Augustine, and C.S. Lewis have carried the torch for a different kind of education: the formation of the soul.
The Christian faith is public, not private. The creed of the early church was “Jesus is Lord” (cf. Phil 2:11), a very public and subversive proclamation which brought about very public persecution. Despite what many assume today, the early church did not suffer deeply merely because they believed in the forgiveness of sins, or the resurrection from the dead, or that God loved them. They suffered because, as they would publicly confess at baptism, Jesus Christ, God’s Son, was also “Lord”, and he has “ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty.”[1] He has been given all authority (Matt 28:18) and has been made “head over all things” (Eph 1:22). And if Christ is Lord, Caesar is not. This public fact was not overlooked by imperial powers. Christ has not simply carved out a private niche for himself in some secluded corner of creation, nor has he been given authority over a small portion of our hearts. He has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he is currently ruling until his enemies are made a footstool (Psalm 110:1; 1 Cor 15:25), and he has dominion over the entire cosmos.
That is not to deny, of course, the very personal nature of the gospel. Christ must be received by faith, personally. But the reality of Christ rules out a simply private faith. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a public event (cf. 1 Cor 15), and a public triumph (Col 2:15), like a victory parade for a Roman general, and the implications are public. A purely “private faith” is a contradiction in terms.
The reality of the public nature of our faith is one of the driving convictions beneath our efforts at KCCS. We realize that Scripture exhorts us to raise the kind of children who will one day, by God’s grace, “stand in the gates’” (Psalm 127:5). They will not join the mob or follow the smooth-talkers. They will not cower in fear. By faith, they will possess the kind of character and competencies required to “give an answer for the hope they have” (1 Peter 3:15).
This is more important than ever, as recent world events have shown. In many ways, the recent turmoil and division are the fruit of failures to train up children to fear the Lord. Folly, not wisdom, rules. Hate, not love, reigns. We have enjoyed, in the West, a measure of peace and freedom and opportunity that the world has never known, and we are seeing that disappear at a rapid pace. We are trying to raise the kind of children who will not only survive in a chaotic world, but thrive, and offer the light of the gospel to a world in darkness. What our world needs most is not one particular leader, or a potent vaccine. Our world needs Jesus Christ, and Christians who will boldly confess his name.
These kinds of people are not accidents. The virtues of faith, hope, and love are not produced in an instant. They are cultivated over years of faithfulness. Does a school or faculty alone produce these kinds of people? Of course not. Apart from the Lord, all our labour is in vain (Psalm 127:1–2). We know that even when we sow, it is God who gives the growth (1 Cor 3:6). But we are called, as parents, teachers, and supporters, to sow the seeds in faith, and leave the rest with God. We must do our part.
At KCCS, we have embarked on a difficult journey of offering a private education. But the goal of the kind of education we are giving our children is that it would equip them with a very public faith. Please join us in this endeavour.
[1] Apostles Creed
Alex is married to Rebecca and is the father of Grace and Ruth. He serves as Lead Pastor of Hill City Baptist Church, and is a founding board member of KCCS. He teaches history and theology to the school’s older students and has been known to frequently reference The Lord of the Rings.
In the August of 2019, Kawartha Classical Christian School was ready to launch its first operational school year. But, in many ways, until that first student walked through the doors in September, wearing her little uniform, greeted by her principal and teachers, KCCS was still a dream. Apart from the steering committee and a few pioneering families who saw the vision crisp in their mind’s eye, it must have seemed an invisible and overly-ambitious endeavour.
One does not simply stroll into Mordor, after all.
And perhaps, from the outside, that is what it looks like we did. Perhaps it may have seemed like the driving force for the creation and sustenance of KCCS lay in the power of a dream alone. And surely, without a like-minded team of individuals coming together, a dream it would have remained.
But although the dream of a Classical Christian school right here in Peterborough, whose aim would be to educate children in and for the glory of God, was certainly a common occurrence, the dream was not our master. Nor is it our master even now that our school has a year notched in its belt.
Rather, our master has forever been and forever will be the Lord Jesus Christ.
Two and a half years ago, God brought together three pastors, their wives, and a university student, the unlikely ingredients of what would soon after become the founding KCCS Board. But even with little money (did I mention three pastors and a student?) and no school building, the ploughmen began to put their hands to the plough. In his gracious providence, it was not long before we not only had a building, but a gifted principal and four gifted teachers who were both able and indeed eager to serve the KCCS community.
The dream was beginning to take shape in more fullness than we could even have anticipated.
To supplement our funds—or lack thereof—a cloud of faithful saints who saw what the dream could be graciously donated to our cause. Not only were donations given by community members who might directly benefit from KCCS, but in fact donations were received from across the world, from churches not even in Canada. Like the Macedonians who were eager to give out of their poverty (2 Corinthians 8:1–5), we were able to see first-hand the Lord’s people cheerfully giving for the sake of these young students, not only out of abundance, but some despite their lack.
Then, in the second semester of our first operational year, just as the culture of the school was growing and the students were beginning to thrive in their rhythms, a global pandemic prevented our school from remaining open physically.
And yet, despite this setback, our principal and teachers continued to labour with parents to tune minds, train hearts, to the glory of Christ. Where giving may have slowed due to uncertain times, we providentially received anonymous donations to meet costs associated with the change of format. And while some parents may be waiting the uncertainty of the pandemic out, our enrolment for the upcoming year has already gone up.
Believe me when I tell you that this is only a snap-shot of the grace of God to the KCCS community. From the unlikely people with a multitude of gifts that God himself brought together, to the financial sacrifices, to the ability to be standing amidst a pandemic awaiting our second operational year, it was no mere dream that caused such to be; it was and could only be the Lord Jesus Christ, accomplishing his purposes through his people. This being the case, it should not be the dream, however lofty, that garners our awe, but the Lord himself. Even though the way our first year has gone may not have been what we were dreaming of those two years ago—certainly the pandemic was a surprise—in serving Christ as the master above even our dearest hopes and ambitions, we have been blessed in more ways than we could ever have imagined.
If you are one of our Board members, teachers, principal, donors, volunteers, students, prayer supporters, I thank the Lord for you. I hope you can join me in saying with Paul, “I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). I thank the Lord that such an inconceivable dream is on its way to year two and I thank the Lord that it is not because of us, because of our dreams, but because of the grace of God that continually works through all of us as we seek to glorify him.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Meghan is a founding board member of KCCS. She lives in Peterborough, Ontario, where she is also a member at Hill City Baptist Church. She is currently pursuing her M.A. in English at Trent University.
Some may say that to stay within the bounds of what we know and have always done will be safer than risk. We believe, however, that to resist the good we know we ought to do is neither right nor safe. We cannot afford to equip ourselves, or our students, with second-rate weapons. The Enemy is elite. And so he must be answered with the excellency of God’s mighty weapons.
The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.
~Acts 11:26
What makes a Christian, a Christian? A Christian—much like a Canadian, an American, or a Russian—is defined by their citizenship. But unlike the national allegiances of this world, a Christian is someone whose citizenship is rooted in the person and kingdom of Christ. According to Jesus, such an allegiance requires nothing less than a total denial of self, the taking up of one's cross, and a willingness to follow Him to whatever end. This is, and has always been, the Bible’s only definition of a Christian.
Why is it in our day, then, that “Christian” more often invokes the ornaments of a subculture—a fluency in certain religious language, traditions, and terms—rather than the preoccupation of a life? Certainly the Christian faith isn’t less than language, traditions, and terms; in fact nearly 2,000 years of church history has been spent honing and improving such things. For some, however, faith never moves on from this, calling to mind the Pharisees who endlessly scrutinized the Scriptures only to miss the Messiah they predicted. Such a mistake is both dangerous and costly, yet remains a constant temptation for Christians.
In order to avoid making such a critical error ourselves, we must acknowledge that a Christian education needs to be more than simply supplying religious information. Rather, we must see Christ not only as the centre our curriculum, but the aim of education itself. But how can we ensure that we remain true to such an aim? And how do we guard against the tendency to sacrifice conviction on the altar of expedience?
There Must be an Explicit Gospel
Where convictions are not regularly and explicitly addressed, they run the risk of being assumed. Where convictions have been assumed, they are in danger of being neglected. And neglected convictions are no defense against error and pragmatism. In fact the quickest route to infidelity and apostasy is by the route of an “assumed” Christ.
While the natural bent of our heart is to assume we could never forget the fundamental truths of the gospel, the reality is that we are all in need of constant and clear reminders of them. Why else would the writers of Hebrews tell his readers to “pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it”? (Hebrews 2:1)
On the point, we must insist not only on the importance of the Bible’s moral instruction, but on the centrality of its Christ. It is true that the Bible does have an inherent moral value; in fact believing, as we do, that it is the very revelation of God, its doctrine possesses the only moral value. But to assume the Scriptures’ first and primary role is as a moral guide is to mistake its purpose: For the story of Scripture has at its centre the person and worth of Jesus Christ. This is where many Christians, and their schools, can go off the tracks.
This is why we need to constantly remind ourselves that it is only through repentance, atonement, and a transformed heart that a student will be enabled to obey, and love, the imperatives of Scripture. Practically, this means that it will not be assumed that every child who attends our school is already a Christian. It only means that even if they are, a regular, organic, and meaningful gospel-inculcation into all facets of school culture will be prioritized.
There Must be Clear and Frequent Definition of Terms
Alongside regularly reminding ourselves of the importance of the “first things,” there must also be a clear and frequent definition of terms. Gresham Machen, an early 20th century theologian, stated:
Nothing makes a man more unpopular in the controversies of the present day than an insistence upon the definition of terms. . . . Men discourse very eloquently today upon such subjects as God, religion, Christianity, atonement, redemption, faith; but are greatly incensed when they are asked to tell in simple language what they mean by those terms.
What Machen is saying here is that it’s easy enough to gather a crowd under an assortment of pleasant sounding religious terms, but if there is confusion as to what exactly is meant by terms such as “atonement” or “faith,” the result will be hurt and confusion at best and the temptation to compromise at worst.
The importance of a Statement of Faith cannot be overstressed here. But a statement hiding dusty and forgotten in a drawer somewhere serves nobody. Rather, it is to everyone's benefit if the biblical convictions, and the principles undergirding such statements, are brought to light and life throughout the term.
The Culture of a Christian School Must Flow from its Convictions about Human Nature
Though a truly Christian education will possess a high view of a child’s ability, it will also have a sober-minded awareness of their predilections. It will approach education understanding that though self—self-protection, self-priority, self-love—is the natural and comfortable orientation of a student’s heart, true flourishing comes about through submission to Christ and His Word.
For example, it will not be assumed that a student will naturally be inclined towards the beauty and usefulness of mathematics; only dissuaded by its challenge. Recently one of our students (before COVID-19 measures), exasperated by an unfamiliar mathematical process, broke down in the middle of class and simply wanted to give up. His teacher encouraged him to press into the challenge, however, and several days later this same student was excitedly doing problems on his own time. Fear (of being left behind), pride (not wanting help), and stubbornness (insisting on his preferred way) were all revealed and shown for the unstable guides that they are.
Such instances, we hope, will equip students with a realistic view of self, a distrust of inherent “feelings,” an impulse to press into challenge, a willingness to acknowledge the deceit of their hearts, and, hopefully, a happiness to rest in the arms of Christ.
What, then, is a truly Christian education? Perhaps we could summarize it as a desire to provide an excellent education, with the end of graduating true disciples. At its heart, it must be more than simply adopting the posture of an appealing culture. Rather it must be shaped, down to its very roots, by the living, enduring, Word of God.
Ben is a founding board member of KCCS. He lives in Peterborough, Ontario where he is a also an elder at Hill City Baptist Church. He is the proprietor at benjamininglis.ca and you can also find him occasionally writing at dragonsetc.ca or getting stomped at Yahtzee by one of his three children.
There are some who might view such questions as irrelevant, or an exercise in overthinking. Others may deem their children resilient enough to withstand whatever consequences may come about by not thinking about them. The problem here is that when we don’t make decisions based on convictions, we will likely make them based on convenience (the distance, cost, or size of a school). But what if the answers to such questions carried massive implications for your child’s future? What if an educational institution’s “soil” was the most critical factor to the detriment, or flourishing, of their students?
The following article is used with permission from Spreading Hope Network.
Hope Academy is just one school startup model of many models. But if you’re planning on starting a new God-centered school for children of the city I want to encourage you to dream big, start small, and grow slow.
In my more than 30 years of ministry, I have to say that the biggest mistake in serving the Lord has been consistently underestimating God. Over and over and over, I have underestimated God. It reminds me of the book, Your God is Too Small by J.B. Phillips. That is not the God of the Scriptures; that’s the god that I have made Him into. I made Him into basically someone who is a little bit smarter, stronger, and able than the best of us. That is not God! God is God. And over and over I continue to plan as if God is not who He says He is.
To give you an example of that, when our school was about five or six years old, we had maxed out the church building that we were in. We had classes meeting in a janitor’s closet at one point. It was just unsustainable. We had been looking for years for what the next place was for the school, and couldn’t find anything that was working. And finally we found a photographic film processing factory nearby that had gone out of business when everything went digital. We were going to buy their factory for a million and a half dollars, and put another million and a half dollars to convert it into a school that would serve about a 150 kids. No gym, no cafeteria, no playground. It was just a barebones thing. And we assumed, “Well, that’s what the Lord has given to us, that’s our next step.”
We began to move ahead with that plan. Then one morning, I got a call from our Board President.
He said, “Russ, we’ve got a problem.”
I said, “Really? What’s going on?”
He said, “You won’t believe this, but as the workmen were doing some soil sampling at the new building, they found arsenic in the soil.”
I said, “They found what?”
“Arsenic!”
Across the street there was a factory that made pesticides, and some of the arsenic that they used had contaminated other places nearby. And the only solution for this was to remove six feet of the topsoil, to truck it away, and to replace it at a cost of another million dollars. So we had to abandon the project. We had told our parents, we had told everybody that we were doing this new thing. We had started raising money for it, and it all came to an end.
I began to despair, “Lord what are you doing? What are you doing?” And then the Lord brought this to mind. He said, “Whenever the Lord gives you a No, it’s always because he’s got a better Yes. Trust me.” And sure enough, 18 months later, we bought a seven-story former hospital that the public schools had put 44 million dollars into to convert into a K-8 school for 600 students. They used it for 15 years and then they sold it to us. One of our donors stepped up and bought this building for Hope. We literally turned the key and walked into a completely ready school all prepared for us. We said, “When God told Joshua that He was going to drive out the nations and give him cities he didn’t build and vineyards he didn’t plant” (see Joshua 24:13), we always add, “And school buildings you didn’t renovate!”
Over and over and over my problem is that I haven’t dreamed big enough. God is always doing something bigger.
But at the same time, I want to encourage you to start small. Dream big, but start small. Don’t despise the days of small things. One of the temptations when you hear about a maturely developed school that’s 17 years in development, you think, “I could never do that!” Or “That seems way too big!” Don’t compare yourselves with mature schools. It would be like a five year old despairing that he wasn’t as strong as a twenty-five year old, or that he wasn’t as fast. A five year old isn’t supposed to be that strong or that fast!
So there’s a day of small things. One of the ways we think about what we’re doing is that we are growing “oaks of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:3). When you’ve got kindergarten, first grade and second grade, all you have are little saplings. You are a long way from having oaks of righteousness. But don’t despair because acorns become oaks if you stay with it long enough. Today, we have acorns and oaks – and you will too. Think of a parenting analogy. God doesn’t give brand new young parents sixteen year olds, does He? He gives you little babies, and that’s by design! Sixteen years later, you’ll be prepared and mature, and ready to handle a sixteen year old, and a school of the kind of scale and size that Hope Academy is today. Don’t despise the day of small things, and getting started.
Don’t despise that your school might only be helping a few people. You know the old starfish story – the little boy walking on the beach, taking starfish that have washed up on the beach and throwing them back into the sea. An old man comes along and says “Little boy, stop for a moment, stop what you’re doing! Just look up ahead of you along the beach – there are thousands of starfish here. You’re not going to make a difference!” The little boy stops, he picks up another one and he says, “It will make a difference to this one!”
That is what we need to remember – all these children are God’s children. They all are infinitely valuable. Helping one or two or five or thirty-five is a gloriously meaningful, important, necessary thing. It will have eternal consequences. There might be 42,000 people in my district, and I’m only serving 475 of those students. But I’m serving 475 children whose lives are never going to be the same.
So dream big, start small, and grow slow. Here’s another story.
Before we started Hope Academy, my Board President, Jeff and I were at a retreat on the shores of Lake Huron. We decided to make a fire in the cabin. As the fire was going along, I stood up and went over to it and took three big logs and put them onto the fire. And guess what happened? I smothered it. The fire died out. And we said, “You know what? This is a metaphor for Hope Academy. We are going to take a grow slow approach.”
There have been a couple of times during our experience when we violated our grow slow approach, and each time we did that we almost sunk the school. There was a time when we started our Middle School and another time when we started our High School, where we said, “In order to provide the level of programming that most parents expect from a Middle School or a High School, we really have to have a critical mass of students.”
So we opened the doors and we brought in a large number of Middle School students, and later on High School students, that hadn’t come up through our system. And in both cases it worked out terribly. We almost sunk the school. It was analogous to the way a healthy body, when it gets an infection, can tolerate a small infection. But if you bring in a massive infection – which happened when students brought in their toxic school culture from elsewhere into our school – it almost kills the patient.
The same is true with regards to the fundraising piece of what we are doing. In most schools, new students are additional revenue. In our schools, new students are another bill – another $7,000 bill. You can only grow at the pace that you can raise the money to serve those students. That demands a grow slow type of approach. I know that all of us are impatient people, and want to grow faster. But let me encourage you that we benefited from a grow slow approach.
Let me just leave you with one scripture from the Gospel because I believe that this is a unique moment of time in our history. Early on in Jesus’ ministry He went to Nazareth, and went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. They handed him the book of Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll, and He found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free. And to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
I believe with all my heart that our schools can do this more effectively than almost any other thing I can think of. If I had the choice of bringing this message to an inner city neighborhood by planting a church or starting a school, I think from what I know now, 95 times out of a 100 I would start the school first, and then the church. I don’t think there’s anything with the kind of promise and power to impact an inner city neighborhood with good news for the poor, freedom for the prisoners, sight for the blind, and freedom for the oppressed, than the kind of schools that we’re talking about. And I think for many of us, if we won’t do it, the Lord will move on and find some others who will.
Because he is determined to do it – to use this unique opportunity of the urban education crisis for believers, in the power of the Spirit, to bring real hope and real change. Hope in God changes everything.
So dream big, start small, grow slow.
Russ Gregg (B.A., Global Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison) has served as Head of School since Hope Academy’s founding in 2000. He has been a resident of the Phillips neighborhood since 1994. In 1999, he was an administrator at Calvin Christian School in Edina, and quit his job to help lay the groundwork for a Christian school for his urban neighbors. Russ and his wife Phyllis, who teaches 3rd grade at Hope Academy, live four blocks away from the school. They have three grown children. Russ serves on the Board of Directors of the Society for Classical Learning. Russ Gregg is available to serve as a speaker or panelist.
Repetition is well-established as a component of classical pedagogy. Repetition helps us memorize, helps us remember, helps us perfect and master. I have come to see another virtue in repetition: Repetition is restful. Repetition brings the shoulders down and reduces tension for both the student and the teacher.
We don’t want our kids to grow up and face adversity wondering, Do I have what it takes? We want them to know. We want them to have witnessed so many heroes living with integrity and fighting their weaknesses that they trust in the sureness of doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. We want them to stand up like warriors.
For classical educators striving to “integrate the disciplines,” music provides an invaluable instrument of integration. Music studies harmonize with every core discipline of he curriculum: the music of various periods vocalizes the movements of history, the formal structures of music correspond to the formal structures of poetry, the theory of music applies principles of mathematics, the physics of music makes audible the laws of science.
Christian education demands that we teach students what to love and how to love, for love is simply the greatest kind of knowledge. A classical education aims to train the affections and show a man how to “rightly order his loves” (ordo amoris), though a man cannot order his loves until he knows what they are.
On behalf of the Board, it is my pleasure to announce the hiring of Rylan Auger as our first principal. This position of leadership is foundational for the healthy functioning and flourishing of the school. As such, we would like to share some of the convictions that guided the Board’s decision, and why we consider Rylan to be an excellent fit for this role.
