The School of Life

The School of Life offers an education model that is easily replicable in any church, large or small, wherever there are families seeking safe, quality education options for their children.

This School of Life model offers high academic excellence across all disciplines, paired with a deeply Biblical Worldview. It provides freedom & flexibility for families in the education of children in a way that aligns with the mission & function of the local church: Discipling the next generation of apprentices of Jesus and equipping them to engage a highly complex, secular cultural moment.

Given the statistics & data about the youth in the west abandoning their faith in droves, as parents and as church leaders, we have to do something different when it comes to the total education of the children in our care or else we cannot expect a different result.

Something is not working and we would theorize that is, in part, due to the sheer number of hours in a week that children’s hearts & minds are being formed by worldviews at public schools which have a veneer of neutrality, but which are deeply contrary to Scripture. To paraphrase Voddie Baucham, if we send our kids to be educated by Caesar, we have no right to be surprised if they act like Romans.

The now antiquated assumption that kids who are raised in a Christian home will inevitably be light to a dark place (such as in public schools), has been upended with now longstanding data to demonstrate that it is in fact the opposite - that our host-culture is far more powerful than imagined in the formation of their beliefs than the church or the home has been able to in recent years. That is clearly not for lack of effort but simply a result of the sheer number of hours in a week spent outside of the home where their inputs are not aligning or even supporting what children learn at home or on a Sunday morning.

If that, now what?

From our experience, many families would rather opt for private Christian schooling but simply can’t afford it, especially families with more than one child. Accessibility is the issue.

The School of Life specifically wants to respond to that holy discontent that parents are feeling with the state of public education, out of protection of their children at their most formative ages. We are asking The Church at large to consider two significant but doable changes:

THE ASK

1) Would you consider opening up your church spaces (classrooms, gyms, meetings rooms, etc.) during the weekdays for a private, Christian hybrid school to operate out of?

We can’t help but notice that there are classrooms sitting empty each week, and there are gymnasiums and parking lots empty all week long until Sunday morning that could be filled with children who come to view their church as a “School of Life,” where their whole person is educated and it is their refuge and sanctuary, on Sundays and Monday - Friday.

The church may get a bit messy. There will likely be wear & tear. There will be transitions to be worked through and perhaps meetings will have to take place in a different room at a different time — but there will also be smiles and laughter and innocence protected, and the name of Jesus spoken without shame in the hallways and within the classrooms. Parents and teachers will have the freedom and the environment needed to teach on the most critical ideologies of our day from a distinctly biblical worldview.

Has there even been a more important moment to reimagine the stewardship of the church building itself to include a safe-haven for families in the education of their children.

As Proverbs 14:4 states, “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but much revenue (because of good crops) comes by the strength of the ox.” Let us not miss the strength or the harvest that could be the result of this exchange.

2) The second ask is equally as uncomfortable but is as much a stewardship-defining question as the first:

Would your church consider adding a line item to the “Missions,” budget allocation each month to include giving specifically to a local christian private school of your choice? This could be structured as a scholarship for a particular student(s) or allocated with the specific request that it benefit the families who require assistance in order to send their children.

In the instance of The School Life, we have created a scholarship-specific fund that churches could donate to directly to accomplish this precise thing:

To consider the education and discipleship of children as an increasingly necessary “mission,” in our own back yards. Churches send millions of dollars abroad each year and that is clearly a beautiful and necessary extension of the hands & feet of Jesus. Yet funds are needed here for this specific purpose as well that, as a general rule, the church does not support missionally.

We’d like to suggest that given what we know now, with the recent statistics & data, that churches are uniquely positioned to specifically financially support christian education as a matter of priority of stewardship.

Imagine for a moment the scenario where churches stand in the gap in a new & different way by appropriating funds to strategically support christian schools, as a parallel economy to that of the State when it comes to education funds. The choke hold is that the state holds the purse and therefore it gets to make all the decisions, despite what parents want.

We firmly believe in creating and supporting legislation and ballot measures to make important and necessary changes in our state when it comes to education and yet, we have what we have until then. What we have are destructive ideas coming from the state down, which play to disordered loves, which are normalized in a secular society. It is a recipe for continued spiritual decline unless the church responds differently.

Jesus will always be the answer - He will always be our strength and our salvation. We simultaneously believe that the church is equipped and called to do things differently than the world and to engage the battlefront for hearts & minds, however it presents itself. “The danger is that if Christians do not consciously develop a biblical approach to a subject, then we will unconsciously absorb some other philosophical approach.” — Nancy Pearcey

How Does This Work
By utilizing the talents & the services of people and organizations who are already specialized and doing beautiful work in these areas, The School of Life has simply pulled together some of the best materials and platforms out there in order to create a total package, hybrid education model that is specifically designed to equip the next generation of Christ followers to thrive as exiles in our postmodern, secular cultural moment.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. We have all the tools available to do this well, and for less expense than many others schools for a variety of reasons.

Organizations such as Foundation Worldview which has one of the top online curriculum for apologetics & worldview training (K-12th). Streaming this training online but doing so in a classroom setting amongst peers removes the need to hire out a spectrum of teachers. In the same way, John Adams Academy’s American Classical Leadership Education(R) online campus gives students anywhere in the country access to top-tier academic excellence in the core classes of Math, Language Arts & Science with high emphasis on servant leadership, public & private virtue, self-governance, and personal responsibility.

These are just a few examples of how, if there is a suitable in-person learning environment for children such as at a local church, classes can be taught online with parent-mentorship available in the classroom itself. This is a hybrid, co-op model (MicroSchool) that removes significant cost while placing appropriate responsibility on parent investment.

With fresh perspective and with a little creativity and willingness, this model has unlimited potential to reform the educational landscape of our country. The Church will always have its hands full of issues to address and work to be done - that is the forever-hustle of a body of people who take Jesus’s life & teaching seriously. Yet we are faced with a unique moment in America’s history and much is at stake.

To end, consider alongside of us what author Eric Metaxes said in his latest book, Letter to the American Church:

“Regan knew that the Soviet union presented itself – as all bullies and monsters and devils do – as something more powerful than it was. He knew that what its leaders desperately feared was that someone like himself would call their bluff. And he knew that most of the people around him had been perfectly content not to call that bluff, but to be bluffed. He – along with Margaret Thatcher in England and Pope John Paul II – knew that if they three fought hard and pushed with everything they had, they could forever vanquish the evil empire that was the Soviet union. And now we know that they did just that.

But before it happened, they were denounced as unrealistic and as anti-communist "extremists." Nearly everyone but the three of them behaved as though the Soviet union really were like an unpenetrable and permanent wall that must be accepted and never be touched. But these three had the idea that it was a false wall. And that if they all with a concerted effort gave it a good shove, it would reveal itself to be a sham – a week and tottering façade whose main posts were rotten. It would go down. Which was why those in power in the Soviet union – who really knew it to be weak and on the brink of collapse – had to do everything they could to pretend it was immovable and permanent. But those with eyes to see knew this was a lie and knew that they must do what all the worldly wisdom said never to do. By the grace of God, they did it. And the wall came a–tumbling down.

So the question comes to us. Will we all together now push that false barrier that stands so tall and so long that we cannot see over it and cannot see the end of it? Will we trust God who tells us that victory will be given into our hands and that we must fight with all we have? Or will we, like the 12,000 pastors in Germany, hang back and see which way the wind is blowing, and in our in action guarantee that evil prevails? Will we let the 3000 do all the work, watch them fail, and rejoice that we weren't foolish enough to join them in their foolhardy crusade?

God is clearly calling us not to do that, not to repeat the unspeakably grievous errors of the Christians of that time. But he cannot and will not force us to do what is right. He only warns us and gives us the chilling example of what happened the last time, and through Bonhoeffer and others exhorts us to do what is right. Will we? Will you?

What part of the tottering wall has God called you to push?… He is waiting for you to show him that you know that whatever you have is His gift to you, and that you can trust him with it. As we have said, to do what God asks always takes a certain amount of wildness. We remember that God is good, but his goodness is not safe and it is not tame. God is not the religious god of the Pharisees. He does not call us to be tame or safe or religious.

It's safer to bury the Talent, but God condemns us when we behave in that way. It's safer to hang back and see which way the wind blows – but God condemns us for hanging back when He has called us to the battle… when we follow him in this way, we are certain to be misunderstood by those who claim to their safe pieties and "worldly wisdom."

When they see the kind of behavior that Jesus exhibited – and that David and Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce and Regan and so many others have exhibited – they will clutch their pearls and lift their skirts and express their horror at it. They have always done this. The Pharisees did it when Jesus said most of what he said. The 12,000 pastors did it when Bonhoeffer went out on a limb and following God where no one else was willing to follow. And the establishment has done it in American politics and in American churches, and has blanched when someone shows real leadership and a real willingness to fight against evil. We cannot help but assume they have no idea of what Jesus was saying in the parable of the talents and are convinced that the wisest path really was to bury the talent and simply to keep one's head down and stay out of trouble.

But again, the question comes not to them, but to you. Will you be the leader that God has called you to be in this way? Will you follow him wherever he goes, and be a true disciple by looking to Him alone in what you say and do?

If a holy remnant will do that – and exhort others to join them – we will see such things in heaven and earth as was never dreamt of in your philosophy, Horacio. We will see God's hand move in our time, for his purposes. We will see God’s will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Amen.”

Eric Metaxes, Author of Letter to the American Church