Hello fellow educators, welcome to podcast number 93. Happy new year. I hope everyone has been enjoying as relaxing a time as I have with my family over the holidays. As I am writing this podcast big wet, lumps of snow are falling here in Kelowna. We are having a sludgy white first week to make up for our bare Christmas. I guess we should really be saying happy new decade. We have just finished the first 10 years of the new millennium. 2010 seems very surreal or perhaps I am just getting older. I grew up reading allot of science fiction and when I think of  2010 it feels like I should be writing from outer space. Although when you think about what has transpired, particularly in the last 16 years with the advent of the internet, cyberspace is just as sci-fi as some interplanetary space station. In fact it makes the future much more accessible than going into outer space ever did. The fact that we are able to communicate, do business with or bring Christian Education to anyone at any place at any time is very sci-fi. This podcast is a good example of how things have changed for all of us. I am now podcasting or broadcasting throughout the world and regularly hear from people from faraway places like New Zealand, Amsterdam, Florida and our own Ft. Nelson. It is an amazing day we are living in and I am still full of wonder about the strange and special way our technologies are changing our lives. Every time I Skype someone using video I remember my favourite childhood cartoon, The Jetsons. The creators of The Jetsons had a vision of the future that wasn't too far out from where we live today with video phones and a robot cleaning staff. Just a minute as I move out of the way of our robot vacuum cleaner. Now, all I am waiting for is my flying car to arrive. I can see some of you rolling your eyes right now saying, 'there goes Greg, talking about technology again.' Don't worry we are going a different direction today, but I do plan to do a series of podcasts on new technological trends in the next few years.

2010 will  prove to be a very important year for us at Heritage Christian Schools. We will have been in the Christian Education for 25 years as we start the 2010-2011 school year. I can't resist taking a bit of a stroll down memory lane.

The last decade was exceptionally momentous to our schools. It has proven to be a time of unprecedented growth for our organization in all areas. As I reminisce I don't want to imply that I don't value the 14 years of education before this decade began. In fact, many of the things that were put in place those years put us in a position to experience such growth in our programs. When we started Heritage we kept some key principles that has helped us stay the course through this decade of growth.

• First, we established Heritage as a Church run school under the leadership of Kelowna Christian Center. When we started in 1986 with 50 students our first motivation was to provide a place for Christian Education that would promote the beliefs, values and experience of our young but thriving Church. In some ways the school helped the Church define itself as a place of discipleship. The school took it's spiritual temperature from the Church. We did have other Christian School options for our kids in Kelowna but we believed, and still do to this day, that the Church needs to have a primary role in the governance, accountability and the definition of how we educate our children.
• Secondly, we tried to be inclusive with who enrolled at Heritage. In keeping with Kelowna Christian Center's interdenominational approach to fellowship with other Evangelical churches Heritage has always enrolled students from other churches and in the last 15 years hired staff from other churches. We have never believed that we have a corner on spirituality, nevertheless we have always been upfront about what type of school we are, our Charismatic and experiential approach towards worship and discipleship. I have almost tried, at times, to warn people about who we are because this approach to Christianity is very much a part of our DNA as a Church run school.
• From the beginning we have valued families and community more than structure. We see our role as supporting families in their role to bring children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We have always seen ourselves as subcontractors to our parents. Valuing their key part in the life of each child. We have also strived for community. Much of the "feeling" of community that everyone seems to experience when they enrol at our campus or even in the online school comes from these deep values that we founded our schools and Church upon.
• Finnally, we are committed to discipleship. I realize that this is a broad term and every Christian tradition seems to define it a bit differently. We see discipleship as the comprehensive process that brings the child and believer into their gifts and calling. It happens before and after conversion, it happens in Church on Sunday and the playground on Monday. It happens in every bit of our experience that takes us closer to our maturity in Christ. Wow, it's a big word, but not too big. It does guide us into what we should and should not be doing. Our school isn't about creating model citizens who will get good jobs. Our school is about creating radical disciples of Christ who will go to the ends of the earth in His name.

When the new Millennium dawned upon us our campus program had enrolled  about 250 students and our preschool had about 60 students. We were solidifying our budgets and our leadership. The school was finally making itself known in our city through our participation in sports and academics. We were beginning to take some steps towards three areas of training for our secondary students in technology, industrial arts and drama. All three of these areas continue to distinguish our campus school as an innovative place to bring our children. By keeping up with our technology programs we had positioned ourselves to look at what distance learning might look like in our new internet world. We had about a  dozen science oriented students who were moving us in this direction. In an effort to help them learn and develop internet technologies we encouraged them to animate and create a web savvy Science site so that students could study online. This site is still up today and can be found at: http://www.heritagechristian.ca/science.  Out of this group of students we hired our first technical staff when we started our online school.

In 2002 our HCS School Committee laid out a five year plan for HCS. That plan included building our new technology wing and increasing our enrolment to 350 students. In the next four years we accomplished these goals. A year ahead of schedule we built this new wing to our campus which includes a wood working shop, an auto shop, a music room, a science lab and some additional classrooms for our secondary. To the students the most significant part of the architecture was a true hallway. On student put is succinctly when she said, "wow a hallway, now we are a real school." Let me also point out that this decade saw us produce some amazing dramatic presentations such as "the Diaries of Anne Frank" and my favourite, "Fiddler on the Roof."

In 2004 we started Heritage Christian Online School with 450 full time students and began a journey of growth that is unprecedented in Christian Schooling. As we begin our sixth year in HCOS we have over 1540 full time students. We have become leaders in Online education for Christian schools in our part of the world. We are learning how to do an excellent job of education and discipleship in the online world at a distance. We are forging new territory in education and doing things in ways that have never been done before. This last decade has opened up the entire Province to the values and principles we started with back in 1986. As we have toured people through our schools I like to convey that our biggest struggle in our campus program has been our buildings. If we could take the walls off this community just imagine what is possible. The online programs have done just that. Heritage is beginning to have an international scope of influence because of our unique gifts.

Both our campus school and online school began to receive special education funding this decade. As a result of this we have been able to build an exceptional program meeting the needs of children and families with extreme difficulties. Since funding came through eight years ago we have ministered to over 35 students at the campus and over 125 kids in our online program. We are now receiving millions of dollars of funding for these students every year for special education.

In 2006 our campus school started the Global Citizenship program which takes an entire Grade 12 class (grade 11 back then) to Mexico for six weeks in one of the most transforming experiences for students in their young lives. The impact of this program can be seen in the increase of international studies of our students, the social consciousness that our kids are graduating with and the increased missions heart and experiences in their lives. Our kids are thinking and acting globally.  In 2006-07 we started BC Online school which allows us to reach out to high school students who are attending other schools. Our first year we offered courses to 250 students at the turn of the decade we have enrolled almost 1900. This has turned our school into a place where many non-Christian kids have come to learn from our Christian teachers and students. We are seeing more and more opportunity to reach into the lives of kids who would not have the opportunity to come to a Christian school.

In 2000 Heritage Christian Schools employed 36 full and part time staff. At the end of the 0'ies we now have well over 250 staff working for our schools. We had just exceeded the 1 million mark in our Income and expenses as a school, this year we will  surpass 10 million in income and expenses.

How's that for a little trek down memory lane? What a decade of growth. When we started this year I spoke to our HCOS staff about misinterpreting sheer growth in numbers as success. I believe this is an important point as we look back. We have to be asking ourselves some key questions right now"

• Are we moving in the direction that God intends for us? Again outward success in numbers is not the real indicator of our success in God's eyes.

• Are we compromising our principles in order to get more students? Too often the need or desire for enrolments can put great pressure on our admin team to meet a quota or a budget.

• Have we become so big that we've lost what has made us special? Does Heritage still value the community more than the structure, are we able to share ourselves instead of sharing a system or a curriculum?

• Does God want us to grow in numbers or perhaps he wants us to get a bit deeper first?
  

These questions sometimes come to haunt me in when I consider the enormous growth we have experienced. Although we must be very careful not to interpret the growth and influence of this last decade as success outside of God's definitions for us, there is another prophetic voice calling us as well. Many of you have heard me talk about the prophetic call to be involved with the discipleship of a million children. Obviously this call is unique to us at Heritage but it is an echo of the Great Commission given by our Lord. "Go out into all the world and make disciples of the nations...." As we leave the first decade of the Millennium behind I want to recommit us to this clarion call. Never before has there been a more open opportunity for us, the church, to reach into the lives of people and children and bring the Gospel. The super-information highway is carrying our passion for raising up young, passionate disciples of Jesus who are educated, articulate, servant minded, world changing, culturally wise and relevant. Just as Paul travelled the super Roman highways in his day we have been given a highway to the world and plan to use it even more in the next decade.

If the Lord wills, the next decade will continue to see our schools growing and prospering. Being at the forefront of Online schooling for K-12 will keep us moving outward in both our online and campus schools. We are beginning to contemplate what blending online and campus education will become and we are perfectly positioned to lead the way for Christian schooling. Online education is the fastest growing genre in K-12 yet it is not the only answer in good Christian Education. We can become one the leaders in developing the online tools for Christian education. I just attend an international conference for online education and was amazed at how far we have come in comparison to other educational jurisdictions around the world.   BC continues to be one of the best places on the planet for both online education and home education. I believe, with God's wisdom we can blend the best of our campus program, our online program and our home school programs and build a model for Christian schools worldwide.

We are launching our International Program this year in Hong Kong, Korea and perhaps China. This program called the International Christian Online School or ICOS for short will begin enrolling its first students this month. We want to use the tools and people that God has given us to connect with students in other cultures. Over the past year we have been developing an online English Second Language program that will begin to open up new regions of the world to our discipleship based Christian education. We hope to eventually bring our Christian online high school programs to these regions as well.

When Jesus spoke to the disciples for the last time after the resurrection he left them with these words, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:8. Kelowna is our Jerusalem, BC is our Judea, Canada is Samaria and well the rest of the world awaits us. I am asking God to help us think in ways that He wants us to think. To cause us to grasp the scope of the commission He has given us and to help us use the gifts He has given us to think, grasp and do what He wants from us.

I have some great interviews coming the next couple of weeks. I will be taking to Joanne Robideau about an interesting book she just read called 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School. I hope to get that interview in with Dr. Mark Beadle. I had some technical problems that prevented that podcast and many others over the next couple of months.

Please email us your comments and thoughts on today’s podcast particularly if you want to reminisce about the last decade or look forward into the next decade. Also, if you would like us to mail you a free copy of my book or send you the download link for the audio version of, Discipling This Generation for a Digital World, simply send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know what type of an educator you are, home schooler, classroom teacher, school administrator, or interested parent. Please let us know how you heard about the podcast and, of course, please include your mailing address. Thank you for listening and thank you for your commitment to discipleship-based Christian education.