Hello fellow educators welcome to podcast number, wait for it, 100! Wow what a milestone. I am also encouraged that many of those listening our outside of our immediate community at Heritage. Which will be our topic over the next couple weeks, "it takes a village to raise a child." Before we get to that I will be working on a new Intro and Extro with my friend Sheldon the guy with the amazing voice you have just heard. So it will be nice to hear something different than what we have listened to 100 times. I say this for the sake of those faithful listeners, you know who you are.

Last week was another home run if I gage it by the responses I received. Something that I always appreciate. We were talking about the challenges of the academic emphasis verses the spiritual emphasis in our educational goals and focus with five of our online educators. Here is a couple of your emails. John Hengen, Principal of North Cariboo Christian School comments:

"Thanks for sending me the discussion, it had some good thoughts in it.

What I hope to encourage my staff with from it relates to what one of the speakers said regarding an approach one of his principal's had, that being that the curriculum is an excuse to talk about God.

I think Ephesians 5:15-16 speaks well to this discussion: "Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil". Teaching our students a prescribed curriculum gives us the opportunity to do exactly that, to make the most of our time and use every opportunity. Everything in this world can't help but scream out about the existence and the goodness of God, though it is sometimes difficult to see through the stain of sin. All the curriculum we teach our students is an expression of God's goodness, love and faithfulness, thoroughness and diligence, ingenuity and genius. It also highlights the fallen state of man and God's plan to redeem them, the rest is all filler. Even discussing the purposes of doing FSAs with our students has a very important eternal purpose. It's when we don't see the eternal purposes to each and every single thing that we do at school (from leading devotions to helping unplug a toilet) that we miss the mark of what we're doing. We need to be especially diligent to do this because the days truly are very evil. We are not entertaining ourselves with the comfortable jobs, luxurious homes and full bellies that the good education we give our students affords. We are equipping them to not only perserve their hearts and minds in this battle by their knowledge and belief in the Good Teacher but also to point others to the winning side. Again the rest is just filler.

I think it's good that the consensus of the discussion seemed to be transformation through a fuller education about the why of the curriculum rather than transmission of information from the PLOs to the student via the teacher. The secular schools system largely does not address the why, and it's going to be much more costly to them and their students, eternally speaking."

Great comments John. You point out the very premise of academics verses discipleship is flawed. Probably the best way to say it is, we disciple through the academics we have been give to teach.

Here is what one of our parents Jocelyne Neufeld wrote to Mark Daley who participated in our discussion:

 " Way to go Mark!!  Woo hoo!!  Good discussion on academic/discipleship.  I agree wholeheartedly and not just because Shane recently went through the FSA’s (and all that it entailed), but because we are called as Christians to go forth into the world – not to be of it but to sometimes submit ourselves to it’s endeavours to further our faith!!  Only now do I truly understand (FINALLY) what you’ve been encouraging us in these last 4 years! Anyway, thanks again Mark for your support in this thing we call ‘homeschool’!! "

This comment illustrates exactly what I want to talk about over the next couple of podcasts. As you can see there is a dynamic in the relationships we have built as Christians as we do the most important task before us, that is, discipling our children.

In the 1996 Hilary Clinton used the phrase in the title of her book :  " It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us" in which then First Lady Hillary wrote about the expansion of government as a key solution to nurturing our children. I think most of us would disagree with Hillary's answer to our challenges of raising our children. Although I think Hillary's ideas are a bit misplaced and somewhat myopic I do agree with the concept that it takes more than just Mom and Dad to raise our children.

The phrase is attributed to an old African proverb. Its exact origin seems to be lost in time. In 1994 children's author Jane Cowen-Fletcher released the book, "It Takes A Village" in which a young African girl searches for her younger brother, only to find the rest of the village has been watching over him as well.

I recently used this phrase to open our kindergarten readiness event. As we were preparing these young and eager parents for what they should expect as their precious little people enter school I was reminiscent of when Christine and I prepared our children for their first educational experience at Heritage. Twenty years ago we were not as aware of our choices as parents but I was very thankful for our Church's school. Our commitment to disciple our children made the decision so very obvious. We would give our children a Christian education. Today with the advent of Distributed Learning even more choices are available to parents. If you want to continue to keep your children at home but want the support of a teacher and guided curriculum you can easily make the choice to educate at home. Of course home schooling without that oversight is also possible here in British Columbia. What stood out to me as we were meeting with these parents is the support that we have been able to provide for our families. We have created a "village" or a community of support for parents and children. This support has first come from the Church. Our church, Kelowna Christian Center embraced this responsibility in our earliest years. We are still a very young church, even by Canadian standards. Kelowna Christian Center started in 1982 and we are still led by the founding pastor David Kalamen. When KCC started it seemed to reach out well within a broad spectrum of age groups and demographics and to this day continues to be very diverse and representative of our broader Canadian demographic.  Because of this we had many young families who were concerned about their children's education. Out of this concern we started Heritage Christian School and next year we will celebrate our 25th year in education.

I have come to appreciate a threefold support system for a healthy and dynamic experience for our children: the Home, the Church and the School. This is our proverbial village that God has given us. I am in no-way excluding homeschooling to this and I will explain a bit later how I view the need to develop a "school" type community around the home school experience.

It should go without saying that the first and most important part of the community is the home. The mother and father are the first "village" or community experience that children will have. It is mom and dad that will make most of the decisions about where they will live, what type of education the children will receive, who will their child associate with, what kind of attitude they will have towards others and the greater community. Over and over again, decision after decision will set the stage for the child's "way" of development and experience. Of course the scriptures bear this out:

Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it."

We have always held to the idea that a child's parents hold the primary responsibility before God as to how they are raised. Thankfully our culture still agrees with this perspective though it has been and will continue to be challenged. Hillary Clinton's ideas would strengthen the state and thus weaken the parents role and responsibility. This is not to say that the state doesn't have any God-given jurisdiction in our home, they do. But God designed that jurisdiction to hold the parents accountable to do their job in raising their children because if Mom and Dad are not going to discipline Johnny then eventual the state is going to have to do it and disciplining Johnny will cost us all in pain, time, money and resources. The state is there to ensure that our children are not being abused or neglected by their parents and it is a crucial aspect of the broader community. Of course, as in all of history, people have manipulated state power to shift the role of parents as in the case of Communist China and their one child policy. The state often misunderstands the approach of parents as many home schoolers have experienced over the years here and abroad. In places of the world, if parents are doing the minimum, that is feeding their children, keeping them from destructive behaviour and providing some level of education then the state will leave them alone, certainly that's the reality here in Canada. At Heritage we have always defended the notion that parents are the ones who will give an account before our God as to how they raised their children so where the majority of accountability rest so does the responsibility. Martin Luther said it well 500 years ago:

"Most certainly father and mother are apostles, bishops, and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the gospel. In short, there is no greater or nobler authority on earth than that of parents over their children, for this authority is both spiritual and temporal."

The second and very significant part of the Christian village or community we are raising our children in is the church. I am amazed at how lightly many families hold their relationship to their church. Never forget that our attitude towards the church will be transmitted to our children. If we don't maintain a healthy relationship here to God's larger community then our children will adopt any dysfunction that we pass on. The Church's first responsibility is to train our parents how to properly raise our children. If we consult the Pastoral Epistles you will see how the church leadership is called to hold families accountable to their tasks and roles in the family. They must first lead by example and then teach their people how to raise their children in the community of faith. Over the years I have observed many families who have struggled with their relationship with their churches. Sometimes they have had legitimate complaints about how the church was treating them or a particular teaching or practice that has created problems. Sometimes they haven't been able to provide the time and support that the church is calling for. No matter the reason or the cause how the parents handle the situation they will directly affect their children's perspective of the church. I have often thought that when a family leaves a church they parents will be ok, they will make it, but what about their kids. If we hold our relationship to our fellow believers so lightly what is the message we are teaching our children.

Of course, like families, not all churches are alike. I was sharing this message a few months ago and was approached by a woman who I knew and respected but she was somewhat offended with my message of the three fold community. She felt I was too formulaic. She raised her family in church, sent her children to Christian school and only two of her three kids were serving the Lord. As we talked further she shared how two different churches they were a part of failed them and the Christian school was very legalistic and turned her kids off. The point here is just as parents can do a dysfunctional job with their children so churches can be dysfunctional. As we are preparing for our journey in raising our children where we go to church is crucial. Questions we should be asking are: Does our church prioritize the needs of our children? How does the church support the faith of our children? What does our church believe about Christian schooling? This last question often can be very surprising. Many Pastors have not thought through their position on Christian Education or may even be opposed to it for various reasons. Every family will need to determine how to walk through these challenges with their Church. I have always taken the position that it is my job to educate the leadership of my Church as to how we need to think about these crucial points.

Over the years we have heard a consistent comment about Heritage Christian Schools, both in campus and online programs. This comment is made by almost everyone that visits our school or meets our teachers. We here it at every level. Recently our campus school went through its external evaluation and here is the comment that I am speaking about in an official inspection document filed with our government authorities: "The External Evaluation Committee commends Heritage Christian School on the strong, inclusive atmosphere in the school." Every inspector commented on the sense of community and the healthy way in which everyone interacted, including administration, teachers, support staff, parents and especially the children. One particular comment made by Ray Sutton, the head of the Inspection Team, was that the children looked him in the eyes, spoke with respect and yet had a healthy sense of security. This is the kind of environment we need to seek for our children.

This sense of community also permeates our online school. Somehow we have been able to capture the same spirit in the electronic pathways of these programs as you can see in our parent's response to Mark's comments in last week's podcast. This brings up an important point about the home school movement. The frequent, and I must say, annoying criticism of home education is that children won't be properly socialized in a home school setting. This comment is often made by those who know nothing about good home school practices. Now, do some home school programs create an isolated dysfunctional educational and social experience in their children. Of course, but this can be observed in many traditional school contexts. In fact, an unhealthy school community or group of peers can be far more detrimental than those families that overly isolate their children. But a good home school program should never be thought of as isolated. Home educators in our Distributed Learning community have a huge connection to our greater community of teachers, other parents and kids. They participate in our learning camps and our online chapels. Kids connect to with their fellow students in online forums, Elluminate sessions and student get-togethers. Our teachers speak of the incredible connections they feel to our school community, church and fellow educators. Our parents are not alone. Those home school families who are registered are, in almost all cases, are still very connected with their home school associations. They create school community by banding together and sharing the teaching. They use curriculum that has been written by home education specialists. There are legal, social and internet based homeschool associations that give consistent support. So even our home educated families recognize the need of the school community. It is a threefold cord, home, church and school.

Over the next couple of weeks I hope to speak to the different stake holders in our school community to gain each other's perspective of the support and blessings we receive from each other. Hillary was right that it does "take a village to raise a child." What she didn't understand is that the best village for our children is the body of Christ.

Please email us your comments and thoughts on this podcast. 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.