Hello fellow educators welcome to podcast number 154. Well its been a little more than a week since the Vancouver Symposium on Christian Education in the 21^st Century and I am still pondering all the amazing ideas and direction that came from this event. We gathered educators from around the world to network, discuss, interact and dream about Christian Education as it moves towards the future. The goal of these three conferences will be to produce a Christian manifesto guiding our schools towards the year 2025. Even if we don’t reach this goal I believe we have already experienced something very worthwhile. Thanks to the technology team at HCOS this event can now be viewed online. So far the pre-conference meetings are available and in the upcoming week the entire dialogue will be available.

Another way you might want to connect with the event is the Twitter conference that was happening beneath the conference. Throughout the Friday and Saturday we encouraged our participants to “tweet” their thoughts while the lead delegates were speaking and during the dialogue portions of the sessions. Using Twitter allowed for a shared thought process that was immediate and powerful giving people the ability to dialogue on another level. Often the speakers would share an idea that would immediately get quoted on the Twitter feed and it would be reinforced, discussed or redirected all within a minute of the statement. It was a shared collective of thoughts and directions which facilitated more dialogue. Occasionally someone from the twitter feed would bring ideas into the common dialogue that would connect the two conversations. It truly was a 21^st Century form of dialogue that included multitasking and collaborative thinking. I think it illustrated a concept that we will be living with into the future, that is, people will find ways to communicate and connect beyond the convention forums and spaces. It also illustrates a concept that we discussed throughout the Symposium and what I want to talk about in today’s podcast.

We had a group of educators come from Sydney Australia.  If you have been a regular listener to the Christian Educator podcast you would remember Stephen Harris and Steve Collis. This last summer I visited their school for a week and was blown away by their innovative spaces and programs. Stephen Harris has spent the last 10 years traveling the globe searching for educational innovation and unique spaces for schools. This last fall we spoke to Steve Collis a bit about how he uses virtual world technology in his classroom. He shared a concept that utterly redefined the idea of technology for me and, as you know, this is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. In one of our discussions about internet and how people often fear exploring various technologies Steve made this profound statement. I will play this directly from the website where the entire conference is being posted online:

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Later in his presentation he concluded with questions and made some very important observations regarding the reality of these spaces and its implications.

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He points out here that just as spaces in the wild, wild west had issues so do spaces in the wild, wild web. If we don’t get there and walk around these spaces before our children get there then we have no confidence that they will be safe spaces for our kids. The reality is, for most of us, our children will get there much quicker than we will. It is dangerous in these spaces just like many of the spaces in the normal world are dangerous. Of course there are all kinds of space that we should not go into and especially our children should not go there. But that is not to say that there are some very wonderful spaces that we can travel and experience in both worlds. We have to be there with our kids. If we decide to avoid the realms of the internet space then we may find that our children are ill prepared for the world they will be required to work, relate and participate in. And, if we don’t participate then we can’t engage the world in a way that will open the Gospel and bring the love of God to those around us. Paul clearly stated this as his motivation for entering into the community and dialogue with the world around himself. Eugene Petersen captured this well in his translation of I Corinthians 9:19-23 in the Message version:

“Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn't just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”

So we need to enter there space and live among them without partaking in their way of life. Like Paul, we must enter their spaces and experience things from their point of view. Thus the internet space or as it used to be called Cyberspace is an important place to meet, to relate, to connect and to network with people and ultimately it can be a place where we can enter into relationships around the Gospel and Discipleship.

This is exactly what we have done at Heritage. We have built a massive space to educate and disciple. I believe we have done an amazing job in our campus school. By the way I think this is a far superior name for our physical schools than “brick and mortar schools” as they are often referred to. Another term that is being used by some of our public school partners is “neighbourhood schools” in an attempt to give a more dignified idea to the traditional school in buildings. We have opted for “campus school” because it implies a dignified place or space for education. Though the “neighbourhood” concept is an good metaphor for school it doesn’t solve the idea that the neighbourhood, a place where people live and relate, transcends physical space. In fact is can be something in Cyberspace. In fact Jesus spoke to this idea in the story of the good Samaritan. He started the story off with the question, “who is my neighbour?” Who is the one that truly loves and who is the one that is loved. The answer was quite a surprise to the religious folks that were hanging out with him at the time. This is a great 21^st Century question, Who is your neighbour? Perhaps your neighbour is the person you friended you on Facebook. In fact I know more about those people than the people who live next door to me. Technology has a dramatic effect upon the neighbourhood. Think about this with me. Aren’t your neighbours really the people that you work with and socialize with. In our five years living where I now live I have only been to one social gather on my street and it was the type of gathering that I was somewhat uncomfortable at. I know some of my neighbours, barely. Now maybe us Bitgoods aren’t that neighbourly after all, or perhaps our neighbour has shifted. The technology of the automobile and the telephone have altered our communities in very significant ways. Technology enlarges and changes our spaces. It enables us to extend ourselves in ways we were never able to in the past. This last year I have flew more than 85,000 air miles on Air Canada alone. This is more than three times around the globe all because of the very recent technologies of the airplane. We are now working places we never imagined and would only have read about in the past. Now back to where I started with all this, some of you thought I forgot, Heritage Christian Schools has become the largest Christian School in Canada by extending ourselves into the spaces of the internet. If you come visit us in Kelowna you will see very humble, albeit adequate buildings for our campus school. Seven years ago we sat around the table and dreamed of what it would be like to take the walls off this community and allow the beliefs, passions and love that flows in the campus community to others. But our humble buildings were a limiting space. By using the internet we have expanded and reached literally 10 times the students. Now we are talking about going well beyond the borders of our own country. We have done this by building spaces in the internet to meet and teach.  Consider that you are listening to this podcast which resides on the space we call Itunes or TheChristianEducator.org. I always get a kick out of my dear friends and colleagues Gord and Joanne Robideau. They always listen to this podcast on Thursday morning before they get out of bed. So technology has extended me into their bedroom, well only sort of.

I want to finish today with the audio from a video I used in my presentation at the Symposium. It is called “Learning to Change-Changing to Learn.” It all statements and quotes made by leading public educators around the world. There is a specific statement made by Stephen Heppell, a leader in the UK who takes about the spaces we are in.

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Obliviously there are some very radical views but, these are held by some very influential leaders in education today. Can you see if we switch the word technology for spaces of education we are can find new solutions to some of our problems in education. Heppell closes the compilation with the dramatic and provocative statement, “It is very exciting time for learning, it is the death of education but it is the dawn of learning.” But I thought his ideas about the new space is very relavant and meaningful to our discussion today: “Children are living in a nearly now, …. It is a space that is not quite synchronous…. it is a great world for learning.” I love these thoughts. This is the space where we live and do most of our schooling now-a-days, in the “nearly now.”

Please send me your comments to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . I live for every response in the nearly now. Thank you for your continued commitment to Discipleship Based Christian Education.