Hello fellow educators,

Welcome to our third podcast. I want to thank the many people that have been emailing us and using this broadcast to help their communities in professional development. We sent out a bunch of books last week and we want to continue this special opportunity. I will tell you more how you can get a free copy of my book, “Discipling this Generation for a Digital World” at the end of the podcast.

Last week we contrasted the different goals and mission of “discipleship-based Christian education” from those of public education. Education, like any important long-term endeavor, requires clear direction that comes from well thought out goals. Once we see the end target we are able to then map a path towards that target. Last week we looked at our Provincial government’s target which talks about developing knowledgeable, skillful citizens who value democracy, pluralism and will become prosperous contributors to the economy. Again, I think these are admirable goals for public schools but this is not “discipleship-based Christian education.”

The Apostle Paul presented the ultimate goal and task for all Christian disciplers in Colossians 1:27-28, here is the New Century Version:

“God decided to let his people know this rich and glorious secret which He has for all people. This secret is Christ himself, who is in you. He is our only hope for glory. So we continue to preach Christ to each person, using all wisdom to warn and to teach everyone, in order to bring each one into God's presence as a mature person in Christ.”

This is obviously the goal for every believer in Christ: to grow to full maturity in our faith, our influence, obedience to God’s plan for our lives and our love for him and others. As Christian educators starting with children who are preparing their lives for adulthood we have an incredible opportunity to shape those lives. We can point them toward a path of maturity in Christ without all the baggage and unlearning that takes place in adult converts. Ultimately, I believe that this is the best means for building the kingdom of God in this world. We have a saying in the tour we give of Heritage Christian School, “we want to change the world through one young disciple at a time.”

Christian’s are not the only ones who realize the power of a discipleship in education. Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Communist revolution in 1917 Russia, clearly understood this, he said: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted,” and “Give us a child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”  Twenty years later another dictator was preparing a generation with his worldview of a master race through the Nazi youth movement.  Here is an excerpt from an article about the type of training for the Hitler Youth. “The training of leaders for these various units takes place in special training schools which are almost without exception to be found in beautiful surroundings. Here they go in for sport, receive physical training and theoretical instruction in the theory of life with the team spirit pervading everything.” The Nazis understood that if they were going to build a world based on their “theory of life” they would have to disciple their youth.

Obviously, our Christian faith and worldview has very little in common with these two despots of the last century. Although, like them, we want to change the world and we know that discipling our children is a key to bringing about that change. This is where the comparison ends. We understand that any and all change in the Kingdom of God happens through the love of God and the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through this message of the Gospel is the power to transform the worst of lives. As we live in this world and among those of this world we can bring hope and love, righteousness and peace. Our mandate from Jesus is not to conquer this world through military might but rather to persuade and influence our neighbours through love and the compelling message of the gospel. It is to demonstrate the truth of the Gospel through transformed, Christ centered lives.

The Great Commission mandate of Matthew 28:18-20 to “go into all the world and make disciples of the nations,…” means that we must, to some degree, participate in this world so that we can influence those in it towards the Gospel. The previously mentioned despots so their path to transforming the world through conquest and totalitarian domination. Our path is through love, influence and the power of God through the message of Christ. In order for His love and message to take hold of a culture it must be lived out in a culture. People can only embrace a gospel that they understand and can see the relevance as it applies to their lives. Thus Jesus does not remove us from the world but plants us in every part of society and culture. The Apostle Paul spoke of this in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. I am going to quote the Message translation because it captures the text so well in our language:

“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!”

In order for us to reach those in the various strata of culture we must “enter their world” and “experience things from their point of view.” The call to be a part of the world has its root in our desire to serve the Message or as the New International Version translates verse 23, “I do all this for the sake of the gospel.”  In order to serve the gospel and the people we are called to reach, we must learn to speak their language. We must learn to embrace their culture. We must become one of them.

Note that Paul had very few limits to the cultural persona that he would identify with in order to reach a wide range of people. He was willing to give away his Jewish distinctiveness in order to reach the non-Jewish culture of the Roman Empire. There was one aspect that he was unwilling to compromise. He states his non-negotiable moral position in verse 21, “To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law.” Paul was unwilling to let go of his conscience and commitment to Christ in order to reach a culture. In other words, he would do whatever it took to identify with the people he was trying to disciple except enter into sin. This is the dangerous part of evangelism and discipleship. This is the part where we leave behind the safe moorings of our Christian traditions and etiquette. We must identify so closely with those we are called to reach that when others see us they will think we are one of them. The dangers, of course, are that we might actually lose ourselves in the culture and forget why we are there. On top of this, every missionary with a family recognizes the great risk they expose their children to. Any missions minded parent has had the thought “If I go and identify with this culture how will I keep my children from being affected by those we are trying to reach?” The answer to this question is through discipleship-based Christian education.

We are raising our children to become dual citizens. First we must help them establish their citizenship in the Kingdom of God. I love Philippians 3:20 as it uses this very terminology to describe who we are. Here is the Amplified Bible: “But we are citizens of the state (commonwealth, homeland) which is in heaven, and from it also we earnestly and patiently await [the coming of] the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah) [as] Savior,…” We have become citizens of the Kingdom of God because something very real has taken place on the inside of everyone us that has embraced Christ as their Lord. 2 Corinthians 5:17 calls us a new creation or as some translations put it, we are new race of people who are in Christ. As we help our children embrace the Lordship of Christ they too become part of this new humanity. This is not just theoretical; this is something that happens to every person that embraces the gospel and the Lordship of Christ. Their spirit, on the inside, is transformed. We literally become the sons and daughters of God. In John 3:1-8 Jesus called this being born again. So we are not just immigrants; we are the natural citizens of heaven. It is our race, it is where we are from.

As Christian educators we must develop a keen sense of this citizenship in our children. Our children need to know who they really are in Christ as citizens of heaven first and then citizens of countries they live in. Their allegiance must be first and foremost to the Kingdom of God. We often sing and say in our Churches that Jesus is Lord of all. This means that His Lordship comes before any patriotic allegiance we may have to our natural countries. In our hearts we are not Canadian or American. We are Christians who give their complete and total allegiance to the Kingdom of God as it is administrated under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. If the countries we live in will allow us to be dual citizens then we will gladly accept their inclusion. Let’s not forget that this privilege to be joint citizens was won with the blood of the martyrs. Their willingness to hold to their true citizenship at the peril of their own lives so influenced the cultures they lived in that many followed them into the Kingdom of God. And in the case of western culture our ancestors ultimately chose Christianity as it’s predominate religion and worldview. Today in a postmodern, perhaps even a post-western culture, we find ourselves again having to prepare our children for a world that doesn’t tolerate our Christian citizenship in the way that it did for us when we were growing up.

Herein lies the biggest challenge of Christian education. We have to create an understanding and allegiance in our children for their heavenly citizenship while we also prepare them for participation in their earthly citizenship. Add to this that we want our children to become skilful in their trades or vocation beyond school so that they will be able to fulfill their calling in this world.

I have had the opportunity to be in a good deal of training for Christian educators over the years. For the last decade, the predominate message has been to ensure that we bring Biblical and Christian worldview into every subject we teach. This has been a very important emphasis for Christian schools as we have often followed the government’s approach towards curriculum. We want our kids to view their world through the perspective of the Bible and the Christian faith. This is an instructional mandate but not necessarily a transformational mandate. Let me go back to our previous example of the Hitler Youth movement. The Nazis purpose in creating schools and places of training for their young leaders was not just so that they viewed the world the way Hitler did. It was to develop the next generation of leaders to carry on the Nazi way of life and fully transform their culture. Every aspect of the program was to create an allegiance and transforming devotion to this view of life. We cannot just teach our kids the Biblical perspective without creating in them a devotion to the author of that perspective. I am very excited about the trend in Christian education to teach everything from a Biblical perspective and am a proponent of how to do this. I recommend you read my paper posted on this site entitled, “All Truth is God’s Truth.” But we must go deeper into the very purpose of what we are trying to do.

We are raising citizens of an invisible Kingdom from a place called Heaven. We must instil a devotion to that Kingdom and it’s King in the midst of a world that is vying for their attention and allegiance every minute of the day. We must teach our young disciples how to participate in a loving way among the culture and country we find ourselves in. All time, keeping in perspective, the devotion we must first give to the Lord before any other form of patriotism or flag waving in our perspective countries. We have to help our children become relevant communicators and participants in these cultures so that they can love and serve these cultures with Gospel of our King. And we have to help them to take care of their future lives and families with the vocations that God has called them too.

If we are to do this we must break free from the predominate ideals of public education. We must become deliberate in our purpose and goals as Christian educators. We have to work hard to extricate our own perspectives from traditional, secular ways of thinking and we must personally become extremely devoted to this cause of discipleship. This transforming vision must shape every aspect of how we raise and education our children. If we can do this, then we will change the world one young disciple at a time.

At the beginning of the podcast I mentioned a special opportunity. We would like to find out who is listening into our podcast. If you will send us an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and answer the following questions we will send you a copy of my book “Discipling this Generation for a Digital World” free of charge. Here is what we would like to know from you. What type of educator are you; School Principal, Math teacher, Home School parent, etc.?  How did you find out about our podcast? And, of course include your mailing address.

Thank you for joining this dialog and I hope it has inspired you to become even more devoted to “discipleship-based Christian education.”