Hello fellow educators welcome to podcast number  102. First off, thanks to my friend Sheldon Roberts for the new intro and extro for the podcast. Sheldon is a professional voice imager and does commercials, radio, etc. You can find out more about him at www.sheldonroberts.com. Most importantly Sheldon is passionate Christian and a part of our Church community.   We have begun a serious of podcasts entitled, "It takes a village to raise a child," after the African proverb made famous by former first lady, now US Senator, Hilary Clinton. Obviously I don't agree with Senator Clinton's perspective of what the village is, I do agree with the sentiment that, to raise our children in a safe and appropriate fashion we need more than just our own influence as parents in their lives. Before we get into this more in today's podcast I want to share some of the comments from last week. We took the time to speak with four of our Online School educators about their experience with the 2010 Vancouver Olympic experience. It did dove tail quite nicely with this series as they shared about their amazing experiences within the context of the Vancouver and Canadian community experience. We also talked about the potential of being drawn into the experience so far that we could lose our Christian perspective.   We had a number of very good comments and I want to share a few with you:

This is from Duane, a father of one of our Online School students:

"I just listened to your podcast and appreciated your thoughts about the need to think about the Olympic experience with objectivity and caution.  I still remember watching the closing ceremonies of the summer Olympics when they were held in the U.S. a few years back.  The song they were playing was John Lennon's Imagine.  " Imagine there's no heaven.  It's easy if you try. No hell below us. Above us only sky Imagine all the people. Living for today... Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too, Imagine all the people, Living life in peace... " This song expresses a longing for community without God.  People were singing and were raising their hands like it was a Pentecostal worship service.  They were all enjoying community in a warm and fuzzy way, all the while singing there is "no heaven" (no God).  It makes me think of Psalm 2:2  "The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed One."  It seems the world is prepared to gather together in community to celebrate the glories of men but for the most part God is not welcome.  Community is good, but if it's divorced from God, ultimately it has no eternal value and will bear no lasting fruit.  I guess the same could be said for education.  Which would lead me to say thank you to you and your school for providing an alternative to the public school system.  Christian education will bear lasting fruit."

Thank you so much for your insightful wisdom and we take you admonition very seriously. Here is Sarah Bennett's comments. Most of you know Sarah as regular contributor to the podcast. She is our school's Home Education Consultant and a great freind:

"I really enjoyed the podcast this week.  I was down in Vancouver for a week of the Olympics (without my kids!).  David and I saw a few events and attended the closing ceremonies.  I had a lot of time to just walk around downtown.

One thing that continued to nag at me during the week and was incredibly apparent while we were at the women’s gold hockey game, was that I had rarely seen people this passionate about something that mattered and I had never seen such a large group of people passionate about something that mattered.  Sure, the hockey game was fun and I know those girls trained hard for it, but I was still disconcerted by the level of passion it evoked.  It was like being at the most charismatic church ever, except the worship was for hockey instead of God.

Then I started wondering why we don’t see this level of passion, excitement, commitment and attention in areas that really matter.  In people’s walk with God.  In the education of their children.  We get glimpses, and I know people who actually are very passionate in those areas, but not en masse.  Could you imagine a world where the children of God rose up the way Canadians did during the Olympics?  Where all parents were willing to do whatever it took to ensure their children were educated from a Christian perspective?  Where strangers would enthusiastically talk about their walk with God?

The closing ceremonies were a ton of fun and a great show, but the speeches also got me thinking.  I don’t think that sport is the answer to world peace – I think God is.  We can have all the sport in the world, ensure that every child has the “right to play” and gather together every four years for the Olympics, but if we’re missing God then we’re missing the point.  Sports won’t fix our world and it seemed as though that was the message being sent."

Thank you Sarah we seem to always benefit from your wisdom and insight.

As we continue to take the proverbial walk around the proverb, "it takes a village to raise a child." Let me remind you that we talked about this in podcast number 100. We define the village for our children to be a threefold strand or perhaps a more accurate metaphor might be a three legged stool. Weaken any three of these strands or any three of these legs and you will weaken the foundation under our child's discipleship and journey towards adulthood. These legs are, of course, the home, the church and the school. There are many different permutations of how this might be put together. For the home schooled student, our families need the outside help of curriculum, cultural context, home school groups and associations. For the Campus Christian Schooled student they still need the influence, direction, accountability and discipleship that only a good relationship within a local church can provide. I would also suggest that the combination of the Church run school, like Heritage, provides the most succinct spiritual and academic program that a student can receive. If home, church and school are all in a very strong degree of unity in how the child is to see her world then she will have the best vantage point to grow into her destiny.

I have been  chatting with various folks in our community and want to share some of these conversations. They are a bit interview-ish, I apologize for this but it is hard to sound natural with an iPhone in your face. The first is a conversation I had with Marissa Stace. She is a wonderful young woman who graduated with us in 2009. Marissa went on from just homeschooling with mom to enrolling with Heritage Christian Online School in grade 10. She is now attending our Bible School this year and doing very well. She is also the daughter of Charlotte Stace who has been teaching with us since the Online School started.

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Marissa is a good example of how the combination of a good home education can be greatly enhanced within a community like ours.

Let me share one other conversation with you on the podcast. It is coming from a completely different part of the community but I think you will hear some of the similar needs and values being expressed in this interview. I chatted with Rene Maxwell who is one of our Secondary teachers at our campus school. Rene has been with us for more than four years now and is an important part of the Campus school. I love that she is very deliberate in her passion to make community happen in our school. You can tell, I sort of caught her off guard:

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There is something special at Heritage. It doesn't matter if you are in our campus school, our online school, a student, a parent, teacher or principal. God has brought us together for this amazing project and journey we call discipleship-based Christian education.

Next week I hope to have a message from the Senior Pastor of Kelowna Christian Center which is the Church that has founded and gives oversight to Heritage Christian Schools. Pastor David Kalamen delivered this message to our online school leadership team at a retreat back in January. It helped in bringing those who educate around the Province into the vision of our dynamic Church. 

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.