Hello fellow educators.

Welcome to podcast #6. I want to thank you for listening and passing on the word about our messages to your friends and fellow educators. We have sent out quite a number of free books and will continue to offer this to anyone who will email us in response to our messages. I will have the details of how to obtain your free copy of Discipling the Generation for a Digital World at the end of the podcast.

In these first podcasts we have been laying the foundations for an understanding of discipleship-based Christian education. Up until now I have been defining what we mean by the combined concepts of discipleship and education. Over the next podcasts I want to go deeper into the idea we introduced in our 2^nd podcast where we introduced the idea of setting specific goals and outcomes for our tasks in education. In this message we spoke about the distinct difference in goals and the final picture of what a student would look like at the end of their twelve to thirteen years within both systems. It is often quite a revelation when people realize that we are not trying to emulate the goals of public education.

About five years ago I saw the need in our campus program at Heritage Christian School (we hadn’t even yet started the Online School) to clarify and articulate a set of Student Learning Outcomes. We had a mission statement and some statements of purpose but it seemed difficult to translate into the everyday activity of the school. I would ask our staff what is our school’s final outcomes for our students and I would receive all kinds of answers, most of which were good answers, but nothing that seemed to bring a sense of unity of purpose.

I have come to believe in the power of establishing clear and distinct goals and writing them down. Keeping them constantly in front of everything you do. We need to do this for everything that is important to us. People have said to me, “I can see how goals and vision are important to you, you’re a visionary and a manager responsible for a lot of people, I’m not one of those time management types.” Honestly, neither am I. I hate the tyranny of day-timers and deadlines, but I hate my propensity towards laziness even more. I have had the nightmarish dream of walking up to my precious Lord and Saviour one day empty handed or worse, with handfuls of wood, hay and stubble. I have this aching desire in my heart to ensure that my life means something to the Kingdom of God and that I have done everything possible to give Him as much as I can at the end.

Habakkuk 2 (New American Standard)   

 1I will stand on my guard post
         And station myself on the rampart;
         And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me,
         And how I may reply when I am reproved.
    2Then the LORD answered me and said,
         "Record the vision
         And inscribe it on tablets,
         That the one who reads it may run.
    3"For the vision is yet for the appointed time;
         It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail
         Though it tarries, wait for it;
         For it will certainly come, it will not delay.

The context of this passage is a prophetic vision that God was instructing the prophet to write down. Someone might reply, “I am not a prophet God has not spoken to me. I don’t want to write down arbitrary goals.” And I would challenge that thinking. You are a prophet at least in the sense that you have other lives who look to you for guidance, instruction and inspiration. Whether you are a home school family, a classroom teacher or a Superintendent responsible for the education of thousands of children you have to reach into the presence of God and gain His vision of where he wants you to go. And to get there will require that you write it down and set measurable goals.

I am not suggesting that you somehow envision goals that are beyond your calling or your ability to achieve. I love the statement in Romans 12:3 where we are told “that God has given to every man a measure of faith.” The original word for measure is pronounced “metron” and means “the proportion or limits that can be measured off.” God has gifted you to accomplish certain things with your faith and He has placed within that faith the limits of what you can see and can’t see, of what you can do and not do with your faith. Establishing vision and setting goals is all about what you can reasonably see with the measure of your faith.

What do you see for your children. What do you want students to know and experience while they are on this journey of discipleship in your classroom or your school or through your home educational program? What will be measurably different about your students after you have passed them on to the next class, school or the rest of their lives? If you are committed to more than getting them through the text book or the subject matter, if you are truly committed to discipleship in the lives of your children then this will require a prophetic experience on your part. This will mean that you must press into the Holy Spirit and gain faith and insight into where you are to go.

I have seen this work in my own family. Years ago my wife and I began teaching a course entitled “The Functional Family in a Dysfunctional World.” As we were developing the course it became apparent to us that we had not adequately established our own family values, goals and commitment. So, after a bit of research and prayer we set out together to put to paper exactly what these were. It was not the easiest process and we had to look beyond some of our inconsistencies as parents and shape what we felt would be the ideal values, visions and goals for our family. We included aspects about our marriage but mostly we created this document as a guiding light for our family. Now that we are about to see our youngest graduate high school, I can attest, without reservation, that every single one of the values and goals has been accomplished in the lives of our children. If you were to visit our home today this document, The Bitgood Family Values, Goals and Commitment, is the first thing you will see on our wall. It is a prophetic vision written years ago that has come to pass. It continues to remind my wife, my four kids, our home-stays, every visitor and especially myself of what it means to live and grow up in this family. You can see a copy of this document on the website: thechristianedcuator.org.

What is the first steps to developing a vision for your family, students schools? Let me suggest that you begin to pray very specifically for the unique revelation that you will need to see God’s design in your discipleship. I know this sound a bit trite, “just pray,” but I am not suggesting that you “just pray” and I would suggest to you that Bible teaches us exactly how to pray for this “prophetic, faith filled vision.”

There are three specific prayers that the Apostle Paul prayed for the churches which he was responsible for leading them through to Christian discipleship. These are some of the most relevant and powerful prayers you could ever pray for your children. In my good friend, Wesley Campbell’s book, Praying the Bible, the Book of Prayers he documents 88 prayers in the Bible. He opens the section on the Apostolic Prayers with this commentary:

“Have you ever listened to a father earnestly pray for his child? In the apostolic prayers, you find the apostles, the early fathers of the Church, praying for their spiritual children. Most of the apostolic prayers in the Bible were written by the apostle Paul. And Paul was, as he put it a father: ‘Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel’ (I Cor. 4:15) Therefore, in these prayers you hear a father praying, which is a different form of prayer than is found anywhere else in the Bible.”

I have made these prayers a part of every part of my devotional life and conversation with God. I find myself unconsciously praying these prayers. I pray them constantly for our leadership team at our schools, for each and every teacher, for each and every parent and most of all for each and every child in our schools. I have received direction and vision while praying, I have had prophetic understanding come to me while reciting these prayers. I have received God’s compassion in the midst of these prayers. I recommend them to everyone, I recommend them to you especially if you are seeking to build God’s vision and goals for your life and the lives of your students.

Let me start by praying with you and for you on this podcast. I don’t know everyone who is listing but God does. I do know that my staff and many of our families are listening. I think it is important that you know how I pray for you. Here is Ephesians 1:17-20:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you (to every one of our admin team in our schools, to every parent and teacher, to everyone in our support staff and Lord especially to every child in our schools, and for myself) a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.

I pray that the eyes of your (our) heart may be enlightened, so that you (we) will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might

which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,

Notice that he is not just praying for wisdom and knowledge he is praying for a spirit of wisdom and knowledge to fill their lives. Notice that the three specific areas of revelation he wants us to see is our calling, who we are and how we can accomplish this. I would suggest to you that wrapped up in these three insights is everything we are trying to accomplish in the lives of our students.

Here is the second prayer, Colossian 1:9-12

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you (every one of our admin team in our schools, for every parent and teacher, for everyone in our support staff and Lord especially for every child in our schools, and for myself) and to ask that you (we) may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,

so that you (we) will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;

strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously

giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.

While praying this prayer as a young man seeking a specific direction God completely pointed me somewhere else. When I graduated from Bible school I had a heart for Barbados. My newly married wife and I began to spend an evening a week praying about where God wanted us to go. I was really praying about how to get to Barbados. After weeks of this I began to recite the Colossians prayer. The entire evening I couldn’t get this idea out of my head with the words, I want you to go to Las Vegas and help David and Vicki. David was one of our Bible teachers in school and had asked me if I wanted to help him plant a church. We would do all of the children’s and youth ministry. I had prayed months before and was convinced that this could not be God’s will because of my heart for Barbados. After spending an hour or so praying and unable to get this image and words out of my head, “I want you to go to Las Vegas and help David and Vicki,” I resolved myself to think about it and would hope for more success in hearing God next week. After our time of prayer I asked Christine how she thought it went and she was a bit indifferent about the evening. When I pressed her for an answer she, embarrassingly admitted that all she could think and pray for was asking God to help David and Vicki in Las Vegas. Immediately I realized that God had answered our Colossians 1 prayers. We moved to Las Vegas and helped David and Vicki for the next two and half years. By the way one of my best friends ended up in Barbados and had a dynamic affect in evangelism and discipleship on that congested island.

This prayer will establish you and those you pray for in the will of God with the knowledge and wisdom you will need to walk in his will. It will bring you a significant heavenly understanding of the vision and goals you need to set for those in your “measure of faith.”

The last prayer I want to share with you today is in Philippians 1:9-11:

And this I pray, that your (every one of our admin team in our schools, for every parent and teacher, for everyone in our support staff and Lord especially for every child in our schools, and for myself) love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,

so that you (we) may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;

having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

I love this prayer because it takes is into the future. I want everyone of our community to be blameless until the day of Christ’s return. It also connects the idea of love to spiritual knowledge and discernment. Love is not just an emotion it is something that connects us to making good decisions, approving the right things and committing our lives to excellence.

Next week will dive into the specific goals and vision of what we want to build into the lives of our students as we go through the HCS Student Learning Outcomes.