Economic Crisis, Globalization, our Students, and our Mission (Era of U.S. financial dominance at an end: Germany)

In view of the current financial crisis surrounding the U.S. economy, I sent the following email to my staff. I am sharing this with you in the hope that you may find it of some small value to you or your staff.

Barrett Mosbacker

_____________________________

Dear Staff:

As you know, over the last several years I have made a point of emphasizing the new realities of the global economy, its impact on our students, and what this means for our teaching and our academic standards. I would encourage you to take a minute to read the Reuters article at the end of this email, even if economics and finance are not your “thing.”

I am not an economist, so I cannot assess the accuracy of every assertion in this article. What seems clear is the following:

1. The world our students are inheriting is vastly different from the world we have known.

2. As noted in the documentary 2 Million Minutes, the U.S. no longer enjoys the economic monopoly that was ours after WWII.

3. International competition in all sectors of society is increasing rapidly, with the rest of the world catching up and poised to surpass the U.S.

4. All of the above adds up to greater economic uncertainty for our students.

The question is, what does this mean for us and our students? I would suggest the following:

1. We need to remind our students that we are responsible for our decisions, but God is sovereign, so anxiety is not an appropriate response. Prayer, humility, trust, and obedience are the appropriate responses to this or any crisis.

2. We must continue to enhance our ability to give our students a thoughtful, intelligent biblical worldview. Simplistic responses to complex scientific, social, moral, political, and economic issues will not prepare our students to be salt and light in this world. I am reminded of Dr. Machen’s insightful observation:

The missionary movement is the great religious movement of our day. Now it is perfectly true that men must be brought to Christ one by one. There are no laborsaving devices in evangelism. It is all hard work. And yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well prepared to receive the gospel. It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root. Many would have the seminaries combat error by attacking it as it is taught by its popular exponents. Instead of that they confuse their students with a lot of German names unknown outside the walls of the universities. That method of procedure is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas. What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassioned debate. So as Christians we should try to mould the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity …

Furthermore, the field of Christianity is the world. The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the gospel. It must be studied either in order to be demonstrated as false, or else in order to be made useful in advancing the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom must be advanced not merely extensively but also intensively. The Church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man.1

We need to teach our students that violating God’s law leads to both temporal and eternal loss. Although there are many interrelated causes for the current economic turmoil, it seems clear that materialism and greed are major contributing factors. On the subject of materialism, did you realize that one of the major sins of Sodom was materialism and failure to care for the less fortunate? I believe this is a sin on Wall Street and Main Street alike. To whom much is given, much is required.

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it (Ezekiel 16:49–50).

1. Our students need to understand that the opportunities and relative prosperity of their parents may be much harder to realize in their own lives.

2. There will likely be little job security for most.

3. Working hard and learning are not optional. Our students face global competition for university entrance and employment. They must prepare themselves if they are going to care for their families and have resources to share with the less fortunate.

4. We must teach our students to think and how to learn. Although this risks becoming a cliche, our students will have to be lifelong learners.

5. Our teaching must be active and engaging. Students need to master information and skills, but they also must learn how to assess, analyze, synthesize, and present information. They have to be problem solvers, not just good test takers.

6. We will continue to develop our understanding and application of 21st century skills in our classrooms.

Please join me in praying that the Lord will:

• Use current events to spark a reformation in our country.

• Enable us to use current events as an instructional opportunity to develop our students’ sense of justice, charity, and a deeper understanding of economics and other disciplines from a biblical perspective.

• Be particularly merciful to the poor, who suffer disproportionately during economic downturns.

Thank you for your commitment to excellence in Christian education. The Lord is using you to impact many lives!

Barrett Mosbacker

1. Machen, J. G. (1987). Education, Christianity, and the State. The Trinity Foundation, p. 50. ↩︎

Doing A Great Job on the Wrong Things?

May 24, 2008

Guest article by Scott Mayo

Are you stressed? Overworked? Tired? The evidence suggests that our students are. Many American high school students are reportedly overworked and pressured to produce excellent grades, compete in athletics, and participate in clubs. And what is the prize at the end? Getting into a great college.

Getting into America’s best colleges is certainly becoming more competitive. Acceptance rates are remarkably low. I recently learned of a school that received over 35,000 applications, accepted 7,500 students, and intended to welcome only 2,500 freshmen on campus in the fall. This pressure has produced high school environments that are competitive and cutthroat.

Several organizations are concerned about the stress that high school students face. One is housed at Stanford University, called Stressed Out Students, or SOS for short. This organization works with high schools to reduce the amount of stress placed on students.

The Statesville Christian School (SCS) faculty recently read an article by Denise Pope, the founder and director of the SOS program, and analyzed it from a biblical worldview. In particular, we were interested in why so many of our students were seeking admission into a “great” college. In this respect, our students are no different from the average American high school student.

Recently, I was substituting in one of our senior courses and asked eight seniors if they felt stress. For the most part, they answered that they did. I asked them if grades were important, and they suggested that they were. When I asked what good grades would deliver, their answer followed a familiar chain: good grades lead to a good college, which leads to a good job, which leads to money, which leads to happiness and comfort. I finally asked them what their ideal life would look like. They replied that they would have a great family, earn enough money to provide for their needs, and live in a safe neighborhood.

Before you respond too quickly, I would suggest that you examine your own heart. Personally, I must admit that I have had the same thoughts. Yet is this God’s ideal? Does he call us to comfort or to service?

The SCS faculty has been wrestling with our role in cultivating a biblical worldview in our students such that they seek to develop their talents for God’s glory and his service. The SOS program at Stanford seeks to reduce stress by altering schedules, teaching yoga, and reducing homework. These are merely temporary and fleeting attempts to address the humanistic and materialistic foundations that undergird the real issue. As Christians, we understand that reducing stress lies not in techniques but in the One who produces peace.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28 (ESV)

I have challenged the faculty to consider how we can better instill a biblical worldview in our students and how we can create an environment that is developmentally appropriate. The gospel is not congruent with popular culture. At some point we will need to address what a Christian values compared to what the world values. I would contend that the “great” college is not the most prestigious but the one that God has providentially chosen.

I invite parents, students, and faculty to join the discussion. These types of worldview conversations are uncomfortable because they challenge the world within us. I am truly interested in your thoughts.## Doing a Great Job on the Wrong Things?

Guest Article by Scott Mayo

I had the distinct pleasure of reading Dr. Donovan Graham’s Teaching Redemptively: Bringing Grace and Truth Into Your Classroom in manuscript form during my Master’s program at Covenant College. It was subsequently published by Purposeful Design and is now required reading for ACSI teacher certification. By definition, then, it is getting a wide reading in Christian school circles. That being said, I am having a hard time believing there has not been a greater outcry, because I found it to be a very troubling book on several fronts. His central premise is that the Gospel, the central element of the Christian faith, does not permeate our schools in a manner commensurate with our profession of its importance. Sadly, our Christian schools seem to rival their secular counterparts in focusing on the temporal, superficial, and measurable. In fact, because we have great kids and wonderful teachers, we tend to produce even better results, albeit results measured on the same secular yardstick.

What to do, then? I asked Dr. Graham that very question over lunch one day in the cafeteria. His good-natured response was that the working out of his thesis was “our job” as Christian school administrators and teachers. That answer was more profound than I originally understood. The outworking of the Gospel into daily life, including school life, does not lend itself to a recipe-like approach. The seasoning of grace will produce as many flavors as it finds sinful, hurting, difficult situations. Once I began to grasp that I did not have to figure out how to bring grace and truth into every classroom in every school, I was freed to start discerning how to bring the Gospel to bear on our little school with our unique set of dreams and aspirations, hindered and clouded by the site-specific effects of the Fall.

Initial implementation began in the conventional way: we read the book as a faculty and then discussed sections of it throughout the year during in-services. The content of those discussions varied widely, but the structure stayed very consistent. We were always finding ourselves at “Yes, but…” moments. The “yes” was in reference to the claims of the Gospel and the necessity for all our actions to be guided and covered by grace. The “but” was the pragmatic, mundane reason why we could not accommodate the Gospel in a particular school situation. Instead of acting as a conjunction, we had turned the “but” into an eraser, effectively eviscerating our “yes” to the Gospel of any real meaning. It was evident that we had good intentions, a great desire to make positive changes, and a long way to go.

We are now completing our second year of school-wide attempts to move from a place where our students derive their worth from their performance and instead find it in Christ. This has involved changes in content and process. We still teach, test, discipline, perform service projects, and field athletic teams. We are simply striving to have God’s grace make a difference in each of those elements of school life. Those efforts have not always been understood, especially by parents. We have been accused of giving our students a license to sin (behaviorally) and fail (academically). While not claiming to be infallible in our efforts, it is noteworthy that we had never been accused of granting license before. As Paul made clear in Romans 6:1, grace will always be misunderstood by those who measure ultimate worth and merit by performance, especially outwardly visible performance. Interestingly, most of the consternation was not voiced by parents concerning their own students but was centered on how our actions with other students were somehow not “fair” to their children. During those conversations, Christ’s parable of the workers in the vineyard from Matthew 20 always echoed in my mind. It is easy to want grace for ourselves. It is also easy to resent grace when others receive it.

We truly believe that the image of God in our students, coupled with the power of God’s grace, can be used to roll back the effects of the Fall in a way unattainable by behavioristic, manipulative methods, methods that often seem to produce desirable results in the short term. In the face of all the difficulties, we are still convinced of and committed to the ideas set forth in Teaching Redemptively. To continue to make this the reality at our school, several things working together are needed.

First, we must model this as well as teach it. So many times schools try to plant something at the classroom level that is choked out by the overall school atmosphere. For instance, as an administrator it makes no sense for me to expect the faculty to discipline in a relational way while I treat the teachers bureaucratically.

Next, we need to continue to research, instruct, and experiment. While grace-based instruction should be situational and should never be enacted mechanically from a checklist, that certainly does not mean we cannot learn from other schools. In Dr. Gene Frost’s Learning from the Best: Growing Greatness in the Christian School, his chapter describing the approach to discipline enacted by Lutheran High School North in Macomb, Michigan was both inspiring and useful. So much of what they are attempting to do in moving from Law to Grace is transferable in essence to any school.

Finally, as leaders we must constantly paint the big picture for those on the front lines. Sometimes that takes the form of visionary speeches. At other times, we simply need to take the small, teachable moments to show how a philosophy can inform practice. Recently, I began our morning meeting by reading Luke 14:12–14 aloud. In this passage, Jesus instructs those giving a feast to invite the poor, the crippled, and the blind, those who could not repay them. I then distributed an assignment. The teachers were to reread the passage and, within a week, write a few paragraphs reflecting on how this story applied to their classrooms. The twist was that they had to name names in the reflection. I wanted them to realize how easy it is to reward those who are rewarding but only to tolerate those who are not. It is an even greater leap to love those students who are needy in an academic or behavioral sense. It is easy to admit that in general. It can be painful to admit when there is a face attached.

The results were wonderful. In their written responses, the teachers were very honest about how theory and practice diverge on a daily basis. When they would mention a student by name, describe how they normally reacted to him, and then record how he should be the object of their love especially because he had less to “offer” compared to his peers, it was evident that the desire to be gracious was making a tangible difference. For closure, I read aloud excerpts of the reflections in our morning meeting the following week. That was helpful in that various teachers identified varying ways in which teaching particular students exhibited that lack of inherent reward, along with heartfelt regret for not pursuing more diligently those same students in love. If nothing else, we intentionally took time to examine our practice in light of the Gospel. While no one-shot remedy, I do believe exercises like this can aid in the process of changing the culture of a school.