Contents
Feature Article – Building Christian Community by Marlin Detweiler
Educational Helps – by Laurie Detweiler
August 2008
Feature Article
Building Christian Community
One of the outcomes of godliness ought to be Christian community that loves and serves one another in so glorious a way that the world is drawn in and wants to know more of what makes us tick. Scriptures say, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Yesterday I had the pleasure of having breakfast with a board member from a classical Christian school. Several years ago he found himself as the headmaster of a different, well-established Christian school. He also coached the girls’ soccer team. While his team was playing the girls’ team from the school on whose board he now sits, he observed extraordinary Christian character in the lives of his opponents—even in defeat—so that he just had to meet the coach and find out more about this school. What he learned changed his life, and he now has a child enrolled there.
As we think about educating children—ours or those placed in our trust—we should keep this one end (of several ends) in sight. One of the reasons we memorize a timeline of history in grammar school or study Latin or logic is to educate in such a way that this education is one that helps to produce godliness and that this godliness is one that produces Christian community.
As we think about parenting, we need to think of raising children whose education will aid the process of developing godliness and, in turn, help produce Christian community. Such is the calling of parents and teachers.
Unfortunately, the road we travel has two ditches. The obvious ditch is the one where the “classical” of classical Christian education succeeds mightily but fails to instill the Christian character and godliness needed and expected of those that have been given much. If our children receive a great education, giving them great advantage in life, but it is not used to the glory of God, we have done very little, if any, good. In fact, we have done more harm than good.
The other ditch is when we begin to substitute the role of the school or our educational environment (such as our homeschool) for the church. Recently, I have heard far too many folks suggesting overtly and sometimes not as consciously or intentionally that the community we seek to build will be or should be centered around the school or homeschool association.
This thinking, subtle or otherwise, is riddled with great problems. Where do childless couples fit? How about empty-nesters?
My involvements in education have been more extensive than I ever dreamed or imagined they would be as recently as 15 years ago. Yet I don’t ever want to presume that this educational world, as close and consuming for a family as it may be, can in any way or at any time supplant the role of the organization given to build Christian community—the Church.
It is by the grace of God and through His ordained means that we find the Church to fill the role of building Christian community. In doing so we find that no age group, no stage in life, no childless couple and no single adult is functionally or otherwise left out of the communities we hope and should seek to build.
There are certainly churches with so many programs and meetings that they can be overly consuming of our time. But what I’m talking about here is when the church doesn’t give itself over to scheduling too many things, but educational organizations create the same problem. A pastor at our recent teacher training conference came to realize this and determined that fundamental changes were in order. Praise God for examples like this man.
And, finally, we find frequent divides in churches resulting from school cliques, homeschool cliques, etc. It is certainly natural to develop good relationships with those with whom we work and spend the most time, yet it should not be the case that we have so many meetings and activities within these organizations such that we have little time or energy to serve the needs of others within our churches.
Mature Christian thinking will produce mature Christian communities. May we be blessed with a double dose.
Marlin Detweiler
Educational Helps
I hope that you have already read Marlin’s article. If not you might want to before going any further or this might not make any sense. In the busy world we live in, looking forward to the Sabbath each week can be a neglected if not difficult thing to do. I am convinced that we can do some things that will establish a cycle for the week to help train our children to do this. Here are a few ideas that might help:
- Make Sunday a special day. If your children are small, talk to them about Sunday as if it is a special day, because it is! It is easy to help children along this path. I know a family that has special toys that they only bring out on Sunday and a special bag that they take to church.
- It is a great time for feasting, whether you have a Sabbath supper on Saturday evening or a Sunday dinner after church, make sure to make it special.
- For older children Sunday can be a great time to gather with friends and family after church. What a great time to teach them about hospitality.
We have prepared an “advent” calendar of sorts to help young children learn to look forward to worshiping on Sunday. This can be a great training tool. Click here to access this countdown calendar.
Most of all remember Sunday is the Lord’s Day, and we can rejoice in it!
Laurie Detweiler
Free Offers
Free Talk From Voddie Baucham
As you may recall, Voddie Baucham, author of Family Driven Faith, was our keynote speaker at our Lancaster teacher training conference last month. During the conference he delivered one talk on Monday evening that was open to the broader community. The talk was powerful. The folks at WordMP3.com are graciously making it available FREE. Use this link to listen to Voddie’s talk.
Q&A
Q. What do I do if my seventh grader has never had any Latin?
A. That depends on a few things. Do you have a Latin background or can your hire a tutor that does. If you do not have any Latin background, I would start with Latin for Children A and only use the student workbook, not the Activity book, as it is too juvenile. I would try to work through A and B in one year. If you do have a good tutor, they could start Wheelock’s Latin. The other option is Veritas Scholars Online classes. We have many children who successfully begin Latin in 7th grade or older for the first time.
Q. I have heard from several sources that you recommend reviewing the Bible and History cards every year. What do you mean by that, and how do you do it?
A. In the grammar stage one of the main things we are trying to do is “load the hard drive” of the child’s mind. If you study Old Testament and Ancient Egypt in second grade and never go back over the cards again, I can guarantee when the children are in 6th grade, they will not remember much. That is one of the main reasons that textbooks are not very memorable. We need to study things by having a tool that can easily be repeated over and over again until it is ingrained in our memory. That is why we remember nursery rhymes so well; we heard them again and again. So when you begin the history or Bible cards, you should continue to sing the song and review the chronology and information on the cards every year. I recommend singing one song from a prior year every week. Another thing to do is have the children make index cards from the questions on the test or worksheets each year. Have them write the questions on one side and the answers on the other. Put them in a big box and when it’s a rainy day or on Friday afternoons play a game where you pull a card out of the box and whoever answers the most questions correctly wins. The other game is like Old Maid. Many of the teacher’s manuals have cards in the appendix to make and cut out, and you match the dates to the events. If you do this, you will be amazed at the vast amounts of information that your child will retain for the rest of their lives.
Please submit any questions you’d like answered here to info@veritaspress.com.
Veritas Press Teacher Training Conference
The Lancaster conference is now history but the online teacher training conference is in the next few days, hours or minutes, depending on when you read this. This conference can be attended from the comfort and privacy of your own home. It is planned for August 6–8 and features Joel Belz, Douglas Wilson and Oliver North as keynote speakers.
We’ve added a couple new ways to attend. Are you a school that wants to set up some classrooms with computers and projectors to allow your teachers and parents to attend online as a group? We now offer a site license option that provides four logins to your organization for $800. We require only that your attendees be affiliated with your school or organization.
Veritas Press Scholars Online Classes
It’s Last call for registration for online classes. Please take a moment to click the link to learn more.
Job Opening with Veritas Press Scholars Online
Online Teachers – With the rapid growth of our online courses we are anticipating needing even more teachers for the 2009 – 2010 school year. Experienced teachers can work from home, the beach, or anywhere high-speed internet is available. Send resume to bruce@veritaspress.com. And don’t wait if you are interested. We plan to interview now to qualify teachers to handle the rapid growth we’ve seen.
Visit us on the web at VeritasPress.com or call us at 1-800-922-5082.