Creating The Culture Of Your Christian School

Years ago, I read “The Purpose Driven Youth Ministry” by Doug Fields and Rick Warren and one of the opening thought exercises when thinking about youth ministry was to think about successfull organizations and how they’re structured and compare that to the structure of youth ministry. My mind always goes to sports and as a big NBA fan, I immediately thought of the San Antonio Spurs who, at the time, were in the midst of a near twenty year run of dominance behind head coach Gregg Popovich, star player Tim Duncan, and general manager RC Buford. A lot of NBA teams defined these roles time and time again, but the Spurs were able to achieve something few teams could: They won five championships in that twenty year span. Their continuity from the top down enabled them to continuously succeed even while tweaking their roster and the continuity started with those three men. When I entered the planning phase of our Christian school, I began to think about that same exercise and how I wanted the school structured. Our school structure needed a strong head – which should always be Jesus, we needed a strong “general manager,” which in our case was the church board at the time, I would serve as “head coach” in the role of principal, and our “star players” were the teaching staff. There were obvious challenges to establish continuity. Being a new school, I simply could not offer qualified teachers what they deserve to be paid, benefits were negligible, and I had little control over if the church board changed or not or decisions they made. But I prayed the same Bible verse over our school every single day and that’s the first step in creating the culture of your Christian school.

1. Be Diligent in Prayer and Trust the Lord to Lead You

1 Corinthians 3:6 (NKJV): “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” It’s the single best marketing tip I could ever give to anyone looking to start or grow a Christian school: Pray this verse and trust that God is going to do the growth. We started in 2018 with four students as a kindergarten only school with the intent to grow by one grade and follow that kindergarten group until they were in twelfth grade and be a full K-12 school. Today, that school has nearly two hundred students and is a full K-12 school having graduated four students already. The staff are some of the most qualified and experienced teachers that you will find and they have a heart for ministry. We’ve had retired teachers drawing a pension volunteer to teach certain subjects. As the principal, I maintained an attitude of prayer over every decision, every hire, and every situation I encountered. This brings us to the second step in creating a Christ-like culture in your school.

2. Connect Scripture to the Operation of Your School

I tried to tie every decision back to scripture and not my own opinion. Ephesians 3:17 and Colossians 2:7 instruct us to be rooted and grounded in love and in Christ. Our schools should be rooted and grounded in Christ, with love and when that happens, your school will put on full display what Jesus looks like. When the COVID-19 epidemic happened and schools were shut down, we were in our second year of operation with twenty-eight students and trying to figure out how we would operate the following year. The next year, public schools said they weren’t going back to in-person learning and the Lord blessed us with forty additional students bringing us to sixty-seven students. I told our staff that we may only have these precious students for a year or half a year, but that gives us time to plant a seed of Christ in their lives and in the lives of their families. Some of those students have never left that school, some did, but we were able to sow the seed of Christ to those kids in that short time we had them. The parents could see the difference in our school compared to others. I can’t tell you how many times a parent come for a walkthrough and we’d be touring the building and they would comment on how peaceful it was and it was true. We had some behavioral challenges and what school doesn’t? But two things were different: 1) Our behavioral challenges weren’t nearly as intense as what some public schools face and 2) We connected behavior and conflict resolution back to biblical principles. That was established on day one of our school opening and we have maintained that to this day. That brings us to the final step.

3. Remember Your Mission

Colossians 3:1-2 (NKJV): “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. ² Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.”

Why did you start a Christian school? Why do you work at a Christian school? Why are your kids being sent to a Christian school? The answer is simple: You want Christ intertwined in their education. It’s easy to get frustrated at things that happen, behaviors, at a teacher, at another parent, or be constrained financially and see the free public school down the road and think what you pay in tuition would pay for that awesome cruise you want to go on, but here are some stats that I heard back in 2018 in a presentation by Jeff Keaton, CEO of Renewanation that have stuck with me all these years: From the age of 6-18, if a child attends church 1 hour a week on average, they’ll have attended approximately 1,500 hours. In that same time period, they will attend school 15,000-20,000 hours and have media exposure of another 15,000-20,000 hours. He asked the important question: Where will they get their worldview from? That’s why high-quality Christian education is so important. The Bible gives us a clear directive in Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” And as Christian educators, you’re not just there for a Monday-Friday, punch in, punch out, go home, and collect an enormous paycheck (LOL). You’re there as a teacher, yes, but you’re also there as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If those children leave your classroom and are armed with tons of knowledge, that’s great, but if they’re spiritually bankrupt, then you’ve failed at your mission. We need to not only teach Bible curriculum once a day, but intertwine scriptural truth into science, history, mathematics, economics, and whatever else we may teach. Our interactions with our students and families should reflect the characteristics of Jesus Himself. If not, what separates your Christian school or classroom from a secular school?

Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:33 to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things will be provided for us [our needs if you read Matthew 6 leading up to it]. I’ve compared this in sermons to PEMDAS in mathematics, which is the order of operations (parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction). We have to seek Jesus first and let everything else fall into place. Everything in our schools should center around Jesus. That’s how you create a Christian school culture that resembles Jesus Christ.