Author: art rogers
The relationship between church and school shifts
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 @ 12:01 am
Got your attention? I couldn’t decide if that title would catch your eye or bore you to death. Well, this is just the prolegomena anyway. Still, it must be done. And it’s interesting.
The most captivating, motivating, cage rattling and heart crushing statistic that I have heard in the last 40 years (and I’ve heard many - especially in the last 5) is the one Reggie McNeal quoted from Thom Rainer: “Less than 10% of Bridgers/Millenials/Gen Y have any connection to church.” I assume this is talking about the church in America, since Christianity in the East is exploding at a phenomenal rate.
Laying aside all of the detailed extrapolations of what that might mean, the most simple understanding is that we have completely failed to pass on the faith to the next generation - and they are just fine with it.
The most simple response is that we must do something different or the church in America is going to go the way of the church in western Europe or even the church in Australia, which is, believe it or not, in worse shape. Note the similarity of these declining behemoths. They are all Western Culture - abandoning church like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
So what must we do different? Well, who hasn’t answered that question?
Rather than give you yet another stab at explaining the Missional church - America’s conservative attempt to make the shift to a living, healthy model for a new century - I thought I would call your attention to the Education Crises in America.
Actually, I don’t want to spend time convincing you that there is a crises in the education system in America, but what educators are doing to address it, in hopes that there might be something that we can glean from them. It so happens, I am married to a burgeoning expert in education, who is finishing her Masters and has been wooed to pursue her Doctorate by the faculty of OU’s Education Department. She’s a smarty.
I find it interesting, by the way, that evangelical Christians have absolutely no problem decrying the failure of our school systems to relate in a positive way to our nations kids, but look at similar problems within the church and see the church as pristine in the process of failure. It is merely the culture that won’t listen and obey the edicts of the church.
School violence? “The church doesn’t have the bullying and abuse that goes on in the schools,” you might say. I would respond that the reason is not that the church is doing all that great at resolving violence, but that church is optional, while school is not, and most kids are opting out of church, particularly the kids that live in a violent context.
The problem with violence in schools, and most other problems, is, actually, the problem with culture. Look at the schools with the most violence. What kind of culture do those kids live in from day to day? It is not that the school has failed them, it is that the culture has made them. Yes, I think the problem is with culture, but I don’t think that the solution is merely to proclaim that cuture should conform and stand perplexed while it flows more quickly down the drain.
Look, too, at the schools that are high performing, low violence, high graduation rate institutions. Then look at the culture of the kids that are going there. They live in homes where academics are a high priority, where two parent homes are the norm and money is not an issue - in fact the wealthier the district, the better they perform.
Don’t believe me? Check out some statistics at greatschools.net. Look at the schools around you that you know and then look at their statistics. I’m not even listing examples, because they hold true almost across the board. You pick your own.
What schools are the exception to the rule, though?
The schools that are taking kids with a low performance culture and turning them into high performance students are schools that are change agents within the culture. They are able to shape the culture around them to literally shape the homes of the students.
My wife suggested to the school in which she served in Kentucky that the teachers make visits to the homes of their students in an effort to connect and partner with parents to develop the kids as students. Even though it was a standout school that was already way outperforming its culture (and reshaping it), the general response was that they had their own lives to attend to and they weren’t interested in spending the time to make that difference.
Sound familiar? Come to us. We are the institution. You come to us and do what we say and all will be well.
By the way, the paragraph before last is not an argument for home visits in churches. Rather it is an observation that if kids are going to excel, the best way that can happen is if it is highly valued in the home. The degree to which the church can partner with parents to create a strong Christian culture in the home (outside the walls of the church!) the closer we will have come to turning that corner.
The big debate in education right now is how they (the schools) are going to shift from a traditional model of academic instruction that is proving to be increasingly ineffective to a more effective model that meets students where they are and leads them where they need to be.
The parallels are obvious, if not exact.
Next, I am going to post a paper my wife wrote on the theory of shifting that I think will spark a few ideas. It’s about education, but I obviously think there are some very relevant thoughts.
What do you think so far?
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October 30th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Much good food for thought here, Art. I agree that the parallels are striking and am looking forward to reading your wife’s paper.
October 30th, 2007 at 10:42 am
While I was reading your excellent post, I couldn’t help associate it with much of what Alan Hirsch says in The Forgotten Ways. Instead of appropriating the Hebrew method of discipleship, teachers teaching and modeling it by living with one another, we have opted to use the Greek method (I simply teach, now you go live your own life with your newfound knowledge)
I’m looking forward to this paper!
October 31st, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Hello Art,
I am an administrator at a Christian School in Australia and read your article with interest.
We live in an age where today’s young people in general have no connection with Church and see no reason to.
Their great- grandparents probably grew up in a community where Church was central to their lives.
Their grand parents were well grounded in the ethos and values of Christian teaching, may have attended Sunday School but probably moved away from a Church community.
Their parents had the values passed onto them as children, but didn’t feel connected to a Church community.
For this generation, the connection has been completely severed. They may never have set foot in a Church - except for weddings, funerals and ‘baby blessings’ - and see no connection between society values and Christian teachings.
Part of the issue is that society is changing at a greater pace than ever before. Australian Churches are full of older people looking for certainty and comfort in a world they don’t understand and so the ‘way we do Church’ reflects their desire for days gone by. Yong people look at this and see nothing that attracts them.
The Churches that successfully engage young people have shown a willingness to create structures and services that suit young people. Sure, we need to hang onto the unchanging central message of the gospel, base our church activities on the Bible and Jesus, BUT we can change our ’style’ and the way we do things to engage our youth without losing our real reason for being.
This is the greatest challenge for Churches, and one that many of the major traditional Churches struggle with.
On the subject of education, the Christian Schooling movement began in Australia about 20 years ago primarily because it was seen that Church linked schools were heading down the same secular path that Government run schools were. To some extent, these new ‘Christian Schools’ in Australia operate with a philosophy very similar to that which the traditional Church linked schools had when they began 80 - 100 years ago.
We live in a culture that tells our young people that ’self’ is a worthy God. They don’t necessarily believe that because so many young people are searching for something more meaningful - but our culture doesn’t offer an alternative.
Our challenge is to provide our young people with an alternative that is more meaningful, engaging and inspiring while allowing them to develop their relationship with Jesus.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:35 am
Good article.
As you know, we once again have children in our home who are school age. The schools, especially the middle school and high school, where our kids are zoned to attend have a lot of discipline problems and a high drop out rate. Thankfully, we were able to have our children re-zoned because Carrie required special assistance due to her FAS and other problems. The children are all fortunate this year to be attending a school with high parental involvement and teachers who care about children and correspond with parents before there is a problem.
Last year dealing with the “old” middle school and anticipating high school was a nightmare. Getting information from these schools was like pulling “hen’s teeth.” The newsletters always arrived in the mail after the school events had taken place. The boys were unable to hear the announcements in class because of the level of noise and disruption. The majority of the children zoned to these particular schools come from very dysfunctional homes and a high percentage of the children come from homes were one or more parents are in jail, rehab, or have drug and alcohol problems. One of the saddest things was that the former high school principal had “cleaned up” the school (both literally and figuratively) and had turned it around. The drop out rate had decreased, expulsions and suspensions had decreased and the test scores had increased. I read an article which quoted his philosophy as “providing a clean and safe environment for kids and giving them structure” which apparently worked in this high school so well, that the administration moved him to a new high school that was in worse shape and now the school that he had helped is on a downward spiral and his new school is improving.
We hear Christians all around us stating that the problem is because “God has been taken out of the school” and I am sure that is a contributing factor, but the biggest problem is because God is not in the homes and in a lot of cases neither are one or more of the parents.
CB and I have been fortunate to have been blessed so many times this past year as we have seen God work in the lives of the children who now make their home with us. Structure has been so important to them. Knowing that someone will pick them up at school that they will get to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, that they will have clean clothes to wear, a clean bed to sleep in and not have to worry about being awaken in the night to fighting or the police coming to the door and most important of all that they are loved and as much as we love them, God loves them more. When we hear the younger ones telling us that Jesus loves them and He is their friend and cares about them it blesses our hearts. When they come up out of the blue say “thank you for washing my clothes,” “Nan, you cook good” or “Pa always takes us to school,” it makes tiredness at the end of the day seem to disappear.
Knowing the back ground of our children, it is so sad to think of all of the other kids living in similar situations who will never know a difference because our churches are not ministering to their families because they are “undesirables.” We have to do something to reach these families. The gentleman from Australia said that “the great-grandparents were part of the church” and went on to show how each generation was getting farther away in their relationship to the church and God. With that in mind, if there is a continuation of that pattern most of our churches will be completely dead and closed, because there will be no ties to the church or to faith in God. It is a sad and scary thought.
Prayerfully, our churches will wake up and step up to the plate to minister to these families before we lose the opportunity to reach this generation.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
My wife and I tutored two children intensively (other than our own who were 24/7 projects).
One recently graduated from a bachelor of nursing program and is working in an emergency room at a major hospital. This help started when he was in the 6th grade and continued on a 2 times/week basis, year around, until I could not remember how to do the math any more (somewhere in calculus). He was a struggling 6th grader and would almost certainly have dropped out at some point without help.
We started with the other when she was in the 6th grade also. She would come to the house about 4 PM (4 days each week) and we would work with her continuously (through supper) until homework was done. This took until about 8-9 PM at first but after a few months only required 2 hours or so. By the end of the year her grades were all between 85 and 92–which I think was the upper limit her peer group would tolerate–and she probably only came over two or three days each week. The tutoring continued as needed until she moved away.
The amount of effort necessary to make a real difference in a student who is in serious trouble is huge. However, these efforts were very important to them and to us. There are few things that can make the impact that tutoring (over time) can without requiring a total reorganization of your life (CB and Karen in mind here).
Bennett Willis