A Time to Build
We are living in a time of educational disruption and renewal. It is not only the classical Christian movement that is growing. School choice has created an open market where creating and funding schools is easier and more realistic. There is tremendous opportunity and a strong urgency to ensure that more families have access to the transformative experience of classical Christian education. It is time to build! How do we do it?
Lessons from the Reformers
We should ensure that building and growth are not an end in themselves. We need to ensure there is faithfulness and integrity in the schools we develop. Most education reform movements are a response to spiritual and cultural shifts that happen upstream. This was true in the Reformation period. Lawrence Stone, in The Education Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe, argued that “the sixteenth century witnessed a veritable educational revolution, with schools springing up in every city and town of Protestant Europe.”
The reformers had a profound sense of urgency to train children, discipling them and equipping them with the tools and resources to know and understand Scripture. Remarkably, they were able to establish deep theological, philosophical, and academic roots while growing exponentially at the same time. Many of the influential confessions (Augsburg, Westminster, etc.) and catechisms of the modern church were written during this time, most of which are still present in orthodox Protestant churches today. The Reformers did the hard work to define their theological foundations and translate those beliefs into ways in which children could be formed by them. At the same time, they were busy planting and growing churches and schools. Tens of thousands of churches were planted and thousands of schools were birthed. Of course, there are famous academies like Calvin and Beza’s Geneva, but there were many parish schools started as well. The reformers wanted depth and clarity, but they were also missional.
When there is a work of God, an urgent sense of building and renewal follows. That deep conviction provides the will and perseverance to do the incredibly hard things that building requires. Through plague, war, deprivation, political turmoil, and other obstacles, Christians came together to build the institutions necessary to form their children in the Christian liberal arts. Phillip Melanchthon nearly expended himself entirely for this cause. Luther repeatedly admonished his friend to rest because he utterly exhausted himself writing, preaching, teaching, and leading the development of schools all over Germany. The reformers did what needed to be done regardless of whether it suited their skill set or whether they had training or not. They were committed to investing whatever it took to advance the work of God.
Building with Creativity and Sacrifice
There is no single, fixed way of doing the work. Historically, there is as much variation in the development of Christian liberal arts schooling as there are leaders, denominations, and periods. August Francke had the idea to not only start a school, but to make it free. He said, “In the year 1695 I found many poor children in Glaucha who would gladly learn if there were any to teach them without charge; and so I resolved, trusting in God, to begin a free school for them.” Well before Francke, John Calvin and Theodore Beza started Geneva Academy, which also began as a tuition-free school. It started on day one with 600 students who came from around Europe to attend. John Calvin went door to door to find patrons and scrape resources for this important work. Geneva’s launch was funded by a large bequest from a man who decided to leave his entire estate to the Academy.
When Christians in the past were moved by the Spirit, there were seemingly no obstacles they perceived or lengths they would not go to. In our day, classical Christian leaders are going to be suspicious of growth and change. We have purists who will want the thickest classical Christian model possible. They will perceive growth as an inevitable compromise. These warnings are fair, and we should be prudent to ensure we don’t compromise the integrity of what we are doing. However, there is a deep need and urgency for children to receive the richness and beauty of a classical Christian education. Extending ourselves to expand access is worth the challenges and tensions inherent in the endeavor.
The history of the church shows that when Christians saw the need for cultural change, for discipleship, to serve the poor, to heal their nations, they built schools. Often, they built entire communities downstream from the school. Francke, after launching his free school, went on to found an orphanage, a fee-based school, a Latin grammar school, a boarding school, and a girls’ school. To support those efforts, he then founded a bookshop to print curriculum, a carpentry and lathe workshop, and gardens for the students.
The Opportunity Before Us
We often say we are not doing anything new in our classical Christian school movement. We are simply reviving what has been lost. That is true, but not only in our aims to resurrect old texts and pedagogies. Our tradition also shows us how Christian people addressed the questions of their day and found prudent, entrepreneurial, innovative solutions to the problems they were facing. They were not just rebuilding academic institutions; they were rebuilding culture. Johann Bugenhagen, an often overlooked reformer, was an incredible leader and supporter of Martin Luther. Bugenhagen was rector of a classical school at 18 years old. He labored alongside Melanchthon, wrote school ordinances across northern Germany, and built the infrastructure of the movement. He instituted classical Christian schools by providing clarity and instruction for how the schools should be established. He made sure teachers were paid and that the kids sang (he required that every school hire a “chorister”). He was tireless in his service to the administrative work of the movement and content to build in the background of Luther’s more public role.
The conditions and obstacles for building during the Reformation were immense. We have our own challenges, no doubt. However, the educational winds have blown in our country. There is renewed interest in classical education, funding models have changed, and parents are paying more attention and seeking better solutions for their children. The traditional independent school model is being challenged in many ways as well. Traditional private schools have been accessible to very few in the past, but the traditional financial model is eroding. Are public dollars via school choice going to solve all of the problems? No, but it will create an opportunity for publicly accessible dollars that were previously inaccessible. These conditions are ripe for the opportunity to build.
By pushing for the continued growth and building of schools, I am not advocating a free-for-all. I do not think merely building more schools is the answer. We can, and must, build strong, thick, enduring classical Christian schools. We need leaders who see and respond to the challenges and opportunities with vision, passion, sacrifice, and creative problem solving. We also need a deep anchoring in our tradition so we learn from those who have addressed similar problems. Luther said, “If we want to have good and capable men for both the spiritual and the temporal leadership of the world, we must spare no diligence, time, or cost in teaching and educating our children, that they may serve God and the world.”
It is time to build!
