Christian Education

[00:00:00] This audio sermon is provided by AnabaptistSermons.com and may be freely copied and distributed. You may not sell or edit this sermon. Our prayer is that you would be blessed by this ministry. A vision for Christian education. I understand that the focus this evening or the intended focus is to perhaps reflect on Christian education and hopefully be re-inspired deeply within in terms of what God has called us to. [00:00:38] I do not like baked over notes, but I will admit to you that I pulled out a series of notes that I used at some other places in years gone by. And they've gone through various metamorphoses as far as that's concerned. But I'm thinking that perhaps part of my set of notes here may have been offered at a teacher's institute in Missouri or someplace like that about five, six years ago. [00:01:13] If you were there and you recognize it, well, I do apologize. Typically, when I speak from the same set of notes, I speak differently anyway. So we shall see how the Lord leads. I'm planning to do about three different things tonight I'd like to begin with a few passages from the Bible I then would like to go to the set of notes I have here which gives us just a little bit of a panoramic view [00:01:45] of Christian education throughout the centuries focusing then on Mennonite education as we have experienced it in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and up until the present day. And then a few thoughts, a few projections ahead. I don't know if I can get that done in an hour or not or a little less than that. We'll see. Then we'll take a break. And when we come back from the break or when I come back from the break, [00:02:18] I would like to take a look at two passages to cap off the evening. First, Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7, very, very familiar passage to you. One that has become, I don't know, perhaps almost trite in Christian circles, but it ought not to be that way. I'm quite sure that many of you have this memorized and have gone over it many times. [00:02:49] I just ask you to think about it one time again. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and instruction. Focus this evening is Christian education. And I just want to begin here. I don't care what your degrees are or what your degrees are not, how much education you've had or how much education you do not have. [00:03:19] I will insist if you're going to talk about education this is always the place to begin. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. I shall never forget a number of years ago quite a few years ago now I suppose I was living in Chambersburg a young man perhaps 25 years old and a friend of mine decided to Well, we had, I had a friend who had gone astray, and so another friend and I decided to go visit him. We did, and on the way home, we were on 30 West, I'm sorry, yes, 30 West, and if you're familiar with Chambersburg at all, you know that's on the way over to the Bible school, here in SMBI. [00:04:13] All right. Along the way, we picked up a hitchhiker, two hitchhikers. They were two men who were in college. Unknown to us, the one had been raised in a Christian home, the other had not. I believe that, I forget what college they were attending, but they had their thumbs out. This was, of course, the 1970s, and they were hitchhiking their way. So we picked them up and we were traveling up the mountain going west on 30. If you're familiar with that in Chambersburg, which I know this is Indiana, probably you're not. Chester, are you? As you go up the mountain, it weaves its way up and up and up and around curves and so forth and so on. [00:04:55] and we engaged in discussion with these men and began to talk to them about Christianity and God and what they were learning and the one gentleman began to explain where he was at and he was clearly a dyed in the wool rationalist he did not believe in absolutes I was driving my car And so my friend was turned around to the front seat and he was looking back and he said, in exasperation, he said, but sir, see that sign ahead? [00:05:33] No, this was one of those signs winding up the mountain, right? There was a nice big yellow sign with an arrow that pointed left and trees in a precipice on the right. So, but sir, which way is the arrow pointing? In a very scholarly fashion, the gentleman said, well, it appears, it appears to point to the left. And my friend Carl said, turn right. [00:06:08] It just appears. What difference does it make? I really don't tell the story to make fun of the gentleman so much as to say this again. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Here was a man from some of the finest educational institutions in the world by men's standards. and he could not tell if that arrow really pointed left or not. [00:06:45] Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, if that's where our education takes us, you may have it. You may have it. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And so we got a first-hand look that evening. If taken to its logical conclusion, if taken to its logical conclusion, that gentleman, by the way, was doing that. [00:07:19] He was only telling us what he had been taught. Oh, I should tell you the end of the story. We got over the mountain, down across the hills, past SMBI, and over there to Breezewood, and we dropped him off. And the second gentleman was in tears. And he said, I believe it was the Lord who brought you to me tonight. He said, I myself was beginning to get down the road. I've been far down the road of what I've been taught in the colleges. [00:07:55] And he said, my parents did not teach me this. And you have reminded me again this evening that it really is true. There's a God who lives. I never heard from him since. I didn't keep notes on it. I don't remember his name, but I shall never forget the discussion. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Second passage, book of James, chapter 1, I'm sorry, I would like to do chapter 3 first, verses 13 to 18, again, very familiar passage, but in the context this evening. [00:08:40] If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, well, what is the end? Well, I don't know if I can describe that specifically, but we have a passage here that gives us a glimpse of it. For the truly educated man among you, or the truly educated woman among you, let me read you the description. Here it is. Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Well, let me paraphrase. [00:09:11] Who are the truly educated among you? Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. Isn't that powerful? Let him show out of a good conversation or out of a lifestyle, Out of the way he lives, out of the way he speaks, out of the way he conducts himself, let him show that with meekness of wisdom. [00:09:52] Away with the pride and the arrogance that touches so much of what is called education today. But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against the truth. I ask you what politics is about. We just have gone through a presidential election. And I believe that the scripture teaches us that we ought to respect and honor those who are put into positions of power. [00:10:24] I think we need to extend that to Barack Obama. But what is politics about? Listen, but if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts. Glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, and devilish. [00:10:58] I already prefaced my remarks by saying we are taught to honor and respect our leaders. And we do. I wouldn't use these terms but from what I can tell what the Lord would call politicking it's earthly, it's sensual and it's devilish because it's about a lot of strife and striving for where envy and strife is there is confusion [00:11:28] and every evil work and now the description the positive side, Brother Glenn not the negative But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. [00:11:59] Now there's a whole sermon right there. There's more than a sermon tucked away there into verse 17 that begins to describe to us what true education and a good education is about. We looked at the beginning, and if we want to know if we're getting accomplished, this is the end. This is what it should look like when it's done. When the young man, the young lady graduates or when she, he or she moves on, becomes mom and dad and various other things, meekness of wisdom, purity and peaceableness, gentleness, easiness of entreaty, full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy. [00:12:50] Oh, what a challenge. I feel challenged myself when I see that what would we do if President Bush walked in the back of the room without partiality and without hypocrisy find me a man, I don't know if you've ever thought of this or not but it occurred to me one day that humility is a double-edged sword because I think we normally think of it in terms of lowering ourselves beneath people who really are lower than us. [00:13:28] Well, now, I don't know, there's something contradictory in that right to begin with. But somehow that's kind of the way we think about it. I'll tell you how to really judge it. What do you do when the person of real personage steps up? For humility treats President Bush the same as he treats the man in the gutter in terms of personhood and who he is. So in other words, maybe it's not so much about trying hard to be humble as it is viewing all men and all women equally. [00:14:08] without partiality, without hypocrisy. A well-educated man knows that presidents and kings and mighty men are no different than other people, really. Well, enough said. And finally, the means. The beginning, the end, and just in case we weren't quite sure how to get there, Remember chapter 1 of the book of James in verse 22. [00:14:44] I hope you notice by now that I like just old passages that have been used many, many times. But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only. I want you to notice the next phrase, deceiving your own selves. The person who knows a lot and does not do it typically becomes a master deceiver. Deceives his own self as well as others. When I sat down one day and meditated on this, something began to make sense to me. [00:15:23] Have you ever wondered why the masses of Christianity can give wonderful testimonies? Wonderful testimonies. I don't want to point fingers out there either. I think it happens to us. Wonderful testimonies. But somehow something doesn't jive. The immodest, unveiled lady stands to her feet and gives a testimony like you have never heard before. [00:15:53] And it can almost sweep you off your feet. But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only. Deceiving your own selves Okay Listen, you can talk yourself into a whole load of stuff And the funny thing is Is the more you talk about It bothers me sometimes In Sunday school classes You can talk about giving And you can talk about witnessing And you can talk about this [00:16:24] And you can talk And the funny thing is Talking about it Seems to make you think you're doing it And there can even be a few little whispers and maybe even a tear or two about neglect And yet something is saffed just about talking about it but not doing it There's an incredible deception that's involved with talking and talking and talking and not doing And so again I just simply say The means to the end that we were talking about in Christianity [00:16:58] Christianity is in education is really just simply doing. We do what we know to do. Nothing new to you I know. But I just want to emphasize here right from the get go what I mean when I'm talking about Christian education. I just gave you the beginning, the end, and the means And it really is, in some ways, that's about all I have to say about it I could sit down and that would be done Because that is it, right there [00:17:30] Flesh that out in your schools, flesh that out in your homes, flesh it out in your communities Flesh it out in your church communities, families, wherever And see what God will do if we begin in his sphere If we do as we learn and then watch the end result, a man who is truly educated in the fear of the Lord. Well, with that bit of definition, that bit of understanding to begin with, I feel a little more comfortable moving on and talking about education and even being a bit pro-educational. [00:18:08] I want to tell you, I don't mind, I'll say anywhere, anytime, anyplace, I am pro-educational If you're talking about the three-point education that I just got done sharing with you If you're talking about one that simply is headed to producing a bunch of big-headed, arrogant people, I'm against it I know, you're going to immediately say, so what's happening at Faith Builders? Good question. And one that, at least for me, I want to grapple with in respect to what we just got done saying. [00:18:42] Because if, in fact, whether it's our local Christian school or if it is faith builders or any other so-called Christian educational institution that really is just cranking out a lot of arrogant, big-headed people who cannot do well in their own communities, there's no point. It's not Christian education. I just got done saying to you. The end is meekness of wisdom. That's why I took the time to make sure you understood what I'm talking about to begin with. Now, I'd like to take just a little bit of time and look back to a bit of a panoramic view of Christian education over the years. [00:19:23] Sisters and where I'm headed here is I'd like to to provide some context for what I see as the modern conservative Mennonite school movement. Hate to do this to you ladies. If you don't want to sisters, if you don't want to raise your hand, it's OK. How many of you are older than 50 years old? Can you raise your hand? All right. You will understand me just a tad bit better than those of you who are under 50, probably. because if you have a memory of the Christian school movements in late 60s, early 70s, [00:20:02] you would understand the spirit of what I'm talking about. Incidentally, it may interest you that in, I believe it was 1971, I had an airplane pilot's license as a teenager and John D. Martin and Lester Showalter called me up and asked if I would fly them to LaGrange, Indiana or out here somewhere in Indiana. I'm not quite sure where it was because they were going to give two promotional meetings, I suppose, for Christian education. [00:20:42] I think they were held at Southwest. I was not one bit interested in teaching school at the time. Zero, I think. Less than zero. I was dating Sheila Martin at that time. She's my wife today and she had made it clear she was not going to marry either a farmer or a teacher. Either one. We got in that plane and we flew them out here. Well, I told them, I'll take you out if my girlfriend could go along. [00:21:15] And if you're paying the bill. That's awful to say those kinds of things, but that's the way it was. And so I flew them out here. And, you know, I believe we stayed at Melvin Coney's place, if I remember right. I can't recall for sure, but I think that's where we stayed. and they went and did their thing and I went along and listened in and thought that was very interesting and went on home and went on with my life for another three or four years, got married and mind you, John Martin met me in the basement of Roe Mennonite Church [00:21:48] and I was in business by that time and he said to me, he said, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm in business. And I could tell he was not too happy about that so I said, well, what's the problem with that? He said, I had always hoped you would be a school teacher. And he got that notion when we were flying out here on that airplane. Ask him about the story sometime. It was incredible. Normally I could shrug things off and say, forget that, but you know somehow that thing just got a hold of me and it wouldn't let go. [00:22:19] Next thing you know I was in the classroom and if I wouldn't be on sabbatical this year, it would be my 30th year of teaching school. That was the early 70s. More about it here in just a moment. Early Christians educated their own children for the most part. Go check the record. I'm going way back, all the way back to the beginning now. The pre-Constantinian era. To be really honest with you, most Romans did what they called homeschooling back in those days. [00:22:54] That was just very common for things to be done that way. Secondly, educated men in the church, with few exceptions, received their primary training before they became Christians And I won't enlarge on that point Thirdly, the church began to establish their own schools of education after the time of Constantine And particularly after the fall of Rome During these years, the church shouldered the responsibility for education throughout Western Europe [00:23:27] Now, I'm not, certainly not a fan of the Constantinian church. I'm talking about the church after Constantine that developed slowly but surely into the Catholic church and with all of its trappings and so on. There are positive sides to that. I suppose you know that in what we call the medieval ages, almost all education and almost all medical work was done by the church, by and large. [00:24:00] Now, not all, but most of it. Where did you go if you were traveling from point A to point B and you needed to find a motel? Or you needed a, you had appendicitis and needed to have something. Where did you go? You went to a monastery. somewhere along that that was the only place you could go for the most part and there you found those monks or if you happen to go to it to a convent the nuns and and those people had the heart within them I know about the bad things but they had the heart with it that's where you went to get care and those were also the people who did most of the educating [00:24:43] Perhaps you're not aware of this, but in Ireland, most of you probably have heard of St. Patrick. He's called a saint. I suspect that he himself would object to that. If you've never read the details of the story of Patrick, you really should. and the story of Ireland because back during the 400s, the 500s, the 600s A.D. when Europe, according to historians, [00:25:17] and I think they're right, had descended into a darkness and in fact some history books refer to 600, 500, 400 to 600, 800 A.D. as a dark ages. Probably a bad term, not a good term to use, but nevertheless, this was a time when things were dismal. The barbarians, our forefathers, had crashed over the German borders and had smashed the Roman Empire and knocked the libraries to pieces and burned books and did a whole lot of things like that, [00:25:50] although they weren't really that awful if you read the story carefully. But at any rate, the Roman Empire was in shambles And as you read the story, a descent into the dark ages So-called dark ages However, in a far, far distant place For that era in particular, in Ireland There was a very active group of people Patrick was very formative in the process [00:26:22] Columbo was a man who came along and there in their monasteries they copiously copied books and the Bible and various other things and they taught, they became schools, they grew up schools in Ireland and later on the eastern coast of northern England And from there, Northern Europe was Christianized. Now I say Christianized, but you can read the story for yourself. It's not all a pretty story, but the people who brought Christ to Northern Europe first were the missionaries that came out of the schools of Ireland and Northern England. [00:27:06] And then later when the Roman Catholic Church kind of flexed its muscles and came up against that church Which I would have considered the church from Ireland in Northern England to be at least much closer To a sense of what Christ taught than what the Catholic Church had become Then things changed for the worse But it was these men who were dedicated to learning and preserved the work of the church fathers and others [00:27:40] It produced many, many good things, including manuscripts of the Bible and so on that were passed on to us Alcuin is another one, for those of you who may be interested, you can look up some of these men and be inspired how historically they were educators who changed the world of their day. In the Reformation itself, Grebel and Mons, I suppose you know that Conrad Grebel was a university man. [00:28:11] And I've already told you I'm not arguing for university at all. I'm trying to give you what I think is a true education. But I will say that these were men of learning who through their learning came to some understanding. Felix Mons as well, I believe he was a scholar of Hebrew, there in the Canton, Canton, Zurich, and with his involvement with Ulrich Zwingli, as you know, there grew up an Anabaptist movement out of these, out of the, out of the intellectual, well I shouldn't say intellectual discussions, the theological discussions that these men had during those days. [00:28:49] A person who is often overlooked because we Mennonites do not like him very well is Desiderius Erasmus. I don't want to say too much because those of you who know his story well, probably the reason we object is because he never left the Catholic Church. On the other hand, many of the things he gave to us, he gave to us a New Testament that was a Bible that was corrected of many, many things that were wrong with it. [00:29:21] Because of his mastery of both Hebrew and Greek, he was the one who first, not Martin Luther, he was before Martin Luther, he was one of the first ones who raised up and said, no, wait a minute here, my Catholic brothers, this is a misinterpretation. This is not what the original text said. And he believed that the church could be reformed through solid teaching. He really did. Unfortunately, he never got a chance to see if what he proposed would work. [00:29:59] There were too many hotheads. I often wonder what would have happened if in fact the Erasmian model would have actually been applied I don't know, you can read the story but the part that I'm really wanting to bring to you, it was a man of letters probably one of the most highly educated men of the continent at that time, who did know something of the fear of God, did take his skills, did open up a bible, did begin to do [00:30:29] He was the one who began to demonstrate where the Catholic Church were saying things about purgatory and Mary and so forth that were totally inaccurate, never in the original text. He was the one that unmasked that. And I asked you a question, if it had not been for Erasmus, well, what would have happened? The Lord has told us many times he could raise up a word for himself from the stones. So I'm not declaring that he could not have, but that he did use this man to bring these things to us. All these years, though, mind you, only a relatively small elite group was able to receive anything comparable to high school education today. [00:31:08] Do you know that? Even if you go back to the Reformation era, you had to be from the elite classes to get much of an education. or else you had to be extremely bright and somebody maybe would pull you in and give you some rich man would actually pay for your education because there was no such thing as public education. That did not exist. You either joined a monastery, that was one way to get an education, [00:31:40] or if you were from a wealthy family, you could get an education, But very likely, if you were from the peasant group, even if you were bright, you would not get much of an education. That's the way it was in those days. Trying to describe to you something that our world is totally, totally different than that. I suppose most of us here don't count ourselves from the elite, the upper classes of the world. What that means, if that had been the case, most of us could not even read or write. [00:32:16] It was the Reformation that really began to push things toward mass education. A simple concept, John Wycliffe, the morning star of the Reformation, the Bible in every plowman's hands. Well, if you're going to put the Bible in every palm man's hands, how is it going to help him if he can't read it? Pray tell. And so, corresponding or paralleling the idea that we're going to put the Bible in every man's hands [00:32:51] was the idea you're going to have to educate every man so that he can read it. and hence the idea of bringing education or making at least a general education available to the masses which was a relatively new thing. There's a lot of history in between here that I won't go into but it would be interesting for us to explore it if we had time. Then came the development of the nation states [00:33:21] And those of you who know your world history, this means the rise of France, this means the rise of England, this means the rise of the Netherlands, Spain, and so forth And subsequently compulsory universal education Okay, listen carefully It was not the church that brought to us compulsory public universal education It was the nation state Why? [00:33:55] Well, the nation state, what I mean by the nation state, I mean think of the United States of America. It is in the good interest of the leaders of nation states to have an educated citizenship. Those of you as old as I am or a little bit older would remember if you were in school in the 1960s, the public education, they gave to us what they called new math. And they brought to us all kinds of different things. Why? Well, in the middle of the mid-decade of the 1950s, or I'm sorry, toward the end of 1957, 1958, Russia, mind you, those communist boys over there that didn't know the Lord and were awful people, mind you, they had put a spacecraft up there. [00:34:44] It was called Sputnik 1 and it circled the earth. And whether you know this or not, that made the leaders of the United States shake in their boots. How did they do this? Oh, they've got it. Russia had for a long time been making sure that their people, everybody had to go to school. And of course, they were taught atheistic values, a whole lot of other things. And so, I mean, there was a grand shuffling in American education. We're going to get these guys in school. We're going to teach them math. And we're going to teach them science. So we're going to catch up and go past those Russians. [00:35:17] And mind you, we did beat them to the moon. But I want you to hear my point. It was not the church who pushed on compulsory universal education. It was the nation state. The modern nation state insisted that everybody be educated in certain ways because this was the only way to stay ahead of the rest of the pack. There really is still that way. [00:35:50] And this was obviously a shift in the primary reason for education. If you heard me, if you just heard me right, what you heard me saying is before the Reformation, almost all education was religious in nature. Not all, but most. After the Reformation, the primary impetus for education, if you talk to educators, they were doing this because Christians needed to be able to read the Bible and discover the will of the Lord and walk in the will of God. [00:36:21] There's a shift though when it's the nation state who says you're going to school And we're going to give you a curriculum Because we want you to be a productive citizen We want you to help us get to the moon We want you to help us to whoop those commies The communists, the Russians Now I'm putting it in very stark terms [00:36:52] Essentially the nation state wants you to serve them Now mind you, you can study church history as long as you want to The great persecutions over the years are typically when it's a question of one's allegiance to the state or one's allegiance to God Now not always But oft times that was the case. And so in some way, this whole issue of education comes down to that. Incidentally, it was the Napoleonic era. If you read the Napoleonic era, this is the early 1800s, 1800 to 1815, right in that era. This is when this thing leaps forward like you wouldn't believe. [00:37:43] There are some other educators that I would love to talk about. You know, I want to really give you a positive example before I pull out of this section of my notes here. There was a man named John Amos Comenius, who I'm going to refer to later, probably Sunday again. Comenius was a Reformation man shortly after the Reformation, actually early 1600s, about 100 years later, I suppose. And, interestingly enough, even if you go to college today, this man, Comenius, will come up for sure if you are studying education. [00:38:21] And I'll tell you why. Comenius was a member of the Unitas Fratrum, the unity of the brethren, in what is today the Czech Republic. And that day was called Bohemia. And there was a famous battle called the Battle of White Mountain, 1618 to 1648. It was a 30 years war. It was basically a religious war between the Catholics and the Protestants in Europe. And mind you, the Catholics won some battles, in fact, despite the fact that God was on the side of the Protestants. [00:38:54] I hope you hear the sarcasm there just a little bit. And so in the Battle of White Mountain, the Catholics won, mind you. And all of Eastern Europe came under the influence, under the persecution. of the Jesuits. It was so intense and so severe that Comenius, as a bishop of the Unitas Fratrum, actually the beginnings of the old Moravian church, was forced to flee. [00:39:27] And that's the story I'll tell you on Sunday. But what I want to tell you is he appears in the history books of secular society as an educator. He wrote a book. It was called Pictus Orbitus. I don't know Latin, so if that was showing off there a little bit, forgive me. I used a little Latin term there. It means this is a book of pictures. Comenius was one of the first ones who suggested that maybe, just maybe, youngsters would enjoy studying a little bit if you put a picture or two in the books. [00:40:02] And so, as educators today, even at Penn State, they'll tell you this was a big breakthrough in education, and I agree. Actually, that was done by a Christian man, a solid Christian man, Jan Amos Comenius, making a case here for saying, look, there is a place for Christians to be involved in the educational circles of this world. Come back to that a little bit later on. Now, I might point out to you that compulsory education in the United States is actually not that old. [00:40:43] I'm not sure about Indiana, but in Pennsylvania, the first compulsory education law, I mean compulsory, you had to go to school. Do you know when the date was? 1932 I knew you would frown a little bit My grandfather would tell me these stories and I could hardly believe them He would say, my grandfather Brookholder, he's dead and gone now When I was just a young teacher, he was an old man by that time [00:41:16] He said, yeah, he was born in 1899 Well, yeah, he said in the fall He said school was vacation for us because in the fall of the year we worked. We helped dad in the fields to husk the corn, to plow the fields, to take care of things. We worked right up until you couldn't work anymore in the fields. And then we went to school and he said we enjoyed going to school. I said, well, Grandpa, didn't you get in trouble for it? Oh, no. He said there was nobody who said you had to go to school. [00:41:50] But we wanted to go to school. Oh, I said, God, give me more of those. Where are those students at today? This one said that they couldn't wait to go to school. I do wonder if we just had them work real hard for a little while and said, OK, it's time for vacation. Maybe the school would go a little differently. I've wondered a little bit if we couldn't buy into that model somehow or another. But he said, yes, then we would go to school. I said, well, what did you... Well, he said, you just jumped into whatever grades you were capable of. [00:42:20] If you had been last year, if you went back to the fields in March the 30th and you were at third grade level, that's where you started. It didn't matter if you were 18 years old or if you were 10, wherever you left off, that's where you started. And when springtime came and the snow began to melt and we could get in the fields and there was work to do, My dad would, back out of school we would come, wherever we left off, that's where we left off, and we would do some work and on we'd go. [00:42:52] I'm there with my mouth hanging open, I said, really? Yeah, he said, that's what we did all the time. Now if you'd have known my grandfather, you would have known he had a pretty decent education. I think he went to an equivalent of eight grades. Very articulate, very, just his words were well formed. Probably, if I have any verbal skills, it came from him, if there's any such thing as genetics. He was just kind of a historian, local historian. That's how he got his education. Sometimes I wonder if the compulsory notion is the right notion. [00:43:26] But at any rate, I'm pointing out to you compulsory education is not that old. Now, it may have, I guess you know that in the United States it differs from state to state. And so if you go check Indiana's rules, I don't know what their rules were, how they managed this, but in Pennsylvania, the first truly compulsory educational thing was in 1932. Now, what you may read about American education is like way back in the 1830s, Horace Mann was one of the leading educators who brought about the laws that required every village in Massachusetts first and then later on throughout America to provide a school. [00:44:16] But that's not compulsory education. That meant every village had to have a school. And you could go to school, but you didn't have to. So what I mean by compulsory education is you have to go to school. And as you know today, that's pretty well entrenched. If it's in your state, 180 days or 170 days or whatever it is, you're pretty much required to do that. And it's not that I have a big, and by the way, I believe if that's what you're asked to do, then that's what you should do. Okay, so you don't hear me quibbling about that. [00:44:48] Just hear me saying that it was, compulsory education is relatively new. The reason I'm giving you all of this is because the Mennonite story over this time is interesting. Mennonites first came to Germantown in 1682. and I was long before education really got going here so they were educating their own children and Mennonites generally educated their own children for a number of years but once Horace Mann and crew got schools in place [00:45:18] and particularly in the post-civil war era almost all Mennonites sent their children to the public schools so essentially Mennonites left off educating their own children and began to send them to the public schools. My father was born in 1923. So you're a full, what, 1840, 60 years, two generations after the Civil War. He knew nothing. His father knew nothing other than going to the schools that were provided by the public. [00:45:56] And for the most part, those schools felt safe. I don't know that they were, even for myself. I was born in 1955. I went to school when I was five years old, so I was 1960 or running around or somewhere. And, you know, I remember in elementary school, Mr. Foreman, every Friday, he would come up to the, we'd had an assembly and everybody would come into the assembly. and somebody would play the piano and we would sing hymns and then he would get out his Red Testament. [00:46:32] I can still see Mr. Foreman with his Red New Testament and he would read from that Red New Testament and all of this felt like it was okay. But it was not okay. In fact, if you're my age, I'm 53. I know I look older than that, but I'll make no apology for it. I am 53. And here's the deal. If you're my age and you went to school in Pennsylvania, we really had, I had a traumatic experience because I, you know, I'm sorry to be so blunt here, but let me tell you. [00:47:10] My dad knew, he knew the schools, I just could not explain it to you, where the teachers read Bibles, they prayed with the people, there was nothing unusual. The people dressed decently. Everybody wore dresses and all such things in the schools. And I'm not saying they were all hunky-dory, but I'm just saying that for the most part, you wouldn't have felt that uncomfortable, probably. My dad is a very intelligent man, but he wasn't going to school then. I was. I remember of going to seventh grade, to the junior high school, and maybe some of you will be able to relate to this, and maybe you won't. [00:47:48] There I went into that high school as big-eyed as anything you ever wanted to see, and they told me that we were going to have to take group showers. I had never heard of a group shower. I couldn't believe there was any such thing. And I'm sorry to say I was so timid I didn't have the guts to go home and say to my, I didn't think my dad would even understand. I just thought I'll find some way to bear up under this, I guess. And so that's what we did. We little Mennonite boys, all of us did. [00:48:23] When we took Jim, out came, this is to our shame, I mean, I just don't, you know, out came our shorts and out came our t-shirts and when it was all said and done, at the end of that time, off they would come and we'd all go into the showers, 50 to 100 of us at one time. Now, I told my dad this after the fact, you know, years later. And I said, Dad, what I knew is if you would have walked into that place, you would have dropped over. And that would have been the last day I went to school right then. [00:48:54] That would have been the end of it. But honestly, I was hardly even thinking rationally in those days. So I was, I guess, too young. I was trying to cope with all of this. Now, what's that add up to? All of a sudden, in the 1960s, we got awake. We said, wait a minute. Who is educating our children? And by that time, the word was starting to leak out. Some of the things that were going on. Listen, I could tell you some tales. By the time I got out of high school, that, you know, to this day, I just escaped by the skin of my teeth. [00:49:33] I have no idea why well yes I do, I do now that I'm a little older girls going to school were attracted to Mennonite boys why were they? well simply because they saw stability there and they saw strength there they would have had, they couldn't, none of them could have, that I knew of could have articulated that consciously but way down deep underneath that's what they saw [00:50:04] and some of those girls knew how to turn up the heat some didn't escape some of us did I remember the old bishop in our community so as you can already tell I went through public schools graduated from 12th grade in 1973 That meant that I went to school right through the Vietnam era. Right through all the rioting, right through all of the rebellion, right through the drugs. [00:50:39] You know, I saw all that stuff firsthand at school on a regular basis. And I remember it was my last year of school when there was an attempt to start Anchor Christian School. at that time it was called Rose Strasburg Mennonite School it only had about 50% support but they had school anyway and my dad thought I should finish school because I was taking a vocational training [00:51:10] in mechanics, diesel mechanics and he wanted to see me finish that so I did so I never went to a Christian school some did my age but very few in the community where I grew up here's what changed the tune I have a yearbook at home that I don't know sometimes I think maybe I should burn It was my high school yearbook Today, the women today dress more modestly than they did in 1970 and 71 and 72, I'm telling you [00:51:42] You go look at some of that stuff, it's horrific Here's what happened The bishop in our community was not quite convinced that we really should have a Christian school, but he gave the okay, kind of. Here's why he gave the, well, then he really gave the okay. Here's why. He told me this with his own mouth. He's dead and gone now. He said, I'll tell you what, Melvin, I decided one day I'm going to drive down to the public school when it lets out tonight. So he said, I drove my car down there to the parking lot where I could see the entrance. [00:52:15] and I stopped my car and I just sat there and watched the children filing out of school. He said, I went home and told my wife we're having school. After he saw what he saw, he was very convinced and I didn't have the guts to tell him, brother, you didn't see the half. You didn't see but 10% of what the young men in your community are being subjected to [00:52:46] Day in and day out In truth, it was really not the subject matter that got me It was the social atmosphere It was downright intoxicating Absolutely As I think back on it, it really was And it was the right thing for somebody to stand up and say It's time that we make some changes But now just a little bit more on that and I'll be through then here with the first half of part one. [00:53:22] I applaud that movement. It was the right movement. But I want to tell you some of the flaws that were in it. Well, I think we must understand the modern Mennonite Christian school movement as a movement of reaction. Now, I don't mean to say that's wrong, but if you understand that, you'll see why it's easy for it to run out of steam. [00:53:55] It was a reaction to all of the stuff that was going on in the public schools. The content of evolution and militarism and the tendency to be assimilated on the social issues like I've been describing to you It was a right reaction, but it was a reaction And as a result, in my own home community, little thought had been given to the fact that we were totally unprepared to start Christian schools [00:54:25] We really were I mean, we thought, somehow we thought that if you just decided to do something that holy, mind you, if you opened the doors, everything would go perfectly. Well, we found out something, didn't we? At least we did in our home community, mind you. I'm telling you, those first couple of years were not very good years. My hat is still off to those who braved the era and did the work. Quite frankly, this is the reason my wife said I am not going to marry a farmer nor a teacher. [00:55:04] Teaching was not very popular in the teaching in the Christian school was not very popular in the Chambersburg area when I was a 19 year old. OK. The result was things didn't go so well. Now I say that, I hope you heard me right I deeply respect the people who made the moves to do something and to change All I'm saying is here we are now, so many years down the road [00:55:38] And I'll tell you what I've been feeling across the land I've been feeling this sense that, is it really worth it? I happen to know something about this I mean, I've been on just about every side of this. Boards, trying to raise the money, trying to teach the school, trying to recruit teachers, all of those things. And what we found out, this is hard work. And what we found out is this is not cheap. [00:56:13] And so, as time went along, it seemed as though people began to waver a little bit. Now, I am delighted to tell you that I have felt things swing in some good directions. I really have. I'm going to say something about that here in the second half this evening. Basically, what I'm saying is what I see happening about in the 1980s is that original movement. [00:56:46] You might call it the honeymoon stage. You might call it the startup. As it moved from that to the maturing of the Christian educational movement, we struggled to see that maturing happen. For example, when I first started to teach school, it was 1978. And my first year of teaching, I used mostly secular books. The community couldn't afford very good books, and so we bought, I believe, maybe like ten student books. [00:57:23] So I had a student book, like my students had. Same book. I had no test. I had no outlines. I had nothing like this. And so the result was, now and then I have to chide John Martin. He was my mentor in those days. I said, John, weren't you afraid I was going to die? How are we supposed to survive with all of this? But that's how we started out. I have never worked so hard before or since. [00:57:56] Got up early and tight like mad. I was young at those days. It had a little more energy and vitality. So I guess got by with it somehow or another. But, you know, just hard, hard work trying to get today. Bless the Lord. There is there are organizations, Christian light education. Rod and staff, other groups who have bothered to do some work in getting some curriculum on the floor that can be used and teachers actually have some tools, so I'm glad to report after 30 years of teaching that some things have changed, praise the Lord [00:58:31] there has been some mentoring, and I don't want to sound so negative Really, I hope by the time we're finished tonight that what you have is a renewed vision for what needs to happen next.