The Official Site of Andy Boucher

A few years ago (2006-7), we were challenged to revision how to teach Bible at CSCS.  In that process, I became convinced that it was not that we need a completely new and regenerate BibleDepartment, but that we need a new and regenerate view of “why Christian education”,“why Bible” and “why we emphasize Spiritual Life” (or Student Ministries as wecall it at our school). This was written as part of that "revision".

I believe that a revolution needs to happen in our perspectivesof ourselves as a school; as individuals at the school; or our students and theirparents; of our position in this city, state, nation and world; and in therealm of Christian education.

The perspective that I feel we need to have can be described ina “we should not be” perspective or in a “should be” perspective”.  I will attempt to project a positive visionof what we could be rather than a vision that appears to be reactionary to whatwe currently are.

Since we are Christian schools weneed to look at things from the perspective of Christ—the One whom we followand are equipping and empowering our students to follow.  Jesus Christ taught us to pray that God’sKingdom would come and His will would be done on this earth as it is in heaven.Our overall prayer for our Christian schools, as institutions and as bodies ofbelievers, needs to be that God’s Kingdom would come and His will would be doneon earth in our day, in each student’s life and in every class that graduatesfrom our schools.  Our prayer andambition in and through our Christian schools is that God’s Kingdom would comeand His will be done in all the policies, operations, budgets, curricula anddecisions at that our schools make so that His will would be done in our lives andin the lives of our students; and that we as individuals and an institutionwould be His instrument through which God’s Kingdom comes and His will is donein our cities, around our states, throughout the country and to the ends of theearth.

Jesus, before leaving this earthgave His followers some instructions on how to see His Kingdom come and Hiswill be done on earth as it is in heaven. He said this:

All authority and power has been given to Me and you willreceive that power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.  You are to go and be My witnesses to all theearth, beginning in Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria and ultimately tothe ends of the earth.  You are to preachthe Good News to everyone, making disciples of those who believe and baptizingthem in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Teach them to obey everything that I’vecommanded you.  And be sure of this:  I am always with you and will work with youuntil the very end of this age.                                                              A combination oftranslations

I believe that our Christianschool can play a more instrumental role in the advancing of God’s Kingdom andwill on this earth without changing many of the programs, but in rather changingperspectives and filters.  I believe thatif we filter our current policies, budgets, programs, curricula—everything—throughsuch a filter that it will truly make our school distinct in the ChristianEducation community,  in the competitivecommunity of education in the region and in the Kingdom of God.  I suggest that we say the following:

In order that the Kingdom of God may come and the will of God bedone  in our day, in this generation,both in our lives and around the world, we will make disciples of our students andempower them with spiritual programs that are age appropriate, academicallysound, and biblically consistent.  Theywill be taught by biblically spiritual men and women who are academically,relationally and culturally prepared to teach them at each level.  We will then provide complementary programsof excellent education as well as quality athletics, fine arts and training inleadership, service and ministry.  Wewill do this so that upon completion of a students time at our school, ourstudents  will be young men and women whoare skilled, empowered and prepared to continue to advance the Kingdom of Godand His will for them individually and their generation and to the ends of the earth.

There is a saying goingaround that proclaims “now more than ever”. I agree with that sign—especially in a new way after a recent lesson andchallenge in church. 

• Now more thanever leaders in Christian educationneed to be training their students for ministry.
• missions should bean imperative and integral part of the prerogative of Christian education, nowmore than ever.
• Now more thanever the Church needs Christianeducation to be functioning as a servant partner[1] to local churches thatprovides biblical not-denominational training so that our common students aresolid in the tenents of our common faith, strong in their personal faith andbelief in Jesus Christ, and well equipped and trained for their service of thelocal and global church.
• Now more thanever the church needs to rise up andbring the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Over the history of the church, the population of the world hasoutstripped the growing Christian population[2].  There are more unsaved and unreached peoplein the world now more than ever in history.
• The 4.5 billion people in the world who don’t know Jesusand the 2.7 billion who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ needChristian education now more than ever to stand up and train students to advancethe Kingdom of Heaven more that than need Christian education to be aboutstandardized test score, academic rankings, comparative Christian school sizes,or state championships.
• Now more thanever Christian education needs toplay its true role in the fulfillment of the Great Commission by beginning atthe youngest ages to build a biblical mindset about evangelism, the Kingdom ofGod, and international missions.

K-12 Vision

• I have a visioninvolving the entire K-12 student body in a progressive missions emphasis program that begins withage appropriate missions, service, and outreach teaching andactivities that culminates with student voluntarily leading their own missions trips in their Junior andSenior years in high school.
• I envisionpartnerships with organizations like the Springs Rescue Mission, Camp Elim andother local ministries to progressively build a passion and habit of missionsand outreach[11]into our student body.
• I envision CSCSgraduates who consider the Great Commission as their number one calling and avocation as a vehicle by which to live out that calling.

Leadership Training Program;

• I envision amissions training track as a combined partof the Bible and Student Ministries Internship programs that specificallytrains students to think philosophically,theologically, and practically about planning missionstrips.  This track would be the capstone of ourmissions emphasis for those who desire to focus onleading missions trips and would have the emphasis on student led trips.
• In order to do so,our long term vision is to establish long-lasting domestic partnerships withwhom we can develop the concepts of missions and service that are ageappropriate as well as enduring relationships with a foreign missions programfor our fundamental missions experience as well as.  We are looking for foundational foreignprograms that:
• give our students atrue and meaningful experience working in a needy country;
• provide a safe, aswell as socially, emotionally, and spiritually challenging internationalexperience;
• provideopportunities for students to explore missions beyond high school;
• have a staff andsystem that is sympathetic to our missions training vision and our passion forstudent led-leadership;
• are desirous topartner with us and our missions vision.

[1] Philosophy of Youth Ministry in a ChristianSchool abridged, Andy Boucher, 2008, p. 5, paragraph 2.

[2]

Year Estimated Christian Population Estimated World Population Estimated Unsaved People Estimated Unreached People Groups

100 AD 1,000,000 (.0055%) 181,000,000 180,000,000

60,000

1000 AD 50,000,000 (18.5%) 270,000,000 220,000,000

50,000 (220 million never heard the Name of Jesus

1989 AD 1,700,000,000 (32.6%) 5.200,000,000 3,500,000,000

12,000

2010 AD (www.JoshuaProejct.net) 2,200,000,000 (32.8%) 6,720,000,000 4,500,000,000

6,838 (2.74 billion people haven’t heard the Name of Jesus) (40.8%)

written October 2009

My Summary: 

In this new economic and cultural climate, I believe that Christian education plays an even more important role that it has been given credit for in the church and even in the world of Christian education. As we move forward, I believe that Christian education needs to quickly transition from being another option of educating our children alongside the public and charter schools and homeschooling; and from an opportunity to provide better academic education and athletic state championships into a effective movement of preparing Christian students to serve the Kingdom of God both in and out of the church. Christian education doesn’t have the luxury of being mediocre or trying to be like other schools. Christian education must be unique in its target, focus, and outcomes. Christian educators must think beyond test scores, sports championships, buildings, and endowment funds (all of which are valuable and indespensible to excellent Christian education), and must focus on preparing our students to be active Kingdom leaders in a changing world. Christian students must learn to take a proactive lead in all areas of ministries both in the church and in the work place. We can no longer simply hope that our students understand how to be a physicist from a Christian perspective or a politician from a Christian perspective. They need to be blatantly instructed that Christian statisticians behave and analyze and report in this way; pastors act and live and preach like this or that, and so on.  This is just the beginning of the changes we need to make. 

In the bullet points below, I have pulled ideas and quotes from the Internet Monk's 3 blogs on the "Coming Evangelical Collapse" that I believe applly to the needed changes in  Christian education and the up and coming role of Christian education as Evangelicalism collapses.

Teaching Doctrine

Christian teachers need to teach their students so that their students are able to:

• Understand and articulate the Gospel with coherence;
• Understand and articulate the basics of the Christian faith in the orthodox form
• Understand and articulate why they should obey the Scriptures
• Understand and articulate the essentials of theology and experiences of spiritual disciplines and community
• Understand and articulate the strong core of evangelical beliefs
• Have a confidence in the Bible
• Understand and articulate how to follow Christ in a post-Christian, post-Evangelical, post-Protestant era
• Identify heresy (not just cults), relativism, and confusion within Christian doctrine
• Understand and articulate the value of Biblical authority
• Understand and articulate accurate Biblical views on the economic implications of the Gospel and Christian living and affluence and identify the difference between Biblical views and the adaptations of current cultural views into Christianity.

Teaching Ecclesiology

Christian schools need to teach:

• That church an approach to church that is more than “the pragmatic, therapeutic, church growth oriented mega churches”
• The value of the historical churches
• The basic call of the church
• The preservation and communication of the essentials of the Gospel and the church itself
• The importance of innovation, being missionally minded, being historically and confessionally orthodox
• How to be culturally appropriate

Teaching Leadership

Christian schools need to provide leadership training that:

• Teaches biblical authority and how it relates to leadership in the church
• The importance of strong Biblical leadership [Henri J.M. Nouwen/C. Clark]
• Teaches innovation in re-structuring churches and church organizations

Other Conclusions:

• With the predicted passing of the traditional seminary system, I (Boucher) see the role of Christian education as being an important baseline of preparing students to be lay and vocational participants in the church in the areas of core orthodox doctrines, practical methods of leadership, the Gospel, spiritual disciplines
• I see the role of the internship program and mentoring as being key
• Christian school can no longer produce a product that simply holds the line in the rising tide of secularism (blog 1, point 2) or simply be used by the Christian community to staff its own needs and talk to itself (blog 1, point 4)

In the last 6 months I’ve read the online commentary of the Internet Monk on what he calls “The Coming Evangelical Collapse” (this is the first of 3 blogs on this subject).  I recommend reading it and would love to discuss his ideas and its implications for youth ministry and especially for Christian education. Here is my summary of his three bogs. I’d love for comments to my summary and forthcoming analysis.

The Christian education response to “The Coming Evangelical Collapse”.

Big points:

• Evangelical Christianity’s association with the right-wing, republican, conservative culture war.
• Need for more intentional Gospel and ecclesiology training of our young people

The theme that captured my attention in this series of blocks/articles was the idea of the training of young people. To me, this appears to be both the problem that leads us to this predicted collapse and the solution to the reshaping of Christianity through this process. Repeatedly, IM mentions his concerns about the teaching and training of our youth.

1. “Massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with coherence and are believing in a cause more than a faith.” (blog 1, point 1)
2. “Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the evangelical Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught.” (blog 1, point 2)
3. Our “evangelical culture …has spent billions…. [and] has produced an entire…culture of young Christian who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it.”
4. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey Scripture, the essentials of theology or the experience of spiritual discipline and community.” (blog 1, point 2)
5. “Christian education has not produced a product that can hold the line in the rising tide of secularism.” (blog 1, point 2)
6. “….evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.” (blog 1, point 4)
7. “A strong core of evangelical beliefs is not present in most of our young people, and will be less present in the future.” (blog 1, point 2)
8. “At the core of this collapse will be the inability to pass on, to our children, a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.” (blog 1, point 6)

• Ultimately the question is: how do we teach our students to follow Christ and “do church” in a post-Christian, post-evangelical America?

What the church will look like (which poses the question, if we’re training kids to be involved in church as lay or vocational participants, how do we train them?):

• “expect evangelicalism as a whole to look more and more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church growth oriented megachurches that have defined success….the result will be, in the main, a departure from doctrine to more and more emphasis on relevance, motivation and personal success…with the result being churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on their faith.” (blog 2, point a)
• “An evangelicalized Catholicism and Orthodoxy….I expect the reviews of the influence of evangelicalism in these communions to be decidedly mixed.” (blog 2, point b)
• “I believe the emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, become part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.” (blog 2, point d)
• “A small portion of evangelicalism will continue down the path of theological re-construction and recovery….a small, but active and vocal portion of evangelicalism will work hard to rescue the evangelical movement from its demise by way of theological renewal. …I do believe many evangelical churches and schools will benefit from this segment of evangelicalism, and I believe it will contribute far beyond its size to the cause of world missions.” (blog 2, point b)
• “Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches [like the SBC] will begin to disappear…” (blog 2, point e)
• charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism…who must decide whether their tradition will sink into the quicksand of heresy, relativism and confusion, or whether charismatic-Pentecostalism can experience a reformation and renewal around Biblical authority, responsibility leadership and a re-emergence of orthodoxy.”

•  “the key issue of leadership and the preparation of leaders leaves me with little hope that charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity can put its house in order…I see and hear little from this community’s younger leadership that indicates there is anything close to a real recognition of the problems they face.” (blog 2, point f)

Para-church ministries:

• “…parachurch ministries are going to become far less influential, and many will vanish…the same will likely be true…of Christian media to publishing.” (blog 2, point h)
• “I believe that the missionary sending agencies of evangelicalism will survive…but will be greatly weakened.” (blog 2, point i)

Predictions:

• “… the most basic calling of the church: the preservation and communication of the essentials of the Gospel in the church itself.” (blog 3)
• …innovative, missionally minded, historically and confessionally orthodox churches to “Emerge” in the place of the traditional church…developing new and culturally appropriate churches.” (blog 3)
• “…a unity where the cleavage between doctrine and spiritual gifts isn’t’ assumed.” (blog 3)
• “the ascendency of charismatic-Pentecostal influenced worship…if that development is joined with the calling, training and mentoring of leaders…and more…influence of the movement of the Spirit in Africa and Asia.”
• “Coming to terms with the economic implications of the Gospel [which has] proven particularly difficult for evangelicals. Perhaps the time is coming that this entanglement [of theology and personal affluence and success] will be challenged, especially in the lives of younger Christians.”
• “Christianity has flourished when it should have been exterminated.”
• “…new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. New kinds of church structure, new uses of gifts, new ways to develop leaders and do the mission…will appear.”
• I expect to see a substantial abandonment of the seminary system…to church based seminaries to internet schools to mentoring and apprenticing arrangements.”