I was introduced to Bruce McIver's book, Stories I Couldn't Tell While I Was a Pastor when I was teaching at Fort Bend Baptist Academy in Sugar Land, Texas. Bruce McIver was pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas and his daughter was a parent of a student in my wife's first grade class at Fort Bend. Pastor McIver was a guest speaker at one of the school's grandparent's day events, and my wife was given a copy of the book.
I decided to read it when I heard her laughing uncontrollably at one of the stories he related, something that takes an understanding of the culture and life in a Texas Baptist church in order to find it amusing. It's a really enjoyable, uplifting book that reveals a pastor's heart, along with those inevitable circumstances that happen because people are people, even in a large, traditional Baptist congregation.
There are plenty of the kind of anecdotes that Dr. McIver offered in his book that also happen in a Christian school. They are things best discussed after those directly involved are no longer in a position to be the object of a joke, or they've had plenty of time to get over themselves and see things in a different perspective now. Those memories are for another time and place.
After spending 38 years as a teacher, coach, principal and superintendent in Christian school ministry, the kind of book I want to write first has a lot more to do with some of the things I've observed from where I've been that might contribute in some way to improvement in the way we do things, and into a more effective use of resources we have to work with.
Thirty-eight years is a long time. Actually, it's more like 43 years, but there was a time when I took a hiatus from Christian school and was involved in local church education and discipleship ministry, and that included teaching in an alternative high school, which was a much different atmosphere than a Christian school by any stretch of the imagination.
What Would I Write About?
Chapter 1: Defining Christian School Education for Evangelicals
The current era of Christian school education in the United States, what I would call a "movement," began in the 1950's as a response to the humanist influence over public education curriculum and instruction brought about by John Dewey's progressive education movement, which had taken over teacher training at most American universities by the 1950's. Humanism swept into the vacuum left behind by the inability of public school systems to navigate the religious neutrality required by the establishment clause of the Constitution. The first Christian schools started by Evangelicals in response to this educational philosophy began to appear in areas where it had the most influence first.
I use the term "movement," because it is one of those things among Evangelical Christians that finds its own path, rather than ministry that is organized around a specific purpose and with planning and resources committed to its success. Christian schools popped up at random, either associated with a church that started one, or a group of parents who got together to start one. And there was little cooperation or coordination involved. The independence and autonomy of most Evangelical churches, and by extension denominations, did not permit the kind of coordination and cooperation that the Catholics, Lutherans or even the Quakers had for their schools and churches working together.
So Christian schools sprang up where groups of parents perceived a need and put together the resources to start them. Just like churches, some areas have multiple schools from which to choose, while other areas, mainly those where resources are more limited, have none.
There are those who think this provides a distinct advantage to the schools, and in some ways, independence and autonomy has become critical to school success. But it has created a situation where the cooperation and support of like-minded churches is uneven. In most cases, Evangelical churches that don't have Christian schools of their own are not necessarily supportive of those that exist in their community. It is a fact that the reality of Christian school ministry is that most Christian schools are on their own when it comes to recruiting students, and raising the resources necessary to operate.
In fact, Midwestern Christian Academy has been the exception rather than the rule when it comes to the connection between the church and school, and financial support provided by the church. I've worked at four other Christian schools during my career, two as a teacher and two as an administrator, and all four were housed in facilities owned by a church. And in all four cases, the school was not only responsible for the lion's share of the maintenance and custodial care, but they also had to pay a monthly lease for the use of the buildings. MCA is an exception in this aspect of school support.
This lack of cooperative support to spread the costs of ministry operation out so that whole congregations or even denominations are providing much needed financial support to the schools, has proven to be costly to Christian school ministry. At its peak, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, the Christian school movement was reaching and serving only 20% of the families with school aged children in Evangelical churches. The rest of those families, no less in need of the kind of ministry to their children that the schools could provide, could either not afford the tuition and fees to send their kids to Christian school, or they did not live close enough to a Christian school to send them.
And even for most of the families who can afford to send their children, it is still a financial sacrifice.
There are models for success, though Evangelicals as a whole, representing thousands of independent churches in addition to more than a dozen different denominational groups and classifications, have not been able to lower those walls to extend the life of this ministry. Among Protestants, both the Reformed Church in America, and the Quakers, have developed school models tied to congregational support that opens the door for most of the families involved in the churches to provide a Christian education for their children. And of course, for decades, the parish and diocese schools of the Catholic church were able to offer affordable Catholic education to the vast majority of the children growing up in their churches.
In the case of all three of these examples, a significant portion of school experiences were underwritten by a denominational budget dedicated to Christian education, which, to them, meant everything they did for children and youth, including operating expenses of the schools. And as a result, each of those groups has had a high success rate in enrolling children in schools operated by the denomination, and has, as a result, seen a correspondingly high percentage of those children grow up and remain in practice of their faith.
Contrast that with the larger part of the Evangelical movement in America, where losing the younger generation has been such a chronic problem over the past three generations. According to multiple major church researchers, over 75% of the children and youth raised in an Evangelical church will leave the church and abandon any practice of their faith before they leave young adulthood. And with research showing that those who attend a Christian school are far less likely to do so, I've had trouble understanding why Evangelicals invest much more money, time and resources in construction loans to build capacious edifices used once or twice a week than they do on the Christian schools which support and undergird their ministries.
2. Taking Care of Teachers and Staff Whose Sacrifice and Commitment Benefits Students and Parents
When I signed my first teaching contract in a Christian school, I expected the pay to be lower than what I had earned from teaching in public school. I was also single, and had few financial obligations. My first contract, in 1983, was $14,000 a year, and I am glad that I had the foresight to have it distributed in 24 payments, instead of 20, even though it meant a smaller check. That was exactly half of what I had made in public school the year before. But it paid for a small studio apartment, groceries and a lot of fast food, a car payment and insurance, and an occasional movie or trip to the beach. And I enjoyed my job.
When one of my colleagues was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, and his lack of insurance forced him into the public hospital in Houston, I decided the $35 a month for the school's health insurance policy was worth the sacrifice. I'm still surprised at how many Christian school employees go without health insurance, even now. Over time, I've seen a colleague have to leave the Christian school teaching and coaching position he loved because his wife had complications during a pregnancy and they didn't have insurance. I've seen circumstances where a share plan that a school offered would not fully cover the better kinds of treatment for things like leukemia, breast cancer and a spinal cord tumor that I have seen colleagues experience. The last two schools I've worked for covered my insurance premium as part of the package, but only one of them did the same for teachers.
I think the question here is not so much the understanding that parents are sacrificing to send their kids to a Christian school where teachers sacrifice to help them do so, but how much of that sacrifice goes beyond the boundaries of our biblical obligations and our responsibility as Christians for the wellbeing and care of those who serve in ministry. There is nothing more disappointing in this ministry than to leave a board meeting where a teacher "raise" was compromised by a tuition increase not big enough to accommodate what was really necessary. Or to leave a board meeting where teacher raises couldn't be considered at all.
According to the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) the average teacher salary for a certified elementary teacher is $38,000 per year. That is at the very bottom of the salary ranking for college-educated professionals. Public school salaries vary greatly by state and local school district but less than 5% of first year public school teachers in the United States make a salary equal to or slightly greater than that. There are a few states where public school mandated starting pay is almost that low, but the average certified elementary teacher in the US earns $74,177 according to the NEA. That's still below average for certified professional occupations, and it indicates that Christian schools are maintaining a salary level 50% of that of their public school counterparts, but not gaining or improving on that.
In I Timothy 5:8, in a book of the New Testament where a literal application seems to be emphasized more these days than it ever has been before, Paul tells Timothy, "For the scripture says, "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading the grain," and, "The worker is worthy of his wages." He is citing Deutonomy 25:4, and Luke 10:7, a principle of the old covenant along side a principle of the Christian gospel revealed by Jesus. This applies directly, and literally, to the employees of a Christian school who are following a specific spiritual calling in their lives given by the Holy Spirit.
For many employees of Christian schools, including administrators, administrative staff, teachers, and support staff down to the custodians, the sacrifice they have made in accepting a salary well below the expected level for their occupation is the difference between almost half of the students who attend any given Christian school being able to afford the tuition. At the two schools where I have served as head administrator, I have calculated the difference between the current tuition and what it would cost, per student per year, to pay the teachers and administration the lowest entry level salary in the local public school. In Pennsylvania, where public schools pay as well as almost any other state in the nation, the tuition difference would have amounted to almost $3,500 per year, per student. At MCA, the difference is over $2,500 per year per student.
What's interesting is that raising the tuition at MCA by $2,500 would not even raise our tuition and fee expenses per student to what the next highest private, religious-based school in our area charges. We'd still be the least expensive private school in this part of the city. But raising the tuition to that level would definitely cause many families to reconsider their ability to afford tuition. Some of our 8th grade parents got some "tuition sticker shock" this past year when they found out how much a private, Christian high school was going to cost for their children, compared to what they have paid at MCA.
When we lived in Texas, sometimes a little humor helped make the sacrifice more endurable. One of the high school students noticed the difference between the kinds of cars parents drove through the car pool line, and the cars of the teachers and staff in the parking lot. So he did a survey, and found out that those big SUV's with the movie and computer screens, big, comfortable seats and lots of room collectively added up to a value that was almost twice the amount of the school's entire annual budget.
Against that backdrop is the fact that most teachers in Christian school today cannot afford health insurance, even with deep discounts chipped in by the school. And somewhere around 80% of those Christian school teachers who are the primary breadwinner in their home will not be able to have saved enough to have accumulated much, if any, pension income and will largely depend on Social Security. This includes my wife and myself, who tried, but were unable to set aside the kind of money required to invest in a retirement account. We retired on social security and medicare, and trust God that it will be enough.
This must change, or we will lose many of the surviving Christian schools that still operate, as Evangelical church attendance and membership drop like a stone in a well, drying up what resources are left to try and maintain overbuilt facilities dating back to better days. Christian school ministry has proven to be a much stronger, enduring investment than the billions Evangelicals have spent on capacious edifices and the debt service required to build them. RNS reports that the interest on church construction loans in the US runs over $1 billion annually.
And during the last two and a half decades, this problem has caught up to Christian schools. Half of the schools that were started in this movement that began in the 1950's have closed their doors since 2000. A large part of it has been the fact that schools were operating on the edge of their budget and as their Evangelical constituency declined so severely, that decline also included the families in the churches with school aged children who could afford Christian school. It might be different if schools had been able to work together to avoid overbuilding, established endowments and gained support of the churches, but this hasn't developed, and schools have closed. And while the number of members in conservative Evangelical churches in the United States has declined by 40%, Christian schools have lost 50% of their enrollment.
Until there is a vision that includes Christian schools as ministries which support the discipleship function of the local church, and are supported that way, we will continue to see schools close as the membership and attendance among Evangelicals continues to decline. It seems like a self-perpetuating problem. Christian schools, according to all the research, support and undergird church discipleship ministry that, in turn, supports evangelism and church growth. So if we're seeing a decline in Christian school enrollment, we will also see a decline in church attendance and membership.
First on the List
Well, those are a couple of topics that have just been waiting to come out. It's in writing, now and I hope it finds its way to a productive purpose when it comes to Christian school education. This isn't rocket science. But churches sometimes have a tendency to make tradition out of habit, and this is what happens as a result. We learn from experience.
I don't know when, or if, I will ever actually write a book. What I have written on the subject has been enough to fill several books, over the years. I''ve led seminars and conferences, helped teachers improve their personal perspective of Christian school education while improving my own, from integrating the truth of scripture into the practice of education. I have to hope that helps.
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