“The future of Christianity in the post-Christian
West hangs in the balance. If the faith is going to
survive within churches and communities, then
Christians are going to have to become far more
serious and intentional about education.”
and K-12 weekday education. Let me remind you that
the church has children for only a fraction of the time
a school has them each week. However, when a child
attends a school that teaches from a biblical perspective,
the church essentially has the child all week.
Recently, I came across an author I was unfamiliar
with. Rod Dreher recently published a book entitled
The Benedict Model. As best I can tell, Rod is heav-
ily influenced by the Catholic tradition but makes a
tremendous argument for the church’s involvement in
K-12 education. Rod says, “The future of Christianity in
the post-Christian West hangs in the balance. If the faith
is going to survive within churches and communities, then
Christians are going to have to become far more serious
and intentional about education.” 1 He quotes Professor
Michael Hanby’s statement that “education has to be at
the core of Christian survival—as it always was.”
Rod continues, “For serious Christian parents, educa-
tion cannot be simply a matter of building their child’s
transcript to boost her chance of making it into the Ivy
League. If this is the model your family follows (perhaps
with a sprinkle of God on top for seasoning), you will be
hard pressed to form counter-cultural Christian adults
capable of resisting the disorders of our time.”
He adds, “To compartmentalize education, separat-
ing it from the life of the church, is to create a false
distinction. Building schools that can educate properly
will require churches, parents, peer groups, and fellow
traveler Christians to work together. It will be costly, but
it will be worth it.”
Thankfully, we see pockets of awakening as we travel
the country. Pastors and church leaders who were once
strongly against investing in K-12 schools are starting
to see the impact they can have on a child’s life through
weekday education. They are beginning to realize that
weekday Christian education provides the greatest
opportunity, outside of the home, to win the hearts and
minds of children.
I recently spoke in Baton Rouge, LA and was blessed
to meet the pastor of a booming mega-church who
has caught the vision for Christian education. After 14
public school teachers approached him and asked if they
could start a Christian school, he began to get serious
about education. He agreed to help them, and only three
years later, they will soon have more than 1,000 students
developing a biblical worldview through their schools.
If we are going to save our current and future genera-
tions, there must be a paradigm shift in the church. We
must make the salvation and discipleship of our children
our highest and greatest goal. We can no longer afford to
send our children to non-Christian schools and expect
to produce young men and women who embrace a bibli-
cal worldview. We lost the vast majority of millennials
to secularism, and we simply cannot afford to continue
“business as usual” if we hope to save this generation.
God has raised up Renewanation to awaken the church
to the importance of giving children a biblical worldview.
We refuse to accept as normal the loss of 65-80% of our
evangelical children. If God has stirred your heart to get
involved in the work of rescuing our children from the
lies of secularism, please contact us and let us know how
we can be of service to you.
Jeff Keaton has been a successful pastor, church and school
planter, and ministry entrepreneur. As the founder and CEO
of Renewanation, Jeff works across the United States and
Canada to help awaken the church to the great need to
give every child a biblical worldview. Jeff is married to
Michele and has two daughters and a son-in-law: Julianna,
Andrew, and Heidi. He is the author of The Life of Radical
Faith. Visit his website at jeffkeaton.net.
FOOTNOTES
1. Rod Dreher, “Rod Dreher: A strategy for Christians in a post-Christian
world,” FoxNews.com, last modified March 13, 2017, http://www.foxnews.
com/opinion/2017/03/13/rod-dreher-wake-up-call-for-christians-before-
coming-dark-age.html.
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