HOW TO START A
CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
WITH LIMITED
FUNDS
By Jeff Keaton - Founder, CEO &
President of Renewanation
IN
2002, GOD PLACED ON MY HEART a call for the
church I was pastoring to start a Christian school. At
that time, I was unable to locate someone to lead us through the
process in any significant way. However, it was God’s plan, and
we successfully started a school with 37 students. By the begin-
ning of the seventh year, our school had grown to 388 students.
Starting a Christian school is a very challenging
endeavor, but it can be done, and at Renewanation,
we are fully committed to making it as
simple as possible.
Over the last few years, we have
been involved in helping launch
nine Christian schools. We have
been searching throughout this
process for the best practices to ensure
long-term success. It has been a trial and error
process as we have been trying to discover and build a
system that can be reproduced across the country and the world
by organizations both large and small.
We have many people call us each year about starting new
schools. They always tell us they need teachers and the money
to pay them. They also mention in passing it would be great to
have enough students to pay all the bills, but they don’t think
this is possible in the first few years.
In the 1960’s and 70’s, thousands of Christian schools were
launched. Many of them used a system that allowed small
organizations with small numbers of students to open schools.
Though some of these schools faced significant challenges, they
were the genesis of the Christian school movement in the United
States and helped produce several million Christian adults who
are impacting the church and our world today. Though the
school I started wasn’t launched until 2002, I used some of the
same principles and practices that were used in the 60’s and 70’s.
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