Desert Christian Schools

Trials reveal a lot!  CS Lewis said that ‘suffering reveals what we believe about God’.  Suffering does not take faith away or build it; it just reveals what is there, ‘If there is no root, the plant withers’.  Over the holiday Mrs. O’Hair and I read a book out loud together, ‘The City of Tranquil Light’ by Bo Caldwell.  It is the story of a missionary couple in China in the early 1900’s.  They lose their first born daughter to dysentery.  In the pain and anguish one of them points out that God does not require that we understand what is doing, He does ask us to trust Him.  Suffering reveals whether we trust God or not or to what degree we trust Him.

This past Christmas holiday a former student of Desert Christian High School was in a bad auto accident.  This young lady is currently in a coma with a substantial brain injury.  Her family is hanging onto the Lord in the midst of their pain.

One thing that is encouraging me in his ordeal is the behavior of some DCHS grads to this situation.  Several young men and women friends of the young lady have been at the hospital daily and are serving her family in this difficult time.  The love, service and selflessness of these DCHS graduates touches my heart.  I am encouraged by their maturity, compassion and kindness.  They are displaying the fruits of the spirit in the midst of a confusing and painful situation.

I commend these young men and women for their maturity and Christlikeness that I see in their actions.  They are truly living out 1 John 3, ‘let us love not in word or tongue but in deeds an in truth’.  So often this generation gets rightly hammered for their self-centeredness and lack of involvement yet in this instance I am seeing a depth that is glorious.

God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, so understanding suffering is not easily discerned.  God is good and we are called to trust Him in all situations.  Showing the love of Christ is something we can all do whether in pain or not.  I rejoice in His grace expressed in the love of His children.

I am doing a series looking at the 10 commandments and the progression God has built into the commands and its impact on our worldview.  This is an idea I learned from Vishal Mangalwadi in his book Truth and Transformation.  The first commandment tells us there is only one God.  The foundation of all the other commandments is this commandment to have no other God’s before you.  The second commandment tells us not to make an idol (an image of any god).  Since there is only one God putting anything in the place of that one true God is wrong.

Last month I began a series for this blog of looking at the 10 Commandments and the progression they communicate.  Each command is built upon the previous one and as a whole they speak to all of life and our worldview.  This is an idea I picked up from the book Truth and Transformation by Vishal Mangalwadi.

So building off of the first command to have no other gods, the second command tells us not to make an image of any god (an idol).  If our worldview begins with the truth that there is only one God, then worshipping any object or thing is a corruption of the truth that there is one God.  Jesus said to the woman at the well that God is seeking worshippers who worship God in spirit and truth.  Spirit is non-material (Luke 24:39 – “for a spirit does not have flesh and bone”).  So God tells us not to look to the stars or sun, or to look at the created things in our world as objects of worship.  God wants us to worship what is true and not a fake god or a lie.

In our modern world we are being called to worship many created things and not the creator.  For example we hear people talk about 'mother nature’, as if nature is a personal being.  The advent of radical environmentalism is placing the creation ahead of the creator.  Radical environmentalism sees nature as a being that is being harmed (the move Avitar depicts this) and who needs to be worshipped and protected.  In the US culture there are other gods being touted; sex being glorified by the media, political power promising solutions to everything, wealth and prosperity seen as the goal of life, sports and sports figures as more important than life.  The danger for us all is the ease to which we can begin to make these our gods and worship their images; they easily become the focus of our affections and worship.

Mr. Mangalwadi says, “Whoever makes your gods will also make your morality.”  So look how these false gods are changing our morality in America.  Resources are not used, it is better to protect the environment rather than use resources to ease human needs or suffering.  Sex outside of marriage is expected and sought!  Pornography is normal and “healthy”!  Government can solve our problems, electing the right party will save us!  Money will make us happy.  Win at all costs.  These false gods enslave, they do not set us free.  They corrupt us and destroy us.

What you worship defines you and controls you. 

Our worldview informs what we value and how we act. At Desert Christian we teach that there is but one true God.   A major focus for us is on the true God and what He is like.   God transcends His creation; He is separate from and over it.  The true God is the one who commands and reveals true morality, which frees and liberates us.  He is to be worshipped and Him alone.

The world is a marvelous thing to be studied and explored because it is created by a wise loving God. We all need to learn to worship God in spirit and in truth!

A good friend recommended a book to me this summer, ‘Truth and Transformation’ by Vishal Mangalwadi, it is published by YWAM.  In one of the chapters Mr. Mangalwadi explains how the 10 commandments are connected to each other.  They are a progression of one building on the other.  This is a wonderful idea.  I want to explain and develop his thoughts on this over the next few months.

In Deuteronomy 12:28, God tells the people,  "Be careful to listen to all these words which I command you, in order that it may be well with you and your sons after you forever, for you will be doing what is good and right in the sight of the LORD your God.”  The commandments were given to help us to know and do what is good and right with the result that we and our children would prosper.

With the fall and sin we have been corrupted.  Evil brings death and destruction.  Righteousness brings life and health.  God is working to redeem us and our world.  The commandments address our worldviews (our view of reality) and the consequences of those worldviews both positively and negatively.

The first commandment, to have no other God before us, is the starting point.  The starting point of any worldview is that view of God.  There is one true God and there are many false gods.  We in our minds choose to believe who is God.  “Putting some created thing in the place of God is the greatest evil,” is what Francis Schaeffer said.  That is the definition of an idol, some created thing put up in the place of God.  Idols can be man-made things (like a statute) or actions.  In Ephesians 5:5 Paul says that immorality, impurity or covetousness are forms of idolatry.  What that means is that sexual sin is idolatry.  Many people are putting sex in the place of God.  They are breaking the first commandment.

Idolatry leads to poverty and destruction.  In less developed nations where people worship idols, the idolatry changes their whole view of reality and the world.  I have seen people in Kenya who worship idols paralyzed by fear of doing something because of how the ‘god’ would react.  They would not seek to change the situation but work to appease the deity.  I see that same helplessness in the lives of those caught up in sexual addictions.  Their idol is controlling them, improvising them, killing them!

Our God is a forgiving and gracious God.  We are called upon to confess and repent and turn back toward God, to have no other God before us than the true God.  Have you put something or someone else up in the place of God?  It is time to put aside our idols and put God first.

Let Us Shine for Christ

"Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe."-- Philippians 2:14

When I was about 11 years old I had a memorable fight with my younger sister. We were home alone; my folks had gone out. Like clockwork, when they left we started fighting, verbally and physically. I hit my sister in the solar plexus and knocked the wind out of her. I thought I had killed her! After that incident, I never hit her again, but boy did we still argue.

Did you argue and fight when you were kids? Do your children argue and fight? This seems to be a common human issue. Have we grown-ups changed that much? How do we act at sporting events when we are faced with poor officiating? How do we react when the pressure is on?

We live in a darkening world. There is evil all around us. If anyone should have had a negative outlook on life, the apostle Paul qualified. Paul wrote Philippians while in a Roman jail awaiting his execution. Yet Philippians is a book whose central message is a focus on joy.

Paul's admonition to believers was to do everything in life without complaining or arguing. Why? Because, complaining and arguing short circuit what God is trying to accomplish in our life. Whatever is happening to us is no surprise to God. James (James 1:2,3) tells us to consider it all joy when we encounter various trials, because we know that those trials are a test to our faith. Will we trust God when things are hard? For trusting God will produce endurance which will have a perfect result of making one mature.

Look at the similarity of the conclusion Paul offers in Philippians 4:4-6 – “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” and 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

God reveals through Paul in Philippians that the result is that we will shine like stars in a dark world. So for the sake of Christ, let us work to avoid complaining and arguing and to begin shining like stars.

Identifying our Trials as Pure Joy

I have been talking with several different friends recently who are going through some tough times. Tough times come to us all.  Some of these trials we bring on ourselves and other times we are caught unaware.  Either way when difficulties come we have a choice in how we respond to them.

In Genesis 1:26, 27 we are told that God made us humans in the image of God.  In Genesis 2 God proceeds to tell Adam to do certain things that reflect the image of God, like work and take care of the garden (2:15).  This shows that man reflecting the image of God is to enter chaos and bring order to the creation, just like God did.  Adam is told to name the animals (2:19).  God names the stars (Isaiah 40:26) he renames Abram, Jacob and Simon.  People were built to name, just like God.

Dr. Larry Crabb in his book ‘The Safest Place on Earth’ says because of the fall, our capacity to name has been corrupted and we use it to declare and define our circumstances.  We name things, good and bad, healthy and sick, constructive or disastrous, in short life or death.  We proclaim things a reality based on our understanding of the situation. So in our trials we tend to say this event is horrible and terrible and then use that statement to justify our efforts to get out of or end the trial.

God has a very different perspective on such matters.  His view of our trials is not as negative as ours.  He tells us trials should not unsettle us (1 Thessalonians 3:3).  We are told to consider trials as a joy! (James 1:2 and 1 Peter 1:6).  He also says trials should be of no surprise to us (1 Peter 4:12).  Why does God have such a different view of trials than us?

God is all wise and all powerful and He has a goal in mind for us.  He wants to transform us to the character of Christ (Romans 8:29).  He changes us completely when He saves us (2 Corinthians 5:17).  So we are already changed!  We have no reason to be trying to change ourselves by our efforts.  We are His children and we are not on probation!  God’s focus now for our lives is for us to mature.  This is why we can consider it pure joy when we encounter various trials.  These trials are a test of our faith (do we trust God, rely on the fact that He is good, and depend upon His grace?)  Trusting God in a trial produces perseverance which God uses to mature us.

Dr. Crabb’s point is that our passion to define what we think is life or death is evidence of our walking in the flesh, and that walking the in Spirit is displayed by a passion to grow!  Do we want to grow up?  Are we committed to allowing God to do what He needs to do to form us into the image of Christ?  Is it our passion to grow or to get out from under trials?

As Hebrews 2:18 points out we have a high priest (Jesus) who has suffered and knows what it is like for us and can help us through.  He identifies with us.  He is aware of what we are going through and he gave us an example (1 Peter 2:21).  Let us consider it pure joy!

The Bibles’ View of Children

My eldest son and his wife just had their first child last month.  Momma and Gracelynne are healthy and well, for which we thank God.  Mrs. O’Hair and I are grandparents for the first time!  It is quite a thrill.  Yes, you do show pictures to complete strangers and you do not care if they are interested or not!!  It is so much fun.

When my wife and I lived in Kenya in the 1980’s we heard a comment many times from our African friends.  Why is it that you westerner do not like children?  We would ask what they meant.  They saw that we westerners had very few children and they thought that it must be because we did not like children.  The thought being, if you like children, you will have many.  I laughed off this thought as a cultural difference.  .

Once  we returned to live in the US, one of the things I kept an eye on is our country’s  view of children.  There is much talk about concern for the ‘little children.’  It is declared that our political decisions reflect a compassion for kids, yet so many of our policies are not good for children.  I have the feeling that this ‘concern’ is more expedience and not genuine concern.  Do we, as a culture, really like children?

America aborts about 1.2 million babies a year (2005).  We have 4.1 million live births a year (2005).  So 20% of our children never make it to birth.  The majority of these abortions are because people do not want the baby.  That says something about our view of children.  We want them when it is convenient for us.  The incidence of sexual abuse of children is growing too, either from better reporting or because more people see children as something (not someone) they can abuse.  Five children a day in the US die from some form of abuse and 80% of those are under the age of 4.  An estimated 6 million children a year are abused!  Do we as a culture really like children?

Have you ever been on an airplane when there is a crying baby?  Did you notice the reaction of people for the child or for the mother?  Do we really like children?  It seems our culture tends to think of children as something that hinders and limits a person.  Children should be seen and not heard!   A child is an economic drain on an adult.  Children are a nuisance. 

That is not Gods view of children.  The Bible says children are a blessing from God (Ps. 127:3).  They are a gift from God to parents.  They are also a trust.  A child is a person that God places in the home to be loved, develop and prepared for whatever God wants for them (Prov. 22:6).  Children are important to God (Mk 9:42).  They are vulnerable and weak.  They each bear the image of God (Genesis 1:26,27).  They reflect something of God that no other person has or ever will reflect.

At Desert Christian we like children!  We embrace God’s view of children as a blessed gift.  In fact, as a school, we only exist because God created children!  As a school we want to partner with parents in seeing their children develop and mature to become the man or woman God created them to be.  We value each child and we want to teach them what they need to know what God wants them to go do and be.  We see in each child something of our Lord being reflected that we want to see shine forth for God’s glory.  Children are a treasure.  Therefore, as Christians, may it never be said of us by either word or action that we do not like children. 

Links:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html - Live births

http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics/ - Abuse

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.html  - Abortions

I recently spoke with all of the teachers and staff of DCS.  I shared, out of Deuteronomy chapter eight, the words that God gave to the children of Israel as they sat poised to enter the Promised Land.  They had just spent 40 years wandering in the desert and were now moving into a permanent home.

God first calls on them to remember.  He wants them to remember how He has led and provided for them the past 40 years.  He explains how He has humbled them through the ways he led them, by allowing them to be hungry and through the provision of manna.  God was training them. (Deut. 8:2-3)

There is a parallel here for us in the DCS community.  God wants us to remember what He has done for and to the DCS community.  God has humbled DCS through the years.  He led us to begin at Christ Community Church, move over the El Camino then to purchase the Speedway property.  We did not own property of our own for many years.  DCS has been a humble organization; we have not had much compared to some schools and we have always been mindful to rely on God to provide everything from salaries to buildings.  God has provided for DCS each step of the way, God has been training us.

In Deuteronomy 8, God then tells the children of Israel about the kind of land He is moving them into, a land of good things and abundance.  He wants them to bless the Lord for his provision and blessing.  God also warns them that when they prosper and eat and enjoy abundance that they will be tempted to forget the Lord and become proud.  Their humility and dependence will give way to pride and forgetfulness and disobedience. (vs. 7-14)

The danger for DCS is that as we prosper with our own facilities and see our students succeed that we will come to that place where we might forget the Lord and all He has done and to be humble.  We run the risk of thinking our abilities and methods have brought us this success.  The fact is that God gave us our abilities and these facilities and He has blessed our efforts and He alone is worthy of the glory. 

The last part of this passage is God warning his people that after forgetting Him and becoming proud they would then begin to disobey Him and give their love to worship something other than God. (vs. 19) The danger for us at DCS is that we would subtly begin to not love the Lord but start loving the world and what it claims.  We could lose our first love and choose not to obey the Lord. 

There is a pattern here of cause and effect that is seen in many Christian educational institutions.  We begin to enjoy success (good academic and athletic success).  People flock to success, the world praises you for what you are doing and we grow to like the accolades.  We could slowly move away from humility and dependence on God to pride and reliance on our efforts.  We could then begin to want to reproduce our success and start loving that more than the Lord.  The move away from reliance on God leads to falling out of love with God and falling in love with the world.

So how do we prevent this from happening?  First, we (the leadership, faculty and staff of DCS) need to remember the Lord and all he has done (Deuteronomy 8:2) for us in DCS.  Second, we must humble ourselves (1 Peter 5:5) and not become proud by focusing on our accomplishments.  Third, we must rely and depend on God (Proverbs 3:5-7) and not on our methods and techniques.  Last, we need to guard our hearts (Proverbs 4:23) to make sure to love the Lord (Mark 12:30) and obey Him (John 13:34,35).

These instructions and warnings are not particular to DCS, but applicable to all Christians.  Let us keep our eyes on Jesus as we walk forward.

Is Christian Education a business or a ministry?

I was recently reading an article written by Dr. Mark Eckel, the plenary speaker at our ACSI conference this year, on the question whether Christian education is a ministry or a business.  It got me thinking and wanting to put down in writing my thoughts on the matter. 

One of the things about being a private school is that we operate financially like a business.  Families enroll students, tuition is paid and results are expected.  There are business components to what we do.  So is this a ministry or a business?

I choose to refer to our endeavor primarily as a ministry for several reasons.  I know we have to conduct certain aspects of this ministry in a business way, finances, bookkeeping, paying teachers, and overseeing facilities.  Those are all operational activities to be able to conduct the real purpose at hand, partnering with Christian families in educating and discipling students.

See there is a danger in looking at Christian education as a business.  The business model of education is built on some presuppositions that are a problem with a Christian worldview.  Most people today think of private education as a business.  That is why there is a call to bring competition into the market place of education.  Break up the state monopoly in education and let competition and market force develop good schools, people say. 

In business you have a producer who provides a product or a service to a customer.  In the business model the responsibility is on the producer to give to the customer what he or she wants.  When this idea gets into education and becomes primary then several things go wrong in the worldview department.  The student starts to be viewed as a thing (blank slate) onto which instructional inputs are applied and after an appropriate amount of time and pressure a person capable of making a contribution to the economy of the country comes forth.  Ouch! People do not grow and develop this way; we are not machines--let alone blank slates.

 Another thing that is assumed is that the producer (teacher or school) is capable of making something happen to the child.  People think good teachers produce the educational objectives in students.  There are things a teacher can control and cannot control.  The outcomes in a child are not something a teacher has control over.  The problem here is that the responsibility of the child and family in their education become secondary to the teacher!  Hebrews 5:14 says that each person is responsible for their own learning.  The teacher has responsibilities, to ensure the subject matter is being covered and taught, that the classroom is conducive to learning, that students are monitored for behavior and their learning.  The teacher is not responsible for whether a student learns or not, that is what a business model implies.

Thirdly, in a business model the consumer is ‘always right’.  The consumer wants and needs drive the producers endeavor.  This is opposite for a ministry.  As a ministry we are motivated by what God commands and tells us what is best for people.  We are committed to speaking the truth in love over telling you what you want to hear.

A child is an image-bearer of God.  Each one uniquely reveals something of God that no other human in history has shown.  Children are also fallen people, they have a sin nature.   As John Eldridge says,’ they are glorious ruins.’  They are unique persons, designed and crafted by God with certain attributes and talents which we can enhance or ignore, but not produce.  They are fallen people who struggle with sin and its consequences.  These individuals are also responsible before God for their choices.  They are not blank slates or raw material (things) but significant individuals.

There is a responsibility for a teacher, as the Bible says it is to be faithful (1 Corinthians 4:2), faithful to model Christlikeness, to teach with passion, control the learning environment.  Learning is the responsibility of the student!  These are not business principles but Biblical mandates for both the teacher and the pupil.

My answer to the question about ministry or business is that Christian education is a ministry, because we are passing on the truth of God from one generation to another.  Not necessarily giving the child what they want but what they need.  Not giving the parent a finished product but developing the built-in bent that God has created in each child.  All of this is done for the glory of God and not for financial gain.  We minister to the child and family to advance the kingdom of God, not to make a profit!

The Sacred-Secular Split in Our Culture

Twenty-Five Years of Discipling Young People

For 25 years Desert has been discipling students while giving them a liberal arts education from a Biblical worldview.  These three cords have been, are and will always be the distinctive for DCS.    Dr. Spears of BIOLA says, ‘Education should be about revealing to students what is real or true about the world!  Education used to be about understanding ourselves, our world and our role within it.  Public education today is not so much about truth or morality as it is about tolerance and contributing to our economic growth.’

Developing hearts that are willing to follow Christ

I recently read an excellent interview in World Magazine* with Phil Vischer.  Mr. Vischer is the creator of ‘VeggieTales’.  The interview has several thoughts and ideas that really resonate with me about what we are facing here at DCS.

In the interview Mr. Vischer says that he spent 10 years with ‘VeggieTales’, “trying to convince kids to behave christianly without actually teaching them Christianity.”  Telling kids to behave because the Bible says so, “isn’t Christianity, it is morality.”  This is a very big distinction, our desire is not to produce moral people, it is to produce young men and women who are willing to follow Jesus as His apprentices.  So many times Christian schools are teaching kids to behave, be moral, follow the rules without developing in them a heart to listen and follow Jesus wherever He leads.  I believe that many of the kids who are told to be moral come to the belief that life will work out for them if they are moral.  When they go off to college they see people living fun ungodly lives and feel they have been fooled about where life is found.  They ‘fall away from their faith’ and live in the flesh.  It is costly and painful to follow Christ, to be conformed to His image.  This is why Paul told the Thessalonian believers that they would suffer to follow Christ (1 Thess. 3:4). If Christ was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3) why would we expect to be different from Him?  This is not an easy message to pass on to kids.  Do not get me wrong, obedience is important but not as an end in itself, knowing Christ is the end we must pursue.

A second though he shared was that we are not called to be a people of vision; we are called to be a people of revelation.  Mr. Vischer pointed out that we have made our vision or our dreams sacred.  We are told it is most important to pursue our dreams over everything.  This is not right.  We are to pursue God in Christ!  He reveals, He speaks and we follow!  Our hopes, our dreams, our visions for ourselves are secondary to what God is saying and commanding us.  John Eldridge says discipleship is learning to follow Jesus in wisdom and spirit.  There are two areas of revelation that we are exposed to, the Scriptures and the Spirit.   We learn the wisdom of Christ through the scriptures.  At DCS we want our students to be people of the Book.  That they learn to read, study, memorize and meditate on the word of God.  In the scriptures they will learn about Christ and what he commands us to do and how to live.  In learning to follow Christ in spirit we learn to listen to the Spirit of God, to moment by moment keep in step with the Spirit.  The Spirit of Christ lives in us who believe (Romans 8:9) so learning to recognize and hear His voice and follow Him is key to being His disciple.  As a school we want to help students come to know how God has gifted and oriented them, to know themselves.  That revelation must be in the context of following Christ or else they will follow themselves and put their interests over Christ’s.

What is worth valuing?

Our house was recently burgled.  While we were out, some men broke down one of our doors and came inside and stole a variety of things from us.  As any of you who have been through this experience know there is a feeling of violation, of loss, and of helplessness.  We live outside the Garden of Eden and man’s sin is painfully evident.

You progressively discover what else has been stolen for a few days after events like this.  Just today I discovered they had stolen our iron!  For me it has been interesting to see how I react when I discover that something else is gone from my possession.  Most of it is stuff that can be replaced and aside from the annoyance of going and getting the replacement it is really not emotionally difficult.  There are a couple of things I am truly going to miss.  It is the things that have sentimental value that are hardest to lose.

I relate all of this to you to ask, what has value to you?  Jesus said in Luke 12, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."  He told us that possessions, even in abundance, do not make up one’s life.  We live in a country and at a time in its history when we have lots of things!  Our things do not make our lives.  The ancient Hebrews knew about what is valuable.   Proverbs says that ‘to gain wisdom is better than getting gold or silver’ (16:16).  I wonder how many of us actually believe that truth in modern America.

Those of you who are choosing to send your child to a Christian school are making a large sacrifice.  I used to teach economics and the idea of opportunity cost comes naturally to mind here.  Economists observe this phenomenon that they call ‘opportunity cost’ being played out every day by people.  When you purchase something it costs you not the money you spend on the item but it costs you all the other things you could have purchased with that money.  So choosing to send ones child to a Christian school and paying tuition costs the parent all the other things they could have purchased with that money, like a new car, or a larger house or a phenomenal vacation.   Opportunity cost reveals what it is that people value over other things or opportunities, what they are willing to give up in order to have a certain thing.

As a school we know that a person’s life does not consist of the abundance of their possessions.  The bumper sticker that says, “He who dies with the most toys, wins!” is not true.  People who have learned wisdom and knowledge have gained something of real value. 

Desert Christian works to teach and disciple students to give them a Biblically integrated education and to develop their faith.  Simply put, we are working to provide these students both knowledge and wisdom.  So how much is a Biblical worldview for your child worth to you as a parent?  How much is it worth to you that you have a school partnering with you to pass on shared values and beliefs?  How much is it worth to you to have teachers who are people of faith caring and teaching your children?

The Purpose of a Christian Education

Recently at my church one of our associate pastors spoke on Ephesians 2:10 about the idea of purpose.  What is our purpose?  Why are we here?  What does God want to do?  It was a good reminder about this question related to education.  Why do we educate our children?  What is the purpose of a Christian education?

The answer to these questions is tied to the overall question for our purpose for being. For what purpose did God make us?  Some say God made us because He was lonely.  Others say God needed someone to praise Him!  The truth is that God needs nothing.  He is self-sufficient in Himself.  We were not created to fill any gap for God.

Ephesians 1:4 says, “We were chosen by God before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”  God made us to be holy and blameless.  Holiness is the same as being righteous, to be perfect and pure.  To be blameless is to be someone who cannot be accused of anything wrong. No one can point the finger at you.  We were created by God to be holy and blameless.    Because we have willfully rebelled against God, none of us is holy and blameless.  Christ’s work on the cross addresses both of these areas.  His blood forgives our sin and makes us blameless and the sacrifice of his perfect body grants us the gift of the righteousness to our account.  (Romans 5:9 & 5:19)

God’s redemption returns us to a place of relationship with God.  We are now as God intended us to be, holy and blameless in Christ.   So what is the purpose of relationship with God?  I like the Westminster Catechism answer to the question of the chief purpose of man.  The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him.  We are created to bring glory to God and personally enjoy Him as God.  Bringing God glory is reflecting the image of God in us to our world.  Being who God made us to be in truth and humility.  Enjoying God is our experiencing the wonder, mystery and goodness of God for who He is and what He does.

So the answer to the question of what is the purpose of a Christian education begins with the answer to the purpose of man.  A Christian school has the high calling of instructing, modeling, and developing in young people their relationship with God.  The Christian school gets to teach students about God, His world, His people and to prepare them for whatever it is God has for them to do.   This then prepares the student to glorify God through their thoughts and actions and enjoy God.

At DCS if our students come to know God in Christ and learn to love God, love His people and love His world we will have succeeded in the purposes of God in the lives of those students.  That then can be judged as truly doing good!