August 18th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

If you’re just joining us on this “why we’re homeschooling” series, you might want to go back and read Why We’re homeschooling, Radical Discipleship, and Packing for Ephesus!

Today’s post isn’t so much why we’re homeschooling as much as a basic look at the philosophy undergirding our general thinking about how we want to go about educating our children.

Among other things, I believe strongly that the education we provide for our children must not settle for being “adequate” or “comparable” – it must be excellent. My kids’ “pretend grandma” (who is an old family friend of my in-laws) was an administrator in a very well respected district in our area for many years – it breaks my heart when we talk about homeschooling and she has so many stories to share of families in the area who claimed to be “homeschooling” and were providing a very poor, substandard education for their kids. I think most of these homeschooling families are probably well intentioned, but I think that neglecting to provide excellent education is often a reflection of the “keep the kids out of public schools” mentality rather than a mentality of discipling our children and preparing them for the Ephesus of our day.

Now, when I say that I want my children to have an excellent, even superior, education, I have to be careful. Homeschooling, like anything else, can quickly turn into something motivated by pride and self-righteousness. Am I seeking to educate my kids in order to be little living trophies to my excellent parenting and homeschooling skills? [Ack - that sounds terrible even typing it as a question!] Or, am I seeking to disciple to follow humbly after Christ and equip them to engage their world with the good news He offers?

With that in mind, not only do I want my children to know Scripture extremely well:

I want my children to know math and science well- in our day and age, they must be well equipped to engage and answer the faith-challenging questions that come out of scientific fields. Sometimes Christians undervalue scientific study – but, this is our Father’s world! Proverbs 25:2 tells us, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” God’s glory is embedded in all of creation; as we study the intricacies of the human body, of the marvels of a butterfly’s metamorphosis, of the mathematical nature of music, it is an honor to us to learn it and it brings great glory to Him as the creator of it all! Truly, the “heavens declare the glory of God,” and home education gives fantastic opportunities to teach our children to see the Creator behind the creation!

I want my children to communicate well- from creative writing, to good grammar and spelling, to communicating through the fine arts or building a webpage, communication skills are not an end to themselves. Ultimately, homeschooling is not about preparing the next batch of crazy homeschoolers to win the national spelling bees! In the end, what it boils down to is that God has given us a message that needs to be communicated. The Scriptures echo with the message that God has communicated to us – through the written word and the Living Word – and He tells us to go and tell, to be a city on a hill rather than a light under a bushel. That message can be given through the internet, through the written word, through skillful conversation, through public speaking, through drama, through story, through art, through song!

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the jist. Education is not an end to itself. I pray that my children will master their areas of study, but not so that they can look down upon their peers with an air that says, “I’m smarter and better educated than you. I can spell better than you, I’ve memorized Oedipus Rex, I built a computer out of spare parts I found at a flea market, and I can speak four languages!” :) Once again it boils down to discipling them, training them, preparing them to engage their world with God’s Truth.

And to end with a laugh, I love this spoof video! :)

August 13th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Image via Wikipedia

So, continuing my ramblings about why we’re planning to homeschool…

On Tuesday I discussed what radical discipleship really means – today we’re going back to the story of Timothy to think about what that discipleship is all about – in Timothy’s life, it was about packing for Ephesus.

Let me explain.

First of all, consider the fact that Timothy was half-Jew, half-Greek. We are told that Paul circumcised Timothy before taking him on his journeys with him (Acts 16:3)- read between the lines: Timothy was completely on the outside of Jewish life and culture. He would not have been allowed to receive training in the Torah from the Rabbi, he would have been restricted in even participating in temple worship. Unlike the boys who grew up memorizing the Torah word for word, Timothy didn’t have that kind of access. However, that does NOT mean that he didn’t know the Scriptures.

2 Timothy 1:5 tells us that his mother and grandmother had “sincere faith,” which Paul was persuaded lived in Timothy also. 2 Timothy 3:15 tells us that Timothy had known the holy Scriptures “from infancy.” Guess who was teaching little Timmy? Mom and grandma. They had taught him the truth from infancy and prepared him to the extent that the other believers spoke well of him and Paul called him to follow him on his journeys – in other words, Paul took Timothy to be his disciple.

How old was Timothy at this point? In Kent and Ed Dobson’s message, Kent points out that the word used for “young” (describing Timothy) in 1st Timothy 4:12 actually means ‘under the age of 20′! Those letters were written years after this point, which means Timothy was probably around the age of 15! [This makes sense, considering that boys were selected around the age of 12 or 15 to follow rabbis.]

Paul sets out with young Timothy. They walk thousands of miles together. Imagine the discipleship that went on during those journeys – I’m guessing Paul was not one to waste time! Eventually, they spend three years in Ephesus.

Ephesus would probably blow our minds. Ephesus offered asylum to any criminal. It was the slave capital of the world. There was not a single believer in Jesus Christ when Paul arrived on the scene. The worship of Diana (or Artemis) was so central to life in Ephesus that we are told in Acts 20 that eventually as more people placed their faith in Jesus Christ and abandoned idolatry, it was upsetting the local economy and actually caused a riot! Into this pagan and corrupt culture Paul walks, with his 15 year old disciple Timothy. Every mom’s dream for her boy, right?

Eventually Paul leaves for further missionary journeys, and he appoints young Timothy to pastor the Ephesian church. Alone. In Ephesus.

Get this: Scholars say that in less than 100 years, Ephesus was 90% Christian. Partly because of a gangly teenager, an outcast from his culture, who was taught God’s Word from infancy, discipled well in adolescence, and equipped and sent to serve.

What does this have to do with us homeschooling? Here are a couple of points that come to mind.

•We do not expect enough of our kids.
I touched on this in the last post so I won’t dwell here. Just think about a 15 year old, acne spotted, gangly, vocally-unstable boy travelling alongside Paul. Called to follow a man who knew the Scriptures better than most anyone, who loved Jesus so radically he was stoned and beaten and threatened and arrested multiple times! And after a few years with his teacher, think of this very young man left alone in the Las Vegas of the day, called to pastor a young church without a single believer more than 3 years old in the Lord.

•We expect too much of our kids.
Nope, I’m not contradicting myself. We don’t expect enough of our kids when it comes to being a true disciple of Jesus Christ (because we don’t expect enough of ourselves.) But we expect too much of them when we send them out into the battlefields of our day without equipping them properly.

Paul didn’t just pluck a 4 year old kid out of Lystra and send him to pastor the church at Ephesus. He was diligently taught the Scriptures as a child. He was intentionally trained as a disciple of Paul. He knew God’s Word, he understood the culture of Ephesus and learned alongside Paul how to teach the truth and recognize error in an incredibly pagan society.

I admire the conviction of many believers who feel strongly that we need to be a light in our public school systems. But I wrestle with the thought of sending my young and foolish (all children are!) children into an environment where they will be taught things that contradict God’s Word, where they will be surrounded with peers who do not fear the Lord and have been exposed to awful things, where they will be in the most violent crossfire of the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation.

No, I don’t believe the goal of our homeschooling should be to avoid the culture. However, before our children can successfully engage our culture with the message of Christ, they must be trained. They must be discipled well. They must be taught wisdom as they learn to fear the Lord. They must work alongside us and see firsthand what it means to live out our faith in a world gone mad.

This was what really drew me to the family interviewed on the radio years ago. Their homeschooling was intentionally done to teach their children to know God’s Word, to engage their culture, and to have the skill set needed to think critically and Biblically.

Is homeschooling the only way to do this? I don’t think so. But whatever choices we make about the education of our children, we must understand that there is a very real battle going on. We must be careful to protect them – not just from physical danger, or emotional trauma, or educational failure – we must understand that until they develop wisdom and insight and a true knowledge and understanding of Scripture, they will be so easily led astray by the vain philosophies of this world.

O Lord, what a gift you have given us in our precious children. Teach us how to love them well. Give us the wisdom we so desperately need to parent them in the daily mundane moments, and give us eyes to see the battle going on all around us – show us how to protect them, equip them, and teach them to engage in that battle for your glory. I pray that they will grow to love You, love Your Word, and obey you wholeheartedly. I pray that they will turn their world upside down for the sake of Your name.

August 11th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Image from wikipedia.org

There are many components that have gone into our discussions and considerations of homeschooling. This is by far the weightiest one in our minds, so this seems to be the best place to start.

Several years ago, my dad had sent us a cd of sermons by their pastor at the time, Dr. Ed Dobson. The series was on 1st Timothy – and right off the bat the first message caught our hearts and minds. Dr. Dobson and his son Kent gave this message together, building some background information about Paul, Timothy, Ephesus, and the church. It was a fascinating sermon, but what was most impacting to us was thinking about the meaning of discipleship to a 1st century believer and what it meant for Timothy, in particular, to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and a pastor of the Ephesian church. [we'll get into Timothy more tomorrow.]

Understanding what “discipleship” really meant in the first century is enough to blow my mind all on its own.

Students in the 1st century learned large portions of the Scripture – it was common for teenagers who had been called to be disciples of a rabbi to, by the age of 15, have all of the Torah memorized – that’s all of Genesis, all of Exodus, all of Leviticus, all of Numbers, all of Deuteronomy. Memorized. Word for word.

If they continued on with the rabbi, by the time they finished with him it was expected that they would have the entire Hebrew Bible memorized word for word! In addition to that, as a disciple of the rabbi, they would have:
1. memorized all of the rabbi’s teachings (word for word!)
2. been able to explain and defend all of the rabbi’s intepretations of the torah
3. sought to actually learn to behave just like their rabbi
4. then made other disciples themselves

We listened to this when we were newly married, and I was teaching high school Bible in a Christian school. I cannot fully explain to you how spiritually and emotionally draining it was for me to teach God’s Word to high school students all day. Because of prep? No. Because of teenagers? No, I really enjoy high schoolers. I found it discouraging and defeating because how little the majority of students and parents seemed to care about learning God’s Word well and living it out.

After listening to this series I could not get away from the idea of true discipleship. We toss the word discipleship around a lot, but I don’t think we really expect anyone to be this “radical” in their approach to following after Jesus Christ. A 15 year old with the first five books of the Bible memorized? A complete commitment to follow Him, learn every one of His words, understand the meaning and basis of His teachings, live just like Him, and then teach others to do the same? Do that and everyone at your church, let alone your local public school, will think you are a lunatic!

Being a disciple does not just mean that you wear your Christian t-shirt and refrain from swearing. It’s more than telling people that Jesus loves them and handing them a tract. Being a disciple means you give up your life - you wholeheartedly commit to knowing God’s Word inside and out, seek to follow so closely after Christ that you stop worring about “being yourself” and “showing your uniqueness” or whatever – you want to look just like Him.

This was the first seed of God’s call in our hearts to homeschool. I know that first and foremost, God has called me to be a disciple – and I am far from those expectations of discipleship given above. I cannot say “follow me as I follow Christ” to my children if I have not personally done whatever it takes to follow Him.

Second, God has entrusted these children to me, and it is primarily my job – not the church’s job or the youth pastor’s job – to disciple them. To teach them the whole counsel of God. To teach them what the Bible says and means! To teach them what it means to live like Jesus 24 hours a day.

I have heard others who have studied and know Greek discuss that the grammatical emphasis of the Great Comission (Go make disciples and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you) is not on “go” as we often think – it emphasizes make disciples. Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.

This is reason #1 why we are planning to homeschool: I believe that God has given us a job that takes 24 hours a day. Will my children have the whole Bible memorized? Probably not. But making learning and living the Scripture a centerpiece of their years in our home is something I believe wholeheartedly that we must do – and it will take tremendous effort and time.

I want my kids to know math, science, literature – I hope that they know these things quite well and excel at them. More than anything, I want them to know and live the Word of God. I want them to look just like Jesus.

August 10th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Image via Wikipedia

I love the turn from summer to fall. I love the colors, I love it when you can smell fall in the air, I love chilly mornings that require a sweater. And I love school supplies!

The back to school buzz always gets to me. Loved it as a student, found it exciting (and terrifying) as a teacher, and now I am loving reading the homeschool blogs I follow as parents gear up for a new year of schooling. Since AG is still three and our “homeschooling” pretty much consists of getting books from the library and playing Candy Land using Spanish words for the colors ;), I don’t have much to add to the back to school excitement. But, I thought it might be a good time to share why we are planning to homeschool.

I always loved school. I attended two different excellent private Christian schools K-10, and finished my high school years in a well respected public school district. I can honestly say that I enjoyed both, both gave me excellent academic training and extracurricular opportunities, and God used both forms of education to shape and prepare me for the life He had called me to.

My husband also loved school. He attended two different public schools K-12, with one year of Christian schooling his 9th grade year (but that was a missionary kid school in Brazil, and that is a whole different story!) He also excelled academically and thoroughly enjoyed the social circles and extracurricular opportunities these schools offered him.

We had such positive schooling experiences that we had always agreed that we would consider public or private schooling depending on our children, the area we lived in, and what God laid on our hearts. But not homeschooling. No way! Those homeschool kids were weird and they missed out on all the things we loved about school!

Oh, how God has a sense of humor.

Four years ago I was pregnant with AG. I was sitting at my desk doing data entry at work listening to our local Christian radio station. During Focus on the Family, a homeschool family was interviewed. And it changed my life.

This family had such an articulate, well thought through understanding of why they were homeschooling. They knew exactly what they were trying to prepare their kids for, and deliberately chose homeschooling as the best way to disciple their children and prepare them for life in the “real world.” This was the first time that I had really heard a well-reasoned approach to homeschooling other than “keeping your kids out of public school.” The ‘keeping your kids out’ argument never sat well with us – first of all because we both had attended and benefited from public school, and secondly because the goal was avoiding our culture rather than engaging it. If I remember right, the Great Commission wasn’t “go therefore and avoid all sinful people.”

As I listened to this program, I stopped doing my data entry and bowed my head right at my desk, confessing to God how stubbornly opposed I had been to homeschooling and yielding my will – if He called us to homeschool, I was willing to do it. That was not an easy thing to say. Lo and behold, God took that seed of willingness and has grown it – and now I am thoroughly convinced that God is clearly guiding us down the homeschooling path.

This week I’d like to share several reasons why we have chosen to homeschool (this post would be WAAAAYYY too long if I did it all in one!). Now, I want to clearly state that I am quite positive that homeschooling is not for everyone. Don’t read these posts as judgement against you if your family is not homeschooling. Like I have already stated, my husband and I had very positive private and public educational experiences. I know many people who are passionately devoted to teaching in and supporting both types of schools – and praise the Lord that His people are following His call! What I share will be the reasons that we have come to the conclusion that homeschooling is the best choice for us at this time.

To be continued… [This series is four parts - I invite you to read Radical Discipleship, Packing for Ephesus, and Quality Stamped all over it!]

I’d love to hear back from you about your schooling experiences and what you are doing/ plan to do with your kids and why!