The School and God-Ordained Institutions
Family and State and Church. And the School
Scripture indicates that God has specially established distinct institutions to serve certain functions in the course of human affairs. These institutions bear authority within limited scopes to accomplish God's purposes. A lot of people who are smarterer than I have written eloquently on these three institutions, but here is my attempt at briefly distinguishing them from a biblical perspective:
The Family
The family was created on the 6th day, as is detailed in Genesis 2:20-24. There, in verse 24 specifically, Moses interjects into the story an editorial remark of utmost anthropological significance. He indicates that the creation of man (and of the woman from man) presumes the creation of a distinct family unit. When a man and woman get married, they form a new family unit distinct from the ones from which they came — that's what it means to be "one flesh." And the clear wording of Genesis 2:24 leads us to conclude that a family is only to be defined as a man and his wife. To think otherwise is to be at best ignorantly pragmatic, and at worst deliberately heretical.
The family holds authority over children within the home, and it should take little effort to argue this to be true. Children are young and immature and dependent, and the husband-wife team is older, wiser, and can provide for needs. Deuteronomy 6 declares the father's role of training and teaching, and Ephesians 6:4 only furthers this vital duty of parents.
State
One of the logical consequences of the creation of the family has to do with God’s establishment of government as an institution to serve and support families. When Jesus used Genesis 2:24 as support for his instructions in Matthew 19:3-9, he followed his quotation of Moses with his own authoritative commentary — In Matthew 19:6 Jesus says, "So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." And the right question to ask the text is: in what sense has God joined together a man and woman in marriage? It's my researched and settled conclusion that Jesus meant that it is through the instrument of government that God joins together a man and woman in marriage. God sovereignly uses government to, well, govern the institution of marriage. Government is a steward of families in that it sanctions their creation. When the state issues a marriage certificate to qualified persons, it is functioning institutionally as God designed.
We also read of further instructions to government in Romans 14 and 1 Peter 2. The State exists to reward good-doers and punish evil-doers. When a government performs these duties well, it further serves families by granting to them a societal context in which they may freely raise their children. We have much reason, therefore, to heed the admonition to uphold government in prayer (1 Tim. 2:1-2).
Church
And then the final institution with authority on earth is the Church. In Matthew 16 Jesus gave authority (keys, binding/loosing) to the Apostolic office for the establishing of the Church. And in Matthew 18 he granted similar authority (binding/loosing) to local congregations. The Church exists, therefore, as the city/temple which God is building for the accomplishing of his purposes on the Earth. Christ has all authority in Heaven and Earth, and it is the Church which shows to all the Universe what it looks like to submit wholly to his righteous and powerful reign. This important institution is granted authority for the purpose of stewarding God's people in their preparation for an eternal reign with the Lord.
Interactions between these institutions determine many things. Government can abuse its authority and mis-define the family by creating "families" that aren't families (and our current government has done so for decades). The family can overstep its bounds by not willingly subjecting itself to law which aren't inherently unrighteous (i.e. not paying taxes). The 2020 Covid situation demonstrated how churches can yield to the State over Christ by not providing opportunity for the saints to assemble together. And the family can fail to submit itself to a local church — which is the only place wherein multi-generational spiritual faithfulness is to be cultivated (i.e. the "home church" isn't really a church).
The proper interactions of the three institutions are, in my thinking, simplistically reduced to the following:
The government stewards families by licensing them and by protecting them so they can flourish in an orderly civilization.
The family stewards children by providing for them and by raising them in Christ's ways (including taking them to a faithful local church).
The local church stewards God's Word by rightly dividing it, and it stewards God's people by feeding, equipping, and protecting them.
And each of these three answers to God alone for how they steward their various areas of sovereignty.
Notice, now, that we've yet to talk about the school. This is because the school (yea, even the Christian school) is not explicitly designated as an institution with biblical authority backing it. This doesn't mean that the school is an illegitimate institution, but rather that it must recognize from which institution it derives its authority.
There is a sense in which the school is tethered to each of these three biblical institutions, but I want to focus here on its interaction with the family and the local church. Perhaps we can talk about the school and the State another time, it's a hot enough topic after all.
And the answer to the question of how a Christian school relates to the authority-wielding institutions of the family and the Church is this: It depends. A local church may decide to open a school for the purpose of shepherding its families' children in their academic growth. This sort of arrangement yields a far more direct connection to a local church. But the more common thing (at least nowadays) is for a school to govern itself apart from a particular local church context. One obvious benefit of such a non-affiliated school is the ability to bring more Christian families into the classrooms. But one drawback is this tricky connection between family and local church(es) and school. Anyone who's worked 2 seconds in a Christian school that serves a handful of different local churches knows what I'm talking about.
So I'd like to offer three big-picture thoughts that are, hopefully, helpful for schools, families, and churches to bear in mind as they work together in the important ministry of educating children.
1. Since non-local-church-affiliated Christian schools are not bound by biblical authority in the same way that families and local churches are, they are free to set a host of preferential policies as they deem necessary.
Whereas a local church has direct marching orders in the Word as concerns leadership, doctrine, practice, and purpose, a local Christian school can teach, practice, mobilize, and function in a variety of legitimate ways. There simply is no one right way to run a school. And whereas a father will give account for how he's raised his children in the paideia of Christ, a Christian school does not carry the same level of responsibility for such things. Not that teachers aren’t to take their job seriously, but they must recognize that that parents have outsourced to them some particularities of their child’s education, but not the entire responsibility for it. This reality is freeing for the collective conscience of the school, and should be considered by parents before asking the school to accommodate their particular conscience point for point.
Wisdom would indicate, then, that a school should be clear on its educational mission, its procedures, its governance, etc., so that parents can make informed decisions about whether or not to partner with it — because at the end of the day the family is in the driver's seat regarding a child's education.
2. Which brings me to the fact that the family is in the driver's seat regarding a child's education.
I deliberately stated it redundantly. Hopefully that helps make the point clearly. The reason for the need for clarity is two-fold: First, a school needs to remember that parents are free to make decisions for what they believe is good for their children. This is a reminder for school workers to seek to be authentically respectful of things that they see families do (or not do). A Christian school cannot accommodate everything that families want for their kids, and hopefully all the families recognize this. At the same time a family may not want everything that a Christian school seeks to give to their kids, and so there should be some measured understanding when such incongruities occur. But even with such an understanding of potential differences, there is a certain threshold in which a Paul eventually needs to go a different direction from a Barnabas, in a loving spirit.
Then the second reason why this point must be underscored is aimed directly at the consciences of families. Parents need to rise to meet the responsibility that's been laid upon them. Dropping off and picking up does not even come close to checking the box of bringing up children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. I could jump onto a lot of particular soap boxes here, but I think it's best left for God's Word to work in all our consciences about the weightiness of this obligation.
3. As the churches go, so go the families. As the families go, so goes the school.
Christian school culture is not so much a product of school leaders and teachers, as it is the downstream result of what's going on in the homes of students. And we would be naive to fail to recognize that the strength of the family is dictated by the strength of the local church. So, it is actually local churches which function as the driver for spiritual climate and spiritual culture for the Christian school. If a school wants to change its culture, it must change its local church clientele. Or when it undergoes a change in its local church clientele, it should expect a change in its culture (for good or ill).
I don’t pretend to have all the answers for effective Christian school functioning. Nor for effective local church or family or government functioning. But I do hope that Christians learn to think more and more biblically about what they are doing in respect to each of these three spheres.