Note: On August 1, 2009, Dr. Brian Simmons assumed the leadership of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). As the third president of ACSI, Dr. Simmons heads up the 
largest association of Protestant Christian schools in the world. Dr. Simmons is starting his watch at a time when Christian schooling in the United States is facing perhaps the greatest challenges in the history of the Christian school movement. A distressed economy is having a depressing effect on Christian schooling, particularly among low-income and working-class families. According to the Department of Education (DOE), during the six-year school period between 1999 and 2005, nearly 1,200 faith-based schools serving urban families closed. Those schools were serving nearly a half-million students. The DOE is expecting another 200 schools to close this year. The schools that are able to remain open are experiencing rapidly declining enrollment. As a result, Christian schooling is on the fast track away from poor and working-class families.
Dr. Simmons represents new leadership for the new challenges now confronting the Christian school movement. These challenges must also be met with new opportunities. The real challenge is how to take the threats and convert them to opportunities. This issue of The Meantime is devoted to identifying such opportunities. It behooves the people of God to seek out and implement ways to bring a Christian influence to bear on the education of urban, poor, and disadvantaged children. The love of Christ compels His people to do so. It will require revisiting what we have thought and believed about Christian schooling. It may require slaying some sacred cows and forgoing some traditions that have been held as dear to Christian schooling. Ultimately, it will require searching the Scriptures in an endeavor to hear from heaven and mind the things of God and not the things of man so that these children who are so near and dear to His heart will be educated in such a way as to make a meaningful difference in their lives.
From the President’s Desk
Dr. Brian S. Simmons, President of ACSI
The mission of ACSI is “to enable Christian educators and schools worldwide to effectively prepare students for life.” The word enable, according to P. F. Collier’s Dictionary, means “to give adequate power, means, ability, or opportunity to.” Our association exists to provide power, means, ability, and opportunity to Christian schools and Christian educators. The result of this enabling of Christian schools and Christian educators is to effectively prepare students for life.
We want to as effectively as possible prepare students to lead lives that bring glory to God. In other words, our desire is that students will be thoroughly prepared by Christian schools and Christian educators to fulfill God’s purpose for their lives. Thorough preparation includes the opportunity for academic rigor. In the broadest sense, this preparation exists in the context of encouraging every student to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Max Lucado, in his book Cure for the Common Life: Living in Your Sweet Spot (2005), tells the story of a time he once grabbed the wrong bag at the airport. The bag looked like his: “Same size. Same material. Same color” (13). But once he opened the bag at the hotel, the clothing was the wrong size, style … and gender! He had a decision to make: he could cram his large body into these small clothes for three days or he could return this bag to the airport and exchange it for his own. No one wants to live out of someone else’s bag!
Similarly, Christian education teaches students that God has packed each one of them as individuals on purpose for a purpose. While it may not be true that students can be anything they want to be, it is true that all of them can be everything that God wants them to be!
This reminds me of the apostle John’s words in John 6:45: “As it is written in the Scriptures, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ ” John 6:47 says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes has eternal life” (NLT). Our job, through Christian education, is to unleash the talent that God has placed in every one of our students as we base everything we do on the Word of God with a focus on Jesus Christ! In this way, then, we prepare students for success in this life and the life to come.
References
Collier, P. F. 1986. P. F. Collier’s Dictionary: A to K, s.v. “Enable.” New York: Macmillan Educational Company.
Lucado, Max. 2005. Cure for the Common Life: Living in Your Sweet Spot. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.
The Meantime Volume 9 Number 1