The Big Idea
Clarity on the underlying model of a school can help facilitate clear thinking and problem solving. Without this clarity, schools quickly drift or stagnate. There are fundamentally two core models that have been used to found and run Lutheran Schools:
- The school serves a felt need in the community. It functions as an entry point into the church and a place to share the Gospel with unchurched families. This is often called the Missional Model.
- The school serves Lutheran families to provide their children a distinctly Lutheran Education. The core goal of this kind of school is to raise up future pastors, church workers, and grounded Lutheran individuals. This is often called the Parochial Model.
Here is a brief history of Lutheran Schools in America: A Gift for Our Children: The Past, Present and Future of Lutheran Schools in America – The Lutheran Witness. What stands out to me is that our current context is not particularly more dire or challenging than generations before us. We stand in a long tradition of faithful educators who have taught in the midst of unimaginable odds.
As you may note from the historical overview attached above, the Missional Model is by far the newer model. It did not come into prominence until the 1970s. On the other hand, the Parochial Model is much older stretching all the way back to Luther’s day in the 1500s. That being said, the age of the model does not inherently make one better or worse. The age difference does, however, help us to slow down to consider our long term hope for the future.
In Luther’s letter To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany that they Establish and Maintain Christian Schools, he lays out the clear connection between education and the Gospel:
“Hence, it is inevitable that unless the languages remain, the gospel must finally perish.
Experience too has proven this and still gives evidence of it. For as soon as the languages declined to the vanishing point, after the apostolic age, the gospel and faith and Christianity itself declined more and more until under the pope they disappeared entirely. After the decline of the languages, Christianity witnessed little that was worth anything; instead, a great many dreadful abominations arose because of the ignorance of the languages. On the other hand, now that the languages have been revived, they are bringing with them so bright a light, and accomplishing such great things that the whole world stands amazed and has to acknowledge that we have the gospel just as pure and undefiled as the apostles had it, that is has been wholly restored to its original purity, far beyond what it was in the days of St. Jerome and S.t Augustine. In short, the Holy Spirit is no fool. He does not busy himself with inconsequential or useless matters. He regarded the languages as so useful and necessary to Christianity that he often times brough them down with him from heaven. This alone should be a sufficient motive for us to pursue them with diligence and reverence and not to despise them, for he himself has now revived them again upon the earth.” - Luther’s Works Volume 45, To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany that they Establish and Maintain Christian Schools, p. 360-361.
I believe that before we can make any long-term decisions and plans for the school, we need to clearly define the underlying model that is valuable for our current context.
Option 1: The Missional Model
From everything I have gathered, Upward Bound was founded on the missional model. In other words, to be a place that reaches out to the community and shares the Gospel with families who are unchurched.
The tricky thing about this model is that Christ Centered education is not the presenting reason for families to join the school. Rather, the school is meant to meet people where they are at by providing a needed service to the family and the community at large. That point of contact is then the opportunity to share the Gospel and bridge them into the wider church family.
Key questions to consider if we are fulfilling that vision are:
- Is the school serving a current felt need in the community?
- If not, what are the felt needs in the community that could be addressed by a school?
- What kinds of bridges are there between the church and the school?
- Is the school itself operating as a bridge between the church and the community?
- If not what are the roadblocks between the church, the school, and the community?
- What are possible solutions for those roadblocks?
Option 2: The Parochial Model
The core parochial model has lived through many varied forms. Each new permutation arising to accommodate for shifting societal and congregational pressures. From German state sponsored schools in the 1500-1600s, to one room frontier schools in America during the 1800s, to the sprawling Concordia System of the 1900s. But the core purpose has always been the same in this model: Raise up the next generation of church and community leaders.
This model has traditionally been formed around advise like this from Luther:
“So it was done in ancient Rome. There boys were so taught that by the time they reached their fifteenth, eighteenth, or twentieth year they were well versed in Latin, Greek, and all the liberal arts (as they are called), and then immediately entered upon a political or military career. Their system produced intelligent, wise and competent men, so skilled in every art and rich in experience that if all the bishops, priests, and monks in the whole of Germany today were rolled into one, you would not have the equal of a single Roman soldier. As a result their country prospered; they had capable and trained men for every position. So at all times throughout the world simple necessity has forced men, even among the heathen, to maintain pedagogues and schoolmasters if their nation was to be brought to a high standard.” - Luther’s Works Vol. 45, To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany that they Establish and Maintain Christian Schools, p. 356
This model has often found itself working to address the same need for church workers deeply felt today. For example “a district committee presented the following considerations at the 1893 convention:
- The present synodical schools, though crowded, are not able to meet the crying need for pastors;
- Each of the present pastors is serving an average of three congregations besides conducting a school;
- Many more students could be won for church work if they could attend a school near home.” - From The Concordia University System — Past, Present and Future - The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
As can be seen, we are not facing problems that are particularly new. Yet the Parochial model starts from a fundamentally different place from the Missional model. Parochial schools aim to train people for mission rather than being the mission itself. Meaning that the marketability of a Parochial school is not it’s primary concern unlike a Missional school. Rather they are established to accomplish the foundational work of education for our Lutheran children to become the leaders of tomorrow.
Key questions that arise from this model are:
- How does our teaching equip our children to share the Gospel?
- Are our children being trained and equipped not just as isolated believers but as leaders for the church and the community at large?
- What foundational skills are our children missing from their current education and how does our teaching help offer those skills?