Trinitas Blog

Dr. Andrew Westmoreland of Samford University gave a commencement address in December of 2017 entitled “Respect Everyone.” The address was about as short a commencement speech as I’ve ever heard at just over six minutes, but what a powerful message he packed into that brief oration. In short, Dr. Westmoreland told an auditorium full of graduates, some earning doctorate and master’s degrees, that all their work had been in vain if they could not respect everyone. And he meant everyone. He went on to list types of people who don’t seem to get much respect in our society, among them the person who bags our groceries and the person who works the drive through line at the hamburger restaurant.

Anybody else out there think the world has gone mad, or is it just me? Every time I turn around some new (perceived) catastrophe has just unfolded, or some attention-starved person has just done something to separate himself even further from orthodox humanity. All the while, the spectators of these happenings are yelling, “Unprecedented, unprecedented!” Don’t these people know their history? Well no, in fact, they don’t know their history. If they did, they would know that hardly anything is really unprecedented.

We began our school year at Trinitas last Thursday with an orientation day. It was delightful to see all of the new and returning students hurrying in with their new binders and books and backpacks, all excited for the year ahead. Seeing how much all of the returning students have grown over the summer break is always bittersweet—exciting because they are slowly but surely becoming grown-up human beings, and sad because we so love to the cling to the cutest, sweetest, youngest version of them. Parents do so love to reminisce about the history of their children. Trinitas teachers love to reminisce about the history of those children too. At a school like Trinitas, we get to watch them grow from four-year-olds to eighteen-year-olds. That’s a lot of history.

For the past two weeks I have tried to convince parents that Christian people are required by God to educate our children in a Christian way, to point them Godward. I have suggested that Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is instructive to that end. I continued by appealing to common sense, the wisdom of the Proverbs, and even statistics to persuade Christian parents of the dangers of secular education for their children (remember, there is no such thing as a neutral education). Now, I’m going a step further and claiming that sending your child to a Christian school is not the whole education solution because all Christian education is not the same.

My wife and I have attended an unusual number of weddings over the past few months. Far from being a burden, I consider our attendance at these glorious events a blessing. After the most recent wedding, I remarked to my family that every wedding like that one strikes a blow for the kingdom of God. Whatever do I mean by that? And what does this have to do with classical Christian education or Trinitas Christian School?

A couple weeks ago I made Trinitas families aware of a few openings we still have for students in the grammar school and asked them to invite families similar to theirs who share their beliefs and values about Christian education to come check out Trinitas. Most of them don’t have an hour and a half to tell their friends about the school, though, so I thought an elevator speech might prove helpful.

This time of year I meet with lots of prospective families as you might imagine. These meetings follow a very different agenda than they might at other schools. Trinitas is not doing school the same way the school down the road is doing school, and so not every family is a good fit for Trinitas—or Trinitas for the family, depending upon perspective. That is as it should be; it comports perfectly with the very different sort of mission we are on. Most private schools are engaged in a growth model; they want as many students as they can get just as quickly as they can get them. At Trinitas, however, we are looking for families that want the same things we want. We are trying to maintain a community of Christian families who have common goals for the education and discipleship of their children.

A parent recently sent me this link to an article by columnist Walter Williams written in response to the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes referred to as the National Report Card. In it, Williams reveals and then comments on some startling statistics concerning the state of public education in our nation. The parent who sent the article said this is “good motivation to keep doing what we are doing.” I agree wholeheartedly.