Trinitas Blog

The Trinitas community is headed into the home stretch leading into the 4th Annual LoveThyNeighbor: Great Day of Giving event on Friday of this week!

Again this year, just over 300 Trinitas students, parents, grandparents, and alumni will be taking a break from regular routines and partnering with a dozen or so local non-profit community partners in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. The whole focus of the day is on loving our neighbors well. From kindergarteners, who will spend the day packing duffle bags with hygiene supplies for foster kids, to upper school students assisting with feeding the hungry in our community there will be plenty of love in action!

How about a quick look back at LoveThyNeighbor from 2019, 2020, and 2021?

Parents are in the business of working themselves out of a job. Think about it: from early in a child’s life, the role of parents is to prepare children to be independent. We train them to eat, use the restroom, brush their teeth, dress themselves, read and write, say please and thank you, and lots of other things before they ever lose their first tooth. It doesn’t stop there, of course. By the time they’re teenagers we’re making sure they can get themselves out of bed and to school or work on time, drive themselves around, make all the right friends, take the classes that lead them to the best colleges and then on to the best careers. All these things we do because we know they’ll be on their own soon, and we won’t be there to tell them what to do.

Graduation is such a special time in the life of young adults. In the present age, it has become arguably the most important rite of passage into adulthood. Eighteen-year-olds across the nation stand on a threshold: thirteen or more years of compulsory schooling is behind them, and the whole world lies ahead. Education, career, marriage, everything is ahead of them, and finally, they get to make their own decisions about where to go and what to do.

Our days are BUSY. Between work responsibilities, volunteering, taking care of the home, and transporting children to school and other extracurricular activities, the average parent has little “downtime”. Over the last two years or so, the Lord has impressed it upon our hearts to be more intentional with the time we have been given with our children. If we want our children to really know the God we love and serve, then it is our responsibility to model that to them in everyday moments.

The work Trinitas requires can put a strain on parents and students, but, as uncomfortable as it is to hear, that’s the way it ought to be. School should be hard. Why? Because hard work brings a profit (Prov. 14:23).

Think of something good. Is it easily acquired? Now something beautiful… Now true… The world our Father created yields its fruit only to laborers like the ant in Proverbs 6. Students who are allowed to grumble about memorizing an additional five vocabulary words or to roll their eyes when required to show all of their math work are being prepared to live life lazily.

Last week in this space, we considered how Trinitas is distinctly different in our classical pedagogy. This week, we’ll note together how Trinitas is distinctly different in our classical content and in our Christ-centered instruction. And, most importantly, how all of these things contribute to our distinctly different Christ-centered culture.

The next thing that makes Trinitas different is what we teach.

Is there anything a 19^th century Anglican Bishop can teach modern Christian parents about training their children? In short, absolutely! As Trinitas parents gather this week for the first Parent Traditio of the new year, they will be discussing a short essay written by J. C. Ryle entitled The Duties of Parents. In it, Bishop Ryle shares seventeen specific directives for Christian parenting that are gospel-centered and rooted in common sense while also practical and encouraging.

Yesterday, the Trinitas Board of Governors spent the entire day engaged in a continuous improvement discussion which resulted in an update to the school’s five-year strategic plan. Revisiting this process and document regularly helps the board ensure that the school is not only staying faithful to its founding mission and vision but is also thriving while improving in the execution of the same.

As valuable as that process is for organizations, it is equally important for parents to honestly assess where their family is in relation to the high calling placed upon Christian parents and to thoughtfully craft their own “strategic plan.”