The Real Economics of Christian Education

I've spend a lot of time in the last few months thinking about Christian Education. (for you non SDA's out there by Christian Education right now I am talking about school, not discipleship classes on Sunday/Sabbath mornings.) Anyways now that we have that cleared up, the Adventist church is about to go through some very difficult times or is already going through difficult times depending on where you are (AUC/WAU, you know what I"m talking about.) And there are many out there that are thinking of ways we can do this more easily by tightening our belts. I think that while we need to be good stewards of God's money, this is not the first thing we should do. We have already found that this hurts us.

First of all let me tell you about our church situation. Our local congregation, a great one at that with a little over 600 members, has over the last 4-5 years pumped around 200k-400k into our school. I could go into a lot of details about those numbers, but they would not necessarily help in my points here. I ask my self, if we did not put that money into the school where would it have gone? Perhaps we'd have a new sanctuary by now, or a youth room or a few more pastors? My belief is that money and the money people paid for tuition would have stayed in their pockets. We are really good at laying up our treasures here on earth, instead of in people. Stuff doesn't go to heaven, people do.

Perhaps, one of the great things that Christian Schooling does is that it helps us not accumlulate so much worthless stuff. I spent this evening in a very nice mall in Edina. One of the stores I went into was Crate and Barrel. As I perused the store I found many things that were both useful and very attractive. But as I was walking out (empty handed) of the store I made the comment to my wife, "There was a lot of really good looking stuff in there that we don't really need." I guess I need to challenge myself sometimes do I really need that? the answer is usually know. Now, don't get me wrong I impulse buy with the best of them, and sometimes we do need to just have a little happiness in life, but perhaps its things like having a tight budget that keep our spending in check as well as our priorities in the right place. And nothing says tight budget like 2-3 kids in Christian school.

So while it may be cheaper to do Christian Education other ways, perhaps the idea of investing in people, both teachers and students is actually the wisest Kingdom Economics thing we can do.

Keeping Jesus #1