 By WCS Headmaster Dr. Roger Erdvig
Parents have the hard job of deciding what kind of school is best for their children. Of the many options available, which will have a more positive impact on their child’s life long into the future? All parents want their children to become well educated, responsible, and productive adults. Part of this vision for the future is the hope that they will have a healthy marriage and family of their own. So how does parents’ choice of school relate to this important goal for the future?  By WCS Headmaster Dr. Roger Erdvig
We hear a lot about biblical worldview as it relates to a Christian school education. But what exactly is a biblical worldview and how can a school help to shape that kind of worldview in students? Our approach to perceiving, interpreting, and living in the world around us includes our desires, our behaviors, and the propositions we hold to be true. Ideally, all three of these (also described as inclinations, actions, and truth claims) are consistent and cohesive. They make up our worldview and combine to form a pattern of ideas, beliefs, convictions, and habits. We use these to make sense of God, the world, and our relationship to God and the world. So a person with a biblical worldview is one who thinks, desires, and acts in ways that are consistent with God’s thoughts, desires, and actions as revealed through Scripture. Though truth claims are not the sum total of a person’s worldview, they do form its foundation. And for a well-formed biblical worldview, these truth claims are not random, unrelated ideas. Together, they make up an integrated narrative framework that accurately describes the way things are. A narrative framework is essentially a story of the world that provides a context for understanding why things happen the way they do and how we should respond to what happens. The narrative framework for a biblical worldview can be summarized in four key words. They are chronological in nature and provide meaning for all our experiences: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration.  By WCS Headmaster Dr. Roger Erdvig
Practically overnight, everything changed. On Thursday, March 12, the WCS leadership team made the hard decision to postpone our Spring Gala (scheduled for the next evening) due to Governor Carney's declaration of a State of Emergency, which included guidance to avoid crowds of 100 or more people. Within 24 hours, we made the announcement to parents that due to COVID-19, we would need to pivot to all distance-based teaching and learning. A lot can happen in 24 hours! Teachers jumped on an aggressive learning curve to transition to video-based instruction, with only two weeks to do so. Students were suddenly home with all their school supplies and their families, and away from the their friends. WCS leadership meetings moved to video, and sports seasons came to a screeching halt.  By WCS Headmaster Dr. Roger Erdvig
Spiritual formation and worldview development are two concepts that are really important for Christian schools. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a Christian school that is not concerned with both spiritual formation and worldview development, with one or both concepts mentioned in their mission or vision statements. (And if you DID happen to find a Christian school that didn’t keep these two concepts at the forefront of everything they do, you’d have to question whether it is a Christian school at all!) It is important to understand that all schools play a role in the process of spiritual formation and worldview development of their students. These are not exclusive domains of Christian schools. Public, private, parochial, homeschools--they ALL shape the spirit and the worldview of their students. That’s right, even non-Christian schools shape the spirits and the worldviews of their students. However, Christian schools ought to lead in intentional, specific spiritual formation and worldview development. By intentional, I mean that we must be able to point to observable activities that actually facilitate proper spiritual formation and worldview development in our students. We can’t just say that these are priorities; we must show that they are. And by specific, I’m saying that we are committed to Christian spiritual formation and Biblical worldview development.  By WCS Headmaster Dr. Roger Erdvig
One of the aims that WCS has for our students and graduates is that they will be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. This is a core element of why we exist as a school. However, shaping the heart of a young disciple is becoming harder and harder. From the intense pressure to conform to the spirit of the age, to the pervasive impact of the digital universe, we are in an uphill battle. Recent research suggests that the number of young adults in the U.S. who identify as followers of Christ is rapidly shrinking year after year. 64% of young adults who grew up in church have dropped out of (and sometimes back into) church. The number of teens who identify as atheists has doubled in the last year. And this impacts their core beliefs. Consider this—most teens in the US believe that not recycling is more evil than viewing pornography. Only 10% of young adults who consider themselves Christian actually have a robust, life-shaping faith in Christ. Have I convinced you yet of the uphill battle that WCS, our families, and our churches are facing? (Read about these stats and more at https://www.barna.com/category/millennials-generations/) But, there is good news. Researchers David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock have extensively studied today’s Christian landscape, and they have discovered ways that we can cultivate robust faith in our students and young adults. They’ve written about what they’ve learned in a new book, Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon. By WCS Headmaster Dr. Roger Erdvig
Most Christian schools include some version of "impacting the culture for Christ" in their mission statements. But very few define what that means, and even fewer seem to specifically plan for how they will actually equip their students to do so. WCS has adopted a set of four key questions that help guide our efforts at helping our students apply a Biblical worldview-- questions that flesh out what it means to impact the culture. These questions are adapted from Restoring All Things: God's Audacious Plan to Change the World Through Everyday People, by John Stonestreet and Warren Cole Smith. (Buy it here on Amazon.) 1) What is good in our community that we can cultivate? In this question, we're looking for what's already good in our community and considering how we can improve it. Whether it's perfecting a piece of music for a concert or re-writing several drafts of a persuasive paper to make it "pop," students are encouraged to take what's good, and make it better. |
Wilmington Christian School provides a distinctively Christian, innovative education that effectively develops Godly influencers who are well prepared for life after high school and who impact the culture for Christ.
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