Broadcasting from the west side of Big Brother City in the heart of Gridlock County, where preaching with impact is like plowing pavement! Because people continue to place their hope in unsatisfying things. This is the Frederick Faith Debate, sponsored by Putman Plumbing and Heating. How can we make you smile? BMC Insurance, proud supporters of New Life Christian School. And Cruise Holidays, getting ever closer to sending Bob on a three-hour tour. Actually, it's like a one-week trip to the Bahamas or something. I'm Troy Skinner. This is the Frederick Faith Debate. You can follow us online at wfmd.com keyword faith. There you will find links to all sorts of religious resources. You'll see my ugly mug in the upper left-hand corner, and you'll find the Faith Debate blog. My blog is your blog, so email me, Troy Skinner, at clearchannel.com. That's Troy Skinner, my name, at clearchannel, our corporate entity, dot com. Pretty much whatever you send me gets posted up there. Nine fresh postings a day, Monday through Friday, 95, 95, 45 blog postings. That's the new math. Ninety-five, forty-five. Nice! We're talking about education tonight. That's the new math they're trying. What was that controversial math program from a couple of years ago? It was not new math, but it was called... Turk or circ or something. Yeah, circular math. Something like that, yeah. That's the new math. Yeah, Turk math. Turk math, where 45 equals 95. Anyway, 45 vlog updates a week. Monday through Friday, five a day. So email me and then see if I post it. See how long it takes me to post it. Sometimes it'll be the same day. Sometimes I'll get around to posting yours like three weeks later. You never know. On the show today, Jonathan Swietzer, who's already piped up. He's Senior Pastor at Crossroads Valley Church. You can follow him on Twitter at SwietzerJonathan. That's right. When's the last time you sent out a tweet, honest? Honestly, it's been like months. All right. So don't follow him too closely. Yeah. Yeah. There's not a whole lot to follow there. And Angela Phillips, I don't know if she's on Twitter or not, but she is the director of development for New Life Christian School. And she's with the kiddies. So she probably does have the kids follow her on Twitter or something. Not on Twitter. Facebook. Facebook. OK. I don't do that either. I'm on Facebook, but I only upload pictures whenever my family goes on a day trip or something, and that's the extent of it. So I'm going to lay the geographical outlay of what we're talking about today here, and then we're just going to go. We're talking about education. We have the Director of Development for New Life Christian Schools, so she's eminently qualified to talk about educational matters, but not just because of that. But I'll let her tell her different perspectives and different ways she's come at education during the course of her life. I'll start with me, and then Jonathan can walk through some of his things, because we have an interesting variety. It seems to me in this room, I primarily myself attended public school, but I did go to a religious institution for three years, three years, three years. It was a private religious boarding school, actually, for three years. I have two children both of them. It's interesting. You said private religious You're you're not saying some things there that I feel like might be helpful for us understand. Well, I was respect I was okay. I was being just broad and generic there, but it was Roman Catholic Okay. All right I have two children. They both have attended public school, but my son was homeschooled for three years. My daughter now attends a college that was founded by the Presbyterian Church 150 years ago, whatever, and is still recognized as a religious school. That's quite a feat to still have it after so many years, the Christian foundations. went through the elementary grades in high school in a secular environment, but now she's in a non-secular environment in college, which is kind of interesting. Like I said, I understand homeschooling because we did it with my son, and my personal experience. So I've got all these different ways that I can look at what education might look like. So now, Jonathan, He has a lot of kids, 74 kids I think the new math says now. That's right, and it keeps us busy. I'm just saying. But you have a lot of varying perspectives and backgrounds on it, so real quickly, what are those? All right, so my background was that... The school that my parents were going to put me into, a public school, was experimenting with a new classroom environment that had no walls. So all the students were, you know, kind of in one big room together and they decided that Their children would not be experimented on. They sent us for the next three years to a Christian school in Mount Airy. Trinity Christian School was the name of it, a Baptist school. And after three years, then they put us back into a public school that was more traditional, but it was on the other side of town. I was only there for three years, then my dad started a Christian high school, 7th through 12th grade, and so I was there for all of my 7th through 12th grade years, and then my kids are all homeschooled. And so I was just telling you earlier, actually, that my son recently went to a public school homecoming dance. And we'll talk about that a little bit later on, some of the differences. And in addition to that, you ran for school board. And I ran for the school board here in Frederick just because it's clear to me that the public schools are pushing an agenda. It seems like at some point somebody needs to raise the issue and recognize that a secular environment pushed on our kids with secular values is not necessarily the best way to raise the next generation. And your brother has established a school, and I think you were a part of that, weren't you, in some way? Yeah, for a while I was going down and helping to lead the worship. for that each week. And for one year, my kids went there just because we had had a couple of personal hits as a family. And we were like, OK, you know what? We're going to not try to homeschool that year, make sure that our kids don't lose a year of education. I think I would also add this, that my brother homeschooled his kid, and then he sent him to University of Maryland afterwards. And have you heard of the Turgeonites? You know, the coach, Turgeon, he wasn't getting a whole lot of support from the student body, and apparently he dresses a certain way, so the Turgeonites are a bunch of guys that dress like he does, and they get up and they dance at the University of Maryland games. And anyways, my nephew was one of those guys that started it, and they're so popular that they became like this thing across the nation. Everybody knows about the Turgeonites. Like the Beatles now. And they get them up to do like halftime shows with the cheerleaders and everything now. And so it became like this whole fad thing that was going on. I mentioned the Beatles, but I wonder if members of the Turgeonites even know who the Beatles are. Probably not. It depends how much their parents were involved with culture back then. So Angela Phillips is currently the Director of Development at New Life, but what are some of the different perspectives you're going to bring to the table today? I grew up in Middletown and graduated from Middletown High School, so I was educated all through public education. I have two children who I decided to homeschool, so I've homeschooled both of my daughters. K-12? Preschool through 12th grade. They were dual enrolled at FCC by 10th grade, but then they went away to secular college didn't choose Christian education at their college level, felt that having homeschooled them in a Christian environment, they were very capable of going off to their four-year institution and holding their own with their belief systems. And so, homeschooling them. As I was finishing homeschooling the younger daughter, I took a swipe not at being on the Board of Education, but took a swipe thinking that the Board of Education might have some interest in exploring an all-girls public charter school for 7th through 12th graders. and tried to organize that and found that back in 2007 and 2008. Both times I was shot down by the Board of Education. That did not happen. And so, realized that Frederick County was not at least at that moment embracing any additional charter education, public charter education, but at least explored a whole lot of things that I thought were really pertinent to education during that process. And now I serve as the Director of Development at a preschool through twelfth grade, Christian school here in Frederick County, New Life Christian School. Actually, that's how Angela and I met was in the context of the charter school, because I had run for Board of Education and I was advocating at that time the school system looking for ways to introduce more parental involvement into the public school environment. And so any kind of a charter school scenario tends to do a much better job in bringing parental involvement into the education of their children. So there you get a sense of the, I don't know if there is a perspective on education that we haven't just touched on between the three of us. Yeah, clearly. I don't think there's any other way to educate your child outside of what we've either personally experienced or our kids have experienced. It's interesting to me that you sent your kids to public school all the way through, but then to Christian college, you know, but a bunch of the homeschool guys that, you know, have a very sheltered schooling environment for their children end up sending their kids to Christian colleges. It's interesting that all of us seem to have this little, I don't want to call it yin-yang, that's not so Christian, but this recognition that there's some sort of a balance there as we're trying to help our kids to deal with the pressures that are out there. And now let's talk, so everybody here, the three of us, are all thoughtful about education. Some of us are making our career in education. So we're at least taking education seriously. And all three of us also take the Bible very seriously. Jonathan's a pastor of a Christian church. I'm hosting a show called the Frederick Faith Debate. And Angela is at New Life Christian School. So we all take the Bible and faith and hold it in very high esteem as well. So now, let's marry the two. As a Christian who's a Bible-believing Christian, and you read things like, train them up in the way they shall go and they will never depart from it, and there's this heavy emphasis on the family and the parents being responsible for their kids, and I think that's a big part of the motivation for a lot of homeschoolers, for example, in Christian churches. So think about what the Bible says, And is there a best way? I don't want to say there's only one way, but is there a best way for Christian parents to think about, if I want to be in the best possible alignment with the Word of God, I should homeschool my kids, or I should send them to a Christian school, or I should send them to a secular school but make sure I train them up inside the church on matters of theology and doctrine or whatever. Is there a best, and are the other options, therefore, lesser? Are we compromising? Well, coming from a background of having chosen to homeschool my children, I would honestly say that if a parent feels that the Lord is leading them and directing their steps to homeschool their children, the best way is to, of course, always be in God's will. I think that the opportunity to say, am I in God's will and be evaluated there is something that's personal. But I truly do believe that. I think that a parent, if they're uncertain of their own capacity, uncertain of their own strength to do the homeschooling, and there's heavy lifting in homeschooling. People might say, well, that's the easy way to homeschool. And I'm thinking, think about it. It'd be much easier to make sure your child's standing at the bus stop for the yellow bus to pick them up than to get up in the morning and spend the entire day engaging with them, doing something with them, ensuring that there's some level of learning, growth going on in their life. So I would say that the best way, and I think the biblical way, is, like you said, for the parents to have involvement. But I think in this generation, in this time frame, most or many parents don't choose homeschooling, and I think then the second best opportunity is Christian education. from the perspective of a Christian institution that has a covenant relationship with those families, and that means that they're partnering with families to do just that, to do the educating so that the parents have involvement in the input and in the outcome of what's coming out of it, because it doesn't help or the students' outcomes if what's going on at home doesn't match or at least align with what's being taught Monday through Friday between 8.30 and 3 o'clock in the afternoon when the students are in the care of the school setting. Why'd I do that to myself? Welcome back. It's good to have you with us, Troy. Angela Phillips is the Director of Development for and at New Life Christian School. Jonathan Switzer is Senior Pastor at Crossroads Valley Chapel. I'm Troy Skinner. This is the Frederick Faith Debate on Frederick's News Radio, 930 WFMD. So, John, do you agree with that prioritization? Homeschooling is the best, most biblical model, and if you can't pull that off, Christian school is I don't know if it's a close second or a distant second, but a second. Would you agree with that? See, the problem with saying that homeschooling is the biblical model is that the Bible takes into account the fact that there's a lot of orphans out there, fatherless children out there, and fatherless children are simply not going to be able to be homeschooled. It's just not possible. My brother got his doctorate in education and he wrote his thesis on the role of parents in education. And the number one negative response that he got from those that were helping him to write the paper was that it works in an ideal situation. But, and there's the problem with the public school system, there's the difficulty with the public school system is that they can't say no. They have to take every kid that comes, you know, exactly as they are, and that means from whatever background they come from, and Christian schools ultimately do have the chance to make distinctions. This is the big question about vouchers. If you have vouchers where a parent can take a voucher to whichever school he wants his kids to go to, will there be a situation where the school can say, well, we're not taking you because your grades aren't good enough or because you don't meet certain standards? And we have to work through some of those issues. And as Christians, we have an obligation also to the widow and the orphan and to help them to raise their kids. At this point, Christian education is mostly only available to those that can afford it. And most Christian schools do their best to try to provide resources to help with that, but there's a limit. I mean, that's what you do at New Life, Angela, is you help to get those resources so that resources are available. But there's a limit to how much people can go to a Christian school, and so at this point, for poor Christians, you know, there's really not an option. And if you're a poor Christian widow, there's really not an option. But my experience, I mean, I've seen some homeschool kids turn out really bad, and those parents had no business homeschooling their kids. I've seen it. But were they doing it because they believed that the Lord was leading them in that direction, or were they just doing it? If you ask them, they said, the Lord's telling us to do this. And there had been others that were believers that were trying to gently talk them through whether or not that was the best way to go. It's interesting, your definition of the Lord's will is not that there's a one set Lord's will and we all need to fit with it, but that the Lord leads each of us uniquely. So when it comes to education, you're not speaking to an ideal, you're speaking to a God that responds to our situation and is doing his best to release grace into that situation so that all kids can be handled the best way, which is, I think, the right way to handle that. Nevertheless, But I know parents like Troy, like you, whose kids went to public school all the way through, and what made the difference was the parents. I know parents that sent their kids to Christian schools, and that was the worst thing that they could have done, and their kids ended up rebelling against the Lord. My experience is that Christian schools tend to have a measure of hypocrisy in them. Sometimes the teachers aren't as godly as you might like them to be, because they're just like the rest of us. They're growing in their faith, and the kids that are hormonal teenagers are quick to spot hypocrisy. And once the kids start calling them on it, especially some sharp kids that aren't so sure about their own faith, then you can set up, in any Christian school environment, the kids that are the in-Christian kids, and then the other kids that are considered the rebels in the school, and everybody's trying to reach them, and they all know that it's the case. I know some kids that the parents should have sent them to a public school, and work them through, you know, just handling the public school environment, but they send them to the Christian school to kind of try to fix them. And I think that's very dangerous to do because a Christian school is not designed to fix bad parenting. You know, a Christian school is designed to educate according to a Christian worldview and works best when the parents are fully on board with that and doing their job at home as well. And that's one of the reasons why our mission statement at New Life is clearly, I mean, it starts with, we partner with families to provide a quality education with a biblical worldview. And so it is essential. And in the interview process for families to join the the population at New Life to join the school community. There's interviewing with the parents, there's interviewing with the prospective student, there's a pastor's recommendation letter that comes from that for that family. I mean, it's because New Life is very strong in its belief that we need to be in partnership with parents We need to be in partnership with parents who hold the same worldview, which is a biblically sound worldview, because we cannot do it, again, Monday through Friday from 8.30 till 3 o'clock and let that child then go home and have a worldview that's so different, so contrary to what they're learning during the school day. Now, I don't want to put you on the spot, but you are the pastor here, so I'm going to ask you. Okay. The pastor. Yeah, you are the pastor. And Angela, you might have some good thoughts on this too, so you can chime in, but I want to put you on the spot. So a parent comes to you. Yeah. as parents, sometimes probably come to you because you're the pastor. And they're like, I have a child now who's five, six, whatever. They're going to have to go to kindergarten at five years old. They're five, they're kindergarten age, and we're not sure whether we should send him to the public school, let's say. Private school isn't an option for us at this stage. We don't have the finances, let's just say. So it's going to be public school or homeschool. And I think my husband and I, I'll say it's the wife who's talking to you, are feeling led that we should homeschool. You're going to help them walk through whether that's an accurate read on their leading, how. You're going to point to the particular passages of the Bible and say, well, as we examine your leading, have you considered this and this to make sure that you guys are equipped, that it's the right move for you and your child? And the reason I'm asking the question is, somebody can get a machete and go chop off a dozen people's heads and say, well, God told me to do it. I felt led by the Lord. And I'm like, no, I don't know what you're led by, but wasn't the Lord, because let me point you to a few key verses here, right? So are there some key verses that can help give us some Yeah, guidelines, some boundaries, some bumpers, some key verses. Or themes, biblical themes for us to think about. Yeah, the biblical theme is this, go in all the world and make disciples, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you, right? The key to all parenting is discipleship. And so the context is never just, what should I do with my kids? But if they come to me and they're asking those kinds of questions, we're going to have some kind of a sense already of, Where are they at in the discipleship process, and are they being responsible with that, or are they just kind of faking it and kind of doing their own thing? I mean, what's going to make the difference in the life of a child is when they see a parent that is sincere about their faith and sincere about the discipline or the ways that they're submitting to the Lord's to the teaching of the Lord in Scripture? What are they doing to grow in following the leading of the Holy Spirit? Did they really get that or are they missing that? And so the question that I would point them in a couple directions in terms of homeschool groups, that are super well-established anymore. It's amazing how pervasive homeschool material is out there and how extensive many of the groups are, support groups, all those kinds of things. I point them in those directions, make sure that they're doing their homework at that, but the more important question for me would be How are they doing as parents? And if they're doing well as parents, again, this is my experience, if they're doing well as parents, they're doing the right job as parents, meaning training their child in the way they should go and shepherding the child's heart. not just trying to get certain behavior out of them, right? And that's a key distinction. If they get it and they're doing those things, they could send them to private school, they could send them to a public school, they could send them to a homeschool. I mean, they could homeschool themselves and they're probably going to do just fine. But the same thing that would cause them to fail as a homeschool parent would cause them to fail As a parent of a kid that's going to a public school as well. Angela is way too well behaved to be a guest on this show. Yes. She's nodding in agreement a lot, smiling a lot, but she's just letting, you know, Jonathan will talk all day if you let him. So you are nodding. Let that happen. You are nodding in agreement most forcefully at what points? What parts were really got you excited to agree? Well, I agree that the student's heart is integral, the parent's abilities to be present with that child, with where that child is. I think the core of what we haven't talked about is really what is, and this is probably very philosophical, but what is the reason that we educate children to begin with. Why does the government put so much money behind educating our children? I mean, it kind of is understandable. I mean, we know... Because of Gutenberg's printing press. That's the reason why everybody's so keen on education. You ever wonder if he really invented the printing press or if it was some sort of folklore legend like, you know, 500 years from now we'll be talking about Al Gore's internet and it'll just be assumed that, yeah, Al Gore invented the internet, just like Gutenberg invented the printing press. Al Gutenberg and Al Gore. Yeah, it's probably like, you know, like Max Weinberger or something invented the printing press and Gutenberg's getting all the pub. You know, you ever wonder about that? No, I actually never wonder about that. Me neither. It will keep me up tonight. So I think really we need to kind of, and I think we probably agree upon it, or maybe that we don't, as to, because that matters whether or not, you made a comment earlier that I didn't so much agree with, in the sense of you felt that you had seen some parents not be successful at the outcomes for their children as homeschool parents. Yeah. And what did you mean by that? What did you mean they weren't successful? What did you see in that child that to you was not successful? That's me like a cliffhanger question. As I'm seeing, because we're running out of time, as I'm seeing the progression of our discussion, we're going to have this panel back again for next week's show. I think we'll spend some time talking specifically about homeschooling, what successful homeschooling looks like or doesn't look like. And you can debate whether there is such a distinction to be made. And we'll talk about some of the characterizations or caricatures of homeschooling and homeschooling kids. We'll talk about some of that. And then maybe we'll progress when we feel like we've covered that. We'll talk about religious private school, maybe non-religious private school, public school. We'll kind of work our way through. Good. So next week... We should also talk about charter education. And charter education. Very important in Friday County. Yeah, we'll sneak that in there somewhere too. All right, here we go. We found the hot button issue. That's where we all start next week's show. This is the Frederick Faith Debate on Frederick's News Radio, 930 WFMD. Jonathan Switzer, Senior Pastor at Crossroads Valley Church. Thank you. Angela Phillips, Director of Development for New Life Christian School. Thank you. Thank you to our sponsors, Putman, Fleming & Heating, How Can We Make You Smile, Cruise Holidays, and Bob on That Big Ol' Cruise, and BMC Insurance, proud supporters of New Life Christian School. What have I been reading lately? Do I have time to tell you? I guess I do. A book called First Peter by Karen Jobes. That's about Paul's epiphany. Exactly. Until next week, God bless.