Well, welcome and thank you for coming to this breakout session. My name is Tom Gindorf. For those of you who don't know me, I am pastor teacher at Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Flagstaff. We are a multi-generational family integrated church there, the only one there. It's my privilege and honor to come and to talk to you today about seeking a gospel permeated home education. Let's pray. Let's ask for the Lord's help and then we'll continue. Father, we come before you with great need. We thank you and praise you that you have provided for us in Christ Jesus by the power of the Spirit to give us not spirits of timidity, but spirits of power, the power of dependence upon you, the power to come humbly before your throne in time of need and receive your help. We praise you and thank you for what you have accomplished in Christ Jesus. We thank you for the redeeming purpose that you have portrayed in all human history through the gospel. And we pray, Father, that you would allow us now to have eyes affixed upon your word, fixed upon Christ, and your redeeming purposes for our life. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. By raise of hands, how many of you are homeschooling your children? Okay, I would say the majority here. You know, that really is a trick question. It's a trick question because everyone with children in the home should be raising their hand. Some hands raised higher than others, but every parent is educating their children in the home. When I say home, I mean the jurisdictional domain or the realm of authority, not just the location. We need to start with a certain understanding about education in the home. And that is that it is not a matter of whether if parents are educating their children in the home, but rather really to what degree and how. Even the pagan parent educates their children in the home on some basic level, even in their absence. Now, we would strongly differ from the pagan parents to accounts. We would disagree about the quality and the orientation of the education. We would also disagree about the authority and the responsibility that we maintain while we carry out that education. However, education does indeed happen in that pagan home and every other home. The question is really what kind of education are they receiving? As you have heard and will continue to hear this weekend, education is not just A, B, C, and one, two, three. It is all-encompassing. Another thing we need to understand on the outset with reference to the gospel, we must understand that the gospel is not a sidecar to what God is doing. It is the fulfillment and the reality of all that he is doing. Romans 1, 1 and 2 says that he set aside apostles for the gospel, and he set them aside which he had promised through his prophets and the scriptures. And we can see that the whole counsel of God's word is rightly comprehended in the purpose of the gospel. And as Christians, we are to seek the quality and the orientation of our education in the home that scripture warrants. Also, as we seek the authority and responsibility that scripture warrants, we do so through the means of his word with a focus on the gospel. It's probably not a very hard task to convince this audience here that every aspect of life is worship. Amen? Therefore, every aspect of life is to be in conformity to the truth when we take and while we take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Romans 12, one and two exhorts, therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. That is the Christian's education. learning everything that is to be learned to the glory of God, by the will of God, and in conformity to the word of God. Therefore, all education belongs to God, and we are to submit ourselves to His will and His purposes within it. 2 Corinthians 10, three through six exhorts, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete. This is how the Christian is to go about education. Learning is to be the illumination of our hearts and minds by the light of the knowledge of God, producing obedience to Christ and requiring accountability to the truth. Therefore, a biblically-based education has everything in common with discipleship. And by discipleship, I mean the process of teaching one to follow an example. It is education, both material and methodology applied. I am sure that at some point you have heard someone make a distinction between discipleship and education. I want to take that to task today. I want to challenge that notion. It is possible to have education without an intentional discipleship, but there will always be some level of discipleship in any education. It may be a negative education. It may be a discipleship in worthlessness, but it is a discipleship. Parents educate and discipline and disciple their children, whether they do so intentionally or unintentionally, whether they do so according to the word of God or according to the world. This is the primary reason why the majority of us homeschool our children. It is because we believe that every bit of education, whether biology, whether history, or whether walking down the street, is all intrinsically linked to discipleship and an opportunity to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I think it's fair to say that many of us today here have accepted that notion. That's why we're here. We're here at this conference so that we can be reminded of the gospel's priority in our life and the equation of discipleship. However, the question I would ask for us today is has my home education been permeated with the gospel down to the process level? By process level, I mean the ins and out of how we do what we do. down to the micro level. Educational process is the micro level of learning and teaching. It includes the learner's perspective. It includes the teacher's methodology or how we do what we do. In edu-speak, we are talking about pedagogy, meaning the method and the practice of our teaching. When we start talking about the gospel at that level, it may seem like a little harder correlation. Yet we need to be reminded that a Christian parent's view of education needs to be. The education of any type is always to be thought of as discipleship and intentionally so. Therefore, it needs to be permeated down to the actual process. And we need to have strategies. We may get caught up in the minutia of our methodology. but we need to see that the gospel saturates everything that we do. And that sounds good, doesn't it? Gospel-saturated education. But how do we carry this out? We are always to be reforming our orthopraxy or our right practice through better and better orthodoxy or right believing. So this is not a question of whether or not we are to be reforming. We are to be reforming. The question is really whether that reformation has reached down to the very procedure of doing things, down to the detail level. I'd like to start by looking at what it means to have a gospel permeated home education by looking at our methodology in general. Methodology is how we do what we do. It involves the scope of what we're trying to plan, and then plans out the sequence of how we're going to achieve it. And suffice it to say, methodology matters. I'll share some illustrative examples from scripture. I'm sure you've all heard these before, but they bear repeating. Moses at Meribah. So Moses was told first time he came to a rock to strike a rock and he was going to get water out of the rock and it was going to give water to the people. Second time around at Meribah, God tells him, you're gonna come to a rock again, but this time you speak to the rock and then water will come out for the people. And Moses disobeyed, he strikes the rock and kept him out of the promised land. Now you could say, well, you know, God's serious about this obedience thing. It was a matter of obedience. He just said, speak to the rock. And we find out in 1 Corinthians 10, four, that in God's mind and plan, the rock that was following them was a typology of Christ. And Christ died once, not to be recrucified over and over. The rock was struck once. Then you can have a relationship with the rock and speak to the rock. So Moses did not realize, perhaps, the gravity of what God was demonstrating. He didn't realize how much his methodology mattered Another example is King David and the Ark of the Covenant. He had stored the house, stored the Ark in the house of Abinadab. He wanted the Ark, he was gonna bring it up to Jerusalem. They put it on an ox cart, because it sounded like a good thing to do. Uzzah reached out to settle the Ark when it had reached the threshing floor and Uzzah died and David was mad. Well, God had told them, don't do it that way. So he was disobedient. So what was the deal with, you know, putting the ark on a car? I mean, what was so wrong about that? Well, methodology matters. And we might keep in mind that Moses, he got water from the rock the second time. So if the end justifies the means, Moses could say, well, I still got water. But methodology matters and it kept him out of the promised land. And we can see in 1 Corinthians 10, 4, God was displaying something that could have been a beautiful picture that maybe Moses missed. The ark was probably a lot more portable on the ox cart. I mean, you have to go round up the priest, you have to put poles inside the ark, you have to put the ark on top of the priest's shoulders, and they're carrying this heavy ark, and they're walking, and they're slow, and it's dusty, and it's hot, and hey, it sounds like a good idea, to spare them the labor of moving with this ark, walking great distances with it. We'll put it on an ox cart, that's way better. But that was the methodology of David. It was the methodology of men, not God's methodology. God wanted it done the way he wanted it done. And I am sure there's great purposes in why God did that. One of which I can think of is this. When the priests were required to carry it with the poles, It was very purposeful. They moved at a particular pace. They moved with a lot of pomp and circumstance. It was the priests. They led the nations religiously. When you put it on an ox cart, it's a beast of burden. It seems like you're just moving a piece of luggage. And so they could devaluate the ark. based on whether or not they carried it in the way that God had prescribed. When God gives us a methodology, we had better keep it. And we see that pragmatism does not pay, especially when it causes direct disobedience. There are many more analogies that we can take from the narratives of scripture, and they will all confirm that when you do things God's way, you keep God's punishment and discipline off you, and you receive God's blessings. Therefore, it is essential to know how to use the Word of God to determine how we do what we do. And since 2 Peter 1.3 tells us that we have received everything pertaining to life and godliness and the true knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord, we hold the Word of God as absolutely sufficient for that task. The sufficient scriptures not only determines what we do, but how we do what we do. So when we obey scriptures like 2 Corinthians 10.5, which tells us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, we must realize that this goes down to the very procedure of how we do things. When 1 Corinthians 10.31 tells us whether we are eating or drinking, we are to do all to the glory of God. It's more than just a matter of conscience. That's the context. But when it says all, all things to the glory of God, it means everything. For those of you who like to study grammar, all is Panta, it's in its plural form. It's without an article, it's a noun, it means everything. Everything. Taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ and doing everything to the glory of God is not merely an overall ideology. It must include our methodology. Let me give you a practical example. Let's say that a Christian man and wife decide to homeschool their children. And they decide they want to do this because they believe that they can give their child a Christian worldview in their education. Now that's good reasoning, but it may not be sufficient reasoning. The question becomes, what do you mean by Christian worldview? Do you mean that you want to use a Christian curriculum? Are we merely talking about correcting the humanistic view on evolution? Those things are good, but it has to be more than that. What is the Christian's greatest joy in glorifying God? Well, it must be that we can glorify God while being reconciled to God. That is the power of the gospel and what gospel living is all about. How is that a reality in that couple's homeschool purpose and plan? Okay, so the couple moves closer to a gospel-centered home education, and let's say they start and close the day with prayer, and they pepper the day with scriptural principles. Now we're moving closer, but I would still ask, is the gospel permeating the actual process? How intentionally are they seeking the gospel's power and plan with regard to how they do what they do? Now I realize, What I'm asking may feel a little bit like trying to ride a bike while balancing plates on your head. It may seem like there's enough to think about without scrutinizing the details. I'm sure that if any of you feel like my wife does, the day's hard enough juggling things with six children and housework, which is too hard to think about the process level. However, if the gospel is to permeate everything we do, we must think about it. I hope to take some of the difficulty away today. In fact, if you have understood so far that the gospel must saturate how we do what we do, then you've understood. The gospel must saturate the very procedure of doing things. You've got the just of it. I think we can understand that much. We can embrace that. but putting it into practice is the biggest obstacle. So I hope to help you with some of those strategies. In academia, we use various terms and practices like paradigms and taxonomies. A paradigm is a pattern or a template that we follow. A taxonomy is how we classify something. And we use paradigms and taxonomies to get down to the very procedure of the way we do things because educators know that all of the parts matter. Now if educators are concerned about the very parts because they know the parts make up the whole, Christians need to be concerned about the parts as well. For example, it is not enough for us to say, we ought to love one another. That is right. That is good. We have to see that love permeates everything that we do. And we have to understand the parts of love. We have to know the ins and outs of how love works and what love does down to the very process level of how we love. That's the type of love that God wants us to have. He wants us to be permeated and saturated with love. And so we look at passages like 1 Corinthians 13, they help us a great deal. Among other passages. We have to take this same detailed look at how we're home educating or discipling our children. Let me use an example of taxonomy to show you what I mean. Bloom's Taxonomy. It's got a lower level, it has an upper level. And in this lower level, It defines basic learning. It starts with knowledge, then it moves to comprehension, then it moves to application. A child has knowledge of something. They grow in their comprehension of what they have knowledge of to the point to where they can begin applying that knowledge and that comprehension. An example would be a toddler having knowledge about a car. They know it's called a car, they know you go places in it. Basic knowledge. As they grow, the comprehension of a car grows, and they begin to understand the limits and the mechanisms of car travel. Eventually, enough knowledge and comprehension leads to application. They can buckle themselves in, they can roll down the window, they can adjust the seat. So basic knowledge leads to comprehension, which leads to greater application, and it's cyclical, it goes around and around. When we educate our children about anything, We should be tying their knowledge, their comprehension, and their application to the gospel. Here's an example, and for the next few examples, I'm going to keep this in the realm of a formal academic education. You're teaching some form of mathematics. Your child should be learning mathematics to the glory of God. while taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That must be the primary and the most important reason that they learn mathematics or anything else. How? Break the process down. Start with why. Does your student know why they are learning mathematics aside from various applications that we use in our jobs and our everyday life? Every Christian mathematics curriculum needs to have chapter one. Why learning mathematics glorifies God and helps us take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. So many things to explain here if we just take the time to think about it. The creator of the universe used and uses mathematics to govern the universe. Therefore, mathematics tells us about who God is and how we work. Psalm 19 one, the heavens are declaring the glory of God down to the micro level. Mathematics becomes important in the book of Daniel. God uses numbers to indicate various attributes and to have debates with all millennialists. Number seven, perfection, completion. We could go on and on. Jesus says forgive 70 times seven. It gives new meaning. We could go on into how mathematics functions. It's orderly, it's patterned. God is orderly, God is patterned. He loves patterns. So we have informed basic knowledge with basic theology. We have further informed further comprehension and greater comprehension of God, and with greater comprehension of God. Then we can move to the attitudes, both good and bad, in learning mathematics. We can explain why learning mathematics that we don't use in our everyday brings glory to God because it helps us appreciate the complexity of his mind and his ways. And just that little piece of knowledge helps you turn something that can be difficult and frustrating into something that's praiseworthy. Mom, I'm so frustrated with this math. It's so hard, it's so complex. Let's talk about the complexity of God's mind. Let's talk about the complexity of our God who created all things. And when you feel the difficulty, son or daughter, give praise to God. Because in that moment, you should redirect your thoughts. God is complex and He's amazing and He's infinite. That is gospel permeation. Ask questions about how and why we comprehend what we comprehend in the process of application. Think about these things in your lesson planning. Ask yourself the primary question. How is today's lesson going to be gospel saturated? That is redeeming the very procedure of how we do what we do. And please, please let your children in on this. Let them know why you're doing what you're doing so that they see your efforts. They'll begin to see through the lens of scripture and the gospel's redeeming power to the glory of God. I have found in the past, working as an educator, teaching in various high schools, the high school level courses, teaching comprehension and logic and composition, that students thrive when you share the scope and sequence with them, when you tell them why you are doing what you are doing. I'm giving a pop quiz today instead of a written exam, and here's why. The buy-in is amazing. They begin to understand why you're doing what you're doing. It just seems arbitrary to them otherwise. When we encourage our children with how we're doing and why we're doing how we're doing, with respect to gospel saturation, they will begin to understand and appreciate why we're doing, why are we learning hard math that we'll never use ever? Because it glorifies God. because you learn about God and the mind of God and the complexity of God and his orders, orderliness and his purposes. In the same way, we tell our children our goals of how we do what we do and we let them be a part of helping us. Don't hide your agenda, let them be a part of it. Now the objection could rise, I've already addressed it. I barely have time to lesson plan and to get it together. How am I going to scrutinize everything that I do to see whether or not it is permeated with the gospel? We have to understand that this is a mindset and one that will grow and become easier and easier to apply as we do. This is not another program. This is not a prescription. This is a lens that we see life through. As one grows in this, you can begin to have even more in-depth application. I'll use Bloom's Taxonomy as an example again. It has an upper level. Once you have knowledge, comprehension, and application, then you can have analysis, and synthesis, and evaluation. And you can help your children begin to analyze, and synthesize, and evaluate with respect to the gospel. analyzing patterns, synthesizing new ideas off of those patterns and evaluating those ideas in practice. And this correlates to gospel permeation as your child begins to understand what you're trying to achieve and begins to follow after example. Imagine, imagine this, you're working on English grammar. It's difficult sometimes, and so what are you doing to teach them verbal declensions? You're drilling it, drilling verbal declensions. A gospel permeation, when a child learns and holds on to what you're trying to do, could say, this is a lot like how we have to drill scripture memory for the difficulties of life. You want them thinking that way. In that moment, your child is seeking a gospel permeated educational process. And if you have hope that this is going to be a reality for your children, then it needs to become a reality for parents. Now, you don't need to understand educational paradigms and taxonomies, but you do need to understand that the details matter. The procedure matters. The methodology matters. How we do what we do matters. Even secular educators recognize that. That's why they care about things like paradigms and taxonomies. because they know that the details matter. But to us, the details are to be redeemed intentionally for the glory of God. 1 Timothy 6, 17 through 19 instructs us, instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed. Us being rich in good works and laying up a treasure for a good foundation for the future is tied to God's rich supply for us to enjoy. This means that even our enjoyment is tied directly to our commission from God. All life, everything, even our play is redeemed to the glory of God. That is life indeed. Now, I've been referring to the micro level in academic educational process, but as I said before, education cannot be separated out from discipleship. So this applies to every learning experience, which I am sure that most of you have embraced as every moment of the day and in everything that we do, every circumstance. At the end of the letter to the Thessalonians, Paul summarizes his desire for that healthy church, and he prays for the minute. 1 Thessalonians 5, 23. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is an all-encompassing sanctification, spirit, soul, body, everything that's material and immaterial. Christians are to be sanctifying forces in the lives of other believers, Paul told the church in Rome, in Romans 15, 14. And concerning you, my brethren, I myself am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to admonish one another. This is to happen nowhere more primary than the home when we seek to pass down a multi-generational legacy. This means that we must also be concerned about everything that's material and immaterial. Last time I checked, that was everything. And this is to the benefit of our sanctification. and the sanctification of our children. If we were seeking to redeem anything, whether it's material or immaterial, for the sake of the sanctification of our children, then we ought to be viewing every experience as educational or a discipleship opportunity. I think that's what gets missed about Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 9. We like that. We're to teach the words of our Lord to our children when we're sitting down, when we're walking, resting, about the way. But that becomes sort of an overview for our lives, which is good, but have we taken it down to the very procedure of how we do what we do? Has this become a spirit, soul, body sort of permeation? What I'm talking about is prescribed very clearly in passages like 1 Thessalonians 5, 17 through 18. Pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks. This means regardless of what you're doing, an attitude of prayer is to be present. So whether you're bending down to help tie a toddler's shoe, or you're teaching reformational history, you are to be having an attitude of prayer. Because bending down to tie a toddler's shoe reminds you that we bend our knee before the Father, and so you take the opportunity to tell them, you know, we bow down to God. And we pray and pray with your toddler right then and there because you were reminded of prayer by tying a shoe. That's the sort of permeation that we're driving towards. And again, this isn't a program. It's not a prescription, it's an attitude. It's a mindset. Colossians 3, 16 and 17 says, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom and teaching, admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God, whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. That is all-encompassing. How is thankfulness a ready remedy on your tongue when you're faced with any grief? How is the word of God, the nucleus, the protons, the electrons of any atom that you study? And fathers, I want to talk to us for a moment. We need to be leading in this. A lot of times we leave it up to our wives to take care of the homeschooling, but this is something that we're responsible for. Ephesians 6, 4 tells us, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Two words used there I want to point out. Discipline, first word, paideia. It is an all-encompassing education. For those of you who follow the Scripps National Spelling Bee, there's a book that they have to know. They may get asked words outside of this book, but you at least have to know what's in this book. It's called the paideia, because it's all-encompassing. We're talking about every life, training, experience. You are responsible fathers. Next word we see there, instruction. It's nutheseia. It means an all-encompassing spiritual admonition and exhortation. You might have heard of nuthetic counseling. It borrows that term because it means it's all-encompassing counseling according to scripture, the sufficiency of scripture. We're talking about every spiritual experience. In those two words, you have everything material and immaterial. Everything that's going to train them for life. Everything that's going to train them spiritually. You're responsible for both of them. So we must learn to lead not only in an overarching sense, but we must know the ins and outs and the procedure as well. The gospel must saturate everything we do. Richly dwell within us. So how do we do this? Well, I'd like to give you some strategies and close out our time today. The first thing I hope you've already recognized is that this is not some sort of program that you're going to sign up for. It's a mindset. It's a mindset. We have to be about God's redemption and it's redeeming purposes in our lives, in everything. So here's number one, first strategy. Don't reduce the gospel down to the contents of a gospel tract. The gospel is the message of Christ Jesus and his redemptive purposes in our lives. This is the whole counsel of God's word, but viewed through the lens of God's redemptive purposes in Christ Jesus. In all our education and discipleship efforts, if we are not minimalistic with our view of the gospel, then we will not be minimalistic with the gospel's impact in our educational efforts. Understand how the gospel permeates intrinsically. That's what it does. That's what life is about. God's redemptive purposes found in Christ Jesus to bring glory to himself. Two, stop compartmentalizing your lives. Compartmentalization is an insipid but destructive error. It's very easy to do, it's hard to see. What compartmentalization does is keep the more spiritual things tied to what is evidently spiritual. Having a gospel permeated education means having a gospel permeated life. And we need to view education as happening all the time, making a necessary connection with education and discipleship. So we take this down to the micro level, the procedure level, and we focus on the redemptive work of Christ in everything we do, everywhere we go. Number three, be very clear to your children about your goal and praise them in the direction that you want them to go. When you hear your children redeem any learning experience with reflection on the word of God, praise them to high heaven. Tell them, that's what we are, that's what we do. Children latch on to things and before you know it, they'll be driving you into a gospel permeated home education. Four. Pray for this reality before you plan and before you implement it. As you do any planning for any academic education, before you start your lessons, ask for God's help. It is the Spirit of God that leads us into all the truth, John 16 and 13. And so ask for the Spirit's help. Submit that to Him before you try to implement it. Ask for His guidance, He'll give it. And pray specifically that you would be able to see God's redemption in the process of what you're doing. Number five, if you are homeschooling full-time, be intentional about finding educational curriculum and strategies that provide a lot of opportunities to speak of the gospel's power and purpose. I know there's a lot of thought about the type of education curriculum that we use in our education. You know, it's classical this or whatever. Our main consideration must be whether or not it lends itself to the gospel and its focus and the power of God and the glory of God and the sufficiency of scripture. Our primary purpose is not to train academic athletes. Our primary purpose is the redemption of our children's souls to the glory of God so that they can spend an eternity praising him. Number six. I like this one. Embellish your efforts when you're trying to implement this. You know, you're gonna find out it is impossible to aggrandize the gospel. It's impossible. Make a big deal out of seeking to redeem every procedure and experience. If you've been down to tie a toddler's shoe, think about prayer and pray with them. You know why that seems cheesy to us? Because we're worldly. That's why. That's beautiful, actually, is what it is. It's redemptive, is what it is. Embellish your efforts when you're trying to implement this. You will not outdo the gospel. You will not wear it out. And you will find that there's a lot of opportunity that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, and it will begin to alert you just how much fodder there actually is for gospel discipleship, if you're looking. Seven. Start believing that your earthly good is dependent upon your heavenly mindset and stop believing the lie that it's possible to be of such heavenly mindedness that you're of no earthly good. Our first purpose in anything must be to reflect Christ and his gospel and realize that there is still quite a bit of penetration that is needed in our lives. This is a further up and further in effort. Gospel permeation must go down to how we do what we do all the time.