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The podcast discusses the topic of where Christians should send their children to school, whether it be a Christian private school, public school, or homeschooling. The hosts share their personal experiences, with one growing up in Christian private school and the other attending public school. They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each option and the importance of having a strong foundation in the Bible. The host who attended private school expresses gratitude for the knowledge and understanding of scripture that it provided, while acknowledging that personal faith and relationship with God are equally important. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Hello, hello. Mic check, mic check, one, two, one, two. I have to figure out where the heck this verse is, because that'll be awkward. Where the heck did it go? Dream of a child. Check, check. But I literally just had it. I can't find it. I'm so confused. Where is it? I don't know. Dream of a child and the way it should go. In Proverbs? Yeah. What verse or chapter? That one. I don't know what that means. I literally bookmarked it, so I don't know what the heck happened. 22-6. Oh, I understand now. Let me just get through here. Okay. Okay, I'm ready now. Still going? Oh, yeah, still going. Okay. Ready? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Christ Crucified podcast. I am your host, Noah Medrano, and today I am joined by my lovely husband. His name is Austin Medrano. Hello, hello. Today we're going to be talking about something that I think is super important in the church, which is this discussion of where Christians should send their children to school, whether it be a Christian private school or a public school or homeschooling them. We're just going to talk about all of that and why we believe the things that we believe about where Christians should send their kids to school and talk a little bit about our experience. Because I actually grew up going to public school, and I was a Christian. I grew up Christian, but going to public school. And Austin, on the other hand, grew up going to private school, Christian private school. So we both have experienced both sides of the coin while still being in Christian families, raised Christian and all of these things. So let's go ahead and talk a little bit about that experience. Austin, let's start with you. Tell us about your experience growing up in Christian private school. Sure. I went to the private school, a Christian school, from preschool to fifth grade. And just for the background for the others, from sixth to eighth grade I went to a private charter school, which you had to, like, literally win a lottery to do. They put your name and, like, ah, and they'd pull it out literally. So I won the lottery on that. And then after that, for high school, well, for the first three years, from freshman to junior, I went to a public high school, a type of high school. And then I finished off in homeschooling my last year through the Gorman homeschooling in Redlands. So I kind of touched all the bases. So I've kind of seen the ups and downs and the benefits of different things and have different opinions. For me personally, I know not everybody learns the same, not everybody acts the same, has grown up with the same background. So those things affect it. But my first years at the Utah Christian school through the private school was amazing. I have no complaints, especially now looking back. I think even then I really loved my teachers and my classmates and all these different things, the nice field trips you would go on, actual educational field trips. Yeah, they were super fun. All those different things, those things that they offered, and not just educationally, but biblically and having chapels on Thursdays and dressing up. You had to get dressed up for chapel and do worship and all these different things. Actually, that's where a passion of mine had started is where I watched this guy. His name is Mr. Grimwood. He was our second-grade teacher but also the guy that would lead worship on Thursdays at chapel where he would play acoustic guitar and sing. Eventually I picked that up because I really wanted to be like Mr. Grimwood and he did that stuff even at a young age. Years later in high school, I ended up playing and singing and doing all that stuff. But, yeah, I don't know if you have any specifics on any of that. But, yeah, there's a lot to go into. For sure, yeah. I'll just touch a little bit. I'll maybe talk a little bit about my experience and then kind of whatever you hear, you can bounce back off of that, contradict that with your experience and these kind of things. Well, let me first start by saying that when I started hanging out with you and hanging out with your friend group, many of which also went to Christian private school, mostly Arrowhead Christian Academy, I felt so out of my league because you guys knew so much about the Bible. And not that – obviously there's different things that play into that. But I know that we had pretty similar situations in terms of both growing up with, like, in and out of the church and, like, different – like, it's not like we both – neither of us, let me say, neither of us had, like, the perfect Christian role model in our life and, like, always – we were always faithfully walking with the Lord 100%. And so to see that, like, you and your friends who also went to Christian private school grew up in that had come out of it with such a deeper understanding of scripture was just shocking for me because going to public school and also not having parents who were very involved with that kind of a thing was – led me to not really have deep knowledge at all about the Bible. Obviously, I knew the basic ones that everybody knows of, like, Jonah and the whale. I didn't even know that it was just a big fish. It was just Jonah and the whale, Noah's Ark, David and Goliath, all the classics. But I didn't even know the depth of those stories at all. And so I think what really shocked me when I started hanging out around you guys was that you guys actually had a depth of understanding. No, it didn't mean that you guys walked perfectly. But it meant that when you guys – like, I'm going to talk about you specifically. When you decided to finally get serious and surrender fully to the Lord, you already had an edge up over me because I didn't – when I decided to get serious with God, I had to do a lot more learning just generally about scripture and all these stories. Whereas I feel like because people who go to Christian school, they have that advantage of already knowing the stories. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that they are applying those to their life. But it means that when you do decide to get fully serious with God, you already, like, know that stuff. You already understand that depth. So, yeah. Did you want to comment about, like, what that was like for you of having that knowledge? Does that make sense what I'm saying about, like, having that one up when you did decide to get serious with God? Yeah. Growing up definitely had that foundation because of – I mean, not just Sunday school and memorizing verses and stories and all these things. But during the week, going to the same church that is actually linked to the school, a lot of the times they'd be coincided at the school and the church would work together on things and all these sort of things. So that was cool because I was able to retain things and know things. But I think the – I mean, we were memorizing Bible verses in, like, kindergarten that I know to this day. You know, I still have my Bible from kindergarten that's all highlighted and all the memory verses in that. And one of them actually was the first memory verse that we had without a psalm. And it was that the Word of God is the light to our feet. Yeah. Here I am not memorizing it. But, yeah, like, the lamp unto our feet and the light unto our path. Sorry, there it is. It took me a second. And there's, like, very basic things. They're, like, Proverbs 3, 5 through 6, right? Like, of trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding and all your ways. Acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. These are things that we either learn literally from, hey, class, this is your memory verse for the week. Or through songs that we would sing in chapel on Thursdays. They would just be singing. We'd just sing scripture, you know. And I can confidently say, not only just the structure of the Bible and singing, like, having Bible stories, because the Bible stories are cool and they're awesome, but if you don't really know what the reason of the story is, it's kind of just like, oh, it's a cool story. It's just like watching something about Santa. You're just like, oh, cool, man. Like, it's a fun little story about Tim Allen and Jack Frost. Like, it doesn't really mean anything. But when you know the depths of it, right, like when you know, like, recently those stories that I have always known, I've been studying, I was going through, like, Luke and Matthew, all these different gospels, and just seeing the depth of why Jesus was telling these parables have brought the life, the actual life behind the actual story. So it wasn't just so much the story that brought life, but I think it was the memory verses that really helped me, because there would be so many times where it was like, who do I trust in this moment, or what do I trust? And I'd remember those memory verses. I was like, okay, don't trust me. Don't trust myself. I mess things up, or my way is crooked, it's evil. Like, my natural way is to mess things up. I mean, I'm like, you don't even have to be a believer to probably understand that philosophy. Like, when we're trying to take things under our own control, many times we mess it up. Or we get so successful in one area that we push everything else away. You're still messing it up, by the way. You're not being successful. Success looks more like surrender. But ultimately, I was able to get to those spots because of the word of God, and we know that in Romans 10-17 that faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. So I would hear the word of God that was memorized as a kid. I'd recall those verses, and the Holy Spirit would help me with that. Recall those verses and have faith to trust God in moments where I wasn't going to church or I wasn't really talking to God. Like, I wasn't actually having a relationship with God. I was just kind of doing my own thing. And I was able to have faith to walk away from a situation that I knew morally it was wrong, but I was like, I'll still flirt with it. Like, maybe I should. But God would convict me in his word and give me faith to step away from those things. So that was the biggest impact about growing up in Christian private school was the memorization of scripture. I think that was the biggest thing. Like, yeah, that to me was, to this day, I mean, I just pulled up two verses that I've literally known for my whole life. I don't have memories of my life without knowing those verses. Yeah, that's so good. And that's so important. And obviously that's something that public school does not offer you, can not offer you because they would get sued or whatever. Whatever. They would have lawsuits against them. And so I think that's so important, especially in those formative years. Let me read a Bible verse, Proverbs 22, verse 6. Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it. And that, I mean, ties in really well to what we were talking about, about how even if you have your moments and you have your areas of life where you aren't surrendered fully to God, because you have that foundation, because you were trained up in the way that you should go, in the ways of the Lord, then when you make that choice to surrender, then you come back. It brings you back, and like you're saying, memorization of scripture was absolutely essential in that. And, yeah, I mean, for me, growing up in public school, never went to private school for a year of my life. Yeah, we didn't get taught any of that stuff. And, of course, there's still a responsibility on parents outside of school to be spending time with their children and reading the Bible with them and teaching them and just showing them scripture and what God's word says about certain things. But it's almost like when you send your kids to public school and they're learning all of these things about – and it's much worse now than it was before, even worse now than when I was in school, which wasn't all that long ago, but it's gotten even worse. But there's no such thing as neutral teaching. Everyone teaches with some kind of worldview attached to what they're teaching. And so if it's not a Christian – if it's not Christian values and if it's not Christian teaching, then it's secular teaching. I mean, ultimately, it's demonic teaching if it's not what God's word says. You can't be neutral on what you're being taught, especially with children being taught how they should perceive the world and all of these things. So definitely when I was growing up in public school, I learned a lot of things and learned a lot of things, not even necessarily just from the teachers, but from the friends around me, the people around me. And it was becoming very popular at my school, probably in middle school, for LGBT clubs and for everyone to be saying that they were LGBT. And looking around, I didn't have any kind of way of knowing what the Bible said about that. Or, you know, no one really told me those things. And so it's almost – it's like if you send your kids to public school, they're learning all these things that you have to then teach them how to unlearn. And then on top of teaching them to unlearn it, you have to teach them truth. You can't just leave them with no understanding. You have to show them the right understanding. And so that's just not the best way to go about it. I mean, definitely there are exceptions to the rule. And, you know, the Lord still worked through me in crazy ways by his grace. But, you know, you just don't want to do that. You don't want to have to unteach what someone has taught your children. You want to be the one making sure that you know what they're being taught and who they're hanging out with and what world views they're being taught. So I just think that's super important. But, I mean, what do you think about that? What do you think about private school, public school, homeschooling? So you already said what I felt the Lord wanted me to emphasize on was you, even not even just school, you taking your kid on a Sunday and dropping him off at Bible class, that's awesome, great. I'm so glad you're doing that. Keep doing that. Keep doing that. Even if you're doing this every day and you're doing the private school thing, the Christian private school thing and you're dropping him off every day, he's learning about Jesus and all these great reports. But you yourself aren't being a spiritual leader in your home, mother or father. You can't read that verse, that verse is from Proverbs 22, 6, about raising, training up a child in the way. And the way it's talking about is the way of everlasting, the way that the Bible is laying out, the will of the Lord. You can't read that verse and go, I'm doing that. That doesn't make any sense. It's like saying, hey, I'm going to disciple you. Me, I'm going to disciple you, but I'm just going to put a computer in front of you and you're just going to learn from the website that's on there. And this is the program that you're going to listen from. And there might be some really cool things on that program. But the way that it's structured, discipleship, raising of children, is not putting an iPad in front of your kid or dropping them off of a class. Because the structure is you're the parent and that you have authority over your child, and authority and respect that the teachers will never have, that the video could never do, that the Bible class could never bring. And you have a role. And that role is so important. Because you'll hear these kids grow up in a really nice environment, with a nice house, with nice things, and they're the popular kid too. And everything's going good for them. And they're going to the school, like I said, the private school, they're going to the nice church. But their dad isn't present. And he starts to act out when he gets older. And all the investment you put in, all the chips you moved into private school and into the Bible class, you forfeited all that time, all that investment. And it doesn't mean that God won't honor it or won't do a crazy work like he did for me. I didn't grow up in the most perfect household with the perfect dad. I didn't do that. The Lord still saved me, amen. But we're not trying to – we don't set up a system of Hail Mary. Hopefully, Hail Mary, I'm going to make it for my kid. Here, my kid's going to make it through the Hail Mary attempt. We want to set up a system that the Bible promotes. And that's spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers stepping up as a role of an authoritative parent that brings spiritual wisdom and sits down with their kid and, yes, reads the Bible story with them, but explains them the truth of the Bible as the Lord leads them. And that, to me, gives you more of a probability, right? Proverbs is not the – 100%, if you sit down with your kid and read the Bible with them every night, they are going to be Christians forever and they will never walk away from the faith. That's not what it's saying. It's just saying, hey, if you do this, there's a higher chance, there's a higher probability that they'll walk this way because they'll start seeing truth. They'll start seeing the truth live down in you. Because if you're dropping them off at school, hey, go praise God. Hey, I'm bringing you on Sunday morning and we get washed off on Sunday and then all week you're getting drunk in front of your kid, you're yelling at your husband and doing all these other things. Dude, you know what the first thing that kid's going to do? Throw the Bible in the trash when it gets older. Because they just saw your hypocritical mother and father suggested them, yeah, listen to the Bible, but you're not listening to the Bible. And that's my stress is these things are great. I am pro-private Christian school over sending – this is the classic term, sending your kids over to Caesar because they're going to go to Caesar, as I've experienced, and, yes, there's going to be all these different clubs, it's going to promote all these different things, all this debaucherous stuff, all this classic evil stuff that's nothing new. And they're going to get involved with that. Oh, not my kid, not my kid. Okay, sure. I have met all those parents that say, oh, not my kid. I've met all your kids and it is your kid, by the way. And the world has a way of being used by the devil and playing on our flesh to suck us into those environments. And there are some kids out there, I've seen it, where they're able to withstand and walk faithfully, but that is because they grew up with faithful, faithful, faithful, blameless mothers and fathers that have walked faithfully with them and they know and trust the Lord. And they're able to be almost like missionary kids in these public schools. See how fast the education factor gets away when it goes to public schools? It's not even about that. But, yeah, that's what I just wanted to emphasize was the expression of, hey, mothers and fathers, you can set up the nice system, but if you're not stepping up, you're really screwing over your kids. And you're screwing over yourself. And you know better, too. And I want to save us from getting into our 50s and then looking back at, like, that's something I don't want to do is get into my 50s and look back and go, man, I should have just took on some more responsibility and figured out how to pay for the private school. It would have been worth it. And I get some of you guys are in a different position. You can't afford it. But I distress you. Pray, pray, pray. Seek the Lord to help you on that. Get in the community that wants that for you. I will support you in that. Not to say that you're just going to take money from the church forever, but just to get you on your feet so you're able to do that and provide that or to homeschool. But the Lord makes a way, because I do believe that's more the Lord's will than the latter. And the Lord will provide whatever it is, a job, finances, friends, community, all those things that you need help of, like, man, I'm here. How do I get there? It will help you. But, yeah, I'll pass it back to you. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, you summed it up really well. I mean, and like you're saying, yeah, it's not just, oh, let me send my kids to Christian school so that I don't have to teach them these things when they're home with me. No, no, no, no. Listen, if you are going to choose between the two, I recommend you don't. I recommend you do both. But if you're going to choose between the two of you being involved and you teaching your kids biblical principles and values and sitting in the Word with them or sending them to private school and you're only going to choose one, or sending them to Christian school specifically, and you're only going to choose one, definitely choose you sitting down with them, reading the Word, teaching them biblical principles. Do both, please. Because, I mean, going to school is a third of their life, eight hours out of every day. So that's really important. But if you're going to choose one, the first most important thing is to make sure that you are having conversations with them and teaching them about who God is and how He's working in your life and how He's working in every single aspect of each day. Just show them that God is in everything, in all things, and that He created all things and that we were created to glorify Him. It's so important to teach kids these things. But, yeah, I mean, that's the parental role. It's so important because, like you were talking about, they're going to listen to you. They're going to have more respect and more honor toward you than any other adult in their life. And so you need to make sure that you are, you know, realizing and acknowledging the responsibility that you have to that child to show them how to walk with the Lord. And so, I mean, it's just so important. And, I mean, that's why I believe with our kids that when we have kids, I'm going to stay home and homeschool them and teach them these Christian principles myself from home. And I know a lot of you have also considered that as a possibility for your kids because I just think it's so important. And if I can have that opportunity to raise our kids up in the way of the Lord so intentionally and so directly and so carefully with such intentionality, then I'm definitely going to choose that option. So, personally, I view that as the best option because even at Christian private schools, there are influences and things that you don't have control over. And not to say that you need to be a complete control freak and, you know, you can't let your child hang out with anybody, but, man, those years, those formative years are so important. And, I mean, I know that I love the Lord, that I am fully surrendered to the Lord, that I am fully submitted to the Lord. And so to choose somebody who is fully submitted and fully surrendered to the Lord to raise up my child in the ways of the Lord, well, the obvious choice, the one who they're going to respect the most and listen to the most and have the most connection with is going to be me. And, I don't know, that's just the way I see it. That's not like a hard and fast rule with no exceptions, but I personally believe that that is the best option. That the second best option is Christian private school and that last resort, I think that it's best not to do this, is to send them to public school. But, yeah, I don't know if you have any thoughts about that. No, I just think that, of course, we're not saying, oh, if I send my kid to Christian private school, they're going to like, it's going to be the best experience or something like that either, right? Like you have people there, newsflash, people are broken and all these different things, and even Christians are walking in defeat rather than in victory, and you're going to come across those people. But the fact that God is being mentioned in Scripture, is being said in song, is so much better than, I mean, we all say, right, we always joke about it, like, oh, like high school, man? Who remembers the education I get from high school? It's really not just about these educational things. And, of course, when it's younger, we want some good education and all that. But the things that are going to last, that are eternal, are the Scriptures, are the times where your kid's sitting there praising God, even young, the super young, they're like six years old, and they're sitting there singing the songs, and they encounter God. And they get to a space where, and then they get older, and all their friends are deconstructing and walking away from the faith, and they just go, man, I'm not walking perfect, but I could never walk away. I've always known God. Remember that one time He revealed Himself to me? And any time I have doubt, these Scriptures come up, and they remind me how good God is, how faithful God is, and it reminds me of all these times where I saw my friends going through struggle, and they trusted God, and God came through for them. So you have this opportunity for that for your kids, but then you have an opportunity to go into these Christian schools and to encourage other Christian parents, and for you to be encouraged by other Christian parents, and to form relationships. As your kids are going to hang out, you're able to go over to so-and-so's house, and the parties, and you're able to preach Christ crucified, and to tell Christians, hey, they don't have to live in that anymore, and you can just be a light. And of course you could do that in these other circles, in public schools, though it's less likely that you will, but if the Lord actually puts that on your heart and creates a window for you to be able to do that, then praise God, that's awesome ministry and evangelism that you're doing. But of course, all of it together for me is, from my experience growing up in it, I highly recommend private school. And if I had my choice of doing homeschool too, I'd either do private Christian school or homeschooling, and especially homeschooling if you're actually homeschooling them in the right way of teaching them the ways of the Lord and all these different things. So that would be, from all my experiences, those things would be awesome. Yeah, and like you said, the caveat for homeschooling your children is that you now are the one who has to put in that work and make sure that every day they're learning Scripture, they're hearing Scripture, they're reading the Word, they're understanding the Word, and all these things. Because obviously just homeschooling without a Christian lens, worldview, that's not going to do anything. So that's the caveat. By the way, you must be willing to truly be surrendered. You yourself need to be surrendered and submitted to the Lord and willing to sacrifice. It is a sacrifice to sacrifice your time and money that you could be making if you had a job to be at home with your child and to be teaching them God's Word and what He says about everything and showing them how to see God in everything. So yeah, that's good that you mentioned that because it's not just homeschooling in general that's the best option, but homeschooling with that lens and that worldview. So yeah, that's really important to remember. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, God's Word tells us to train up a child in the way you should go, and countless other Scriptures talk about raising up your child in the ways of the Lord. It's just so important, and we've both seen that and what it looks like between being somewhere where the majority of the people there do not share the same worldview, do not have a Christian worldview for eight hours a day versus being somewhere where they do have a Christian worldview, and even if they're not walking perfectly, they have that foundation. It's all about that foundation. And man, those formative years are so important. People all the time end up so confused when their children get older and they are not walking with God, and they are disrespectful and rebellious, and they're questioning, like, why is my child not listening to me? Why are they not walking with the Lord? Why are they not doing this? Why are they not doing that? Well, it's most likely, obviously, there are exceptions, but most of the time it's because you didn't teach them how to walk that way in their formative years. And so what you teach a child in their beginning years, in their formative years, shapes everything else in their life and all the other years in their life. So you need to be so diligent to raise them up in the ways of the Lord. So I think that's going to conclude our time for today, but just remember that your child is a gift from God given to you so that you can raise that child up in the ways of the Lord so that you can raise them to glorify God. And, man, that's a big responsibility, one that I do not take lightly, and I don't think you should either. So whatever choice you make, pray about it, seek the Lord, and just surrender to the Lord, and surrender your child to the Lord, and whatever he says, do. Is there anything else that you want to add? I'm good. All right. Thank you guys for listening, and please be gracious with us. We are not trying to say that any of these are the only way to do it and anything else is blasphemy. Definitely not. Definitely not. But, yeah, we love the Lord a lot, and we just know that the Lord loves children so much and has such big plans for them. So we need to steward our children well. So thank you guys for listening, and we will see you next time. Delete me. Delete me. Why? Because I didn't say good. No, we did say good. And I love you. I love you.