Your Christian School: A Culture of Grace?

A live conference with Paul Tripp

Christian school teachers, administrators and staff - Is your school something more than a system of rules, offenses and punishments? What is the vision that propels the mission of your Christian school? Are you content with behavior control and the dissemination of knowledge? Are you asking the law to do what only grace can accomplish? Rules restrain sin, rules expose sin, but rules will never deliver a child from sin. A biblical worldview tells us that what is wrong with children is something more profound than lack of information and skill. It is only when your school is a functional culture of grace that real, lasting character change will take place and your classrooms will become peaceful places of learning. Learn how to critique your school culture and how to become a culture of grace where heart change takes place and education can thrive.

Read an article Paul Tripp wrote on the topic:

The Christian School: A Culture of Grace?

by Paul David Tripp

Why isn’t every child motivated by a desire to learn? Why doesn’t every child do exactly as the teacher says? Why does a teacher’s lesson plan never work exactly as planned? Why do our students struggle so to get along with one another? Why do teachers have to spend so much of their time in the classroom doing things other than teaching?

You cannot examine the classroom in even the best of Christian schools without realizing that a teacher is never able to just disseminate academic information. No, everyday he or she is dealing with anger, fear, resistance, lack of motivation, interpersonal conflicts, authority issues, sadness, envy, hopeless and a host of other hearts issues that children bring into the classroom everyday. It is not hard to see how each of these things interrupts and complicates the educational process in its own way.

Perhaps John lives for the recognition of his peers. So, to him, the classroom is not so much a place of learning but a forum for acceptance. Maybe Mary is simply not able to leave the hurt and chaos of her struggling family at the door of the school. Perhaps that hurt takes her attention away and makes it hard for her to be motivated to learn. Maybe Isaiah hates authority, so he resists directions and takes advice as a personal attack. Sarah lives for material things and education is simply outside of the system of what gives her value.

We could multiply example after example, but here is the point. Students never leave their hearts at the door of the school. They bring their hearts into the classroom everyday. And what rules their hearts will exercise inescapable influence over their desires, thoughts, decisions, words, and actions. (See Luke 6:43-45 and Mark &:14ff.) So, in the classroom we can never simply focus on educating minds, we also have to commit ourselves to change of hearts as well. Everything our students say and do is rooted in the thoughts and desires of the heart. It is only when the heart changes, that the behavior of the child will change for the long run. So, it is never enough for us to set up systems that restrict and control behavior.

This is precisely where the Christian school has a huge advantage. Because we take Scripture seriously, we recognize the centrality of the heart to a person’s behavior and we also recognize how sin influences the thoughts and motives of the heart. But we are not discouraged and we are not desperate because we know that in Jesus Christ we find the promise of and power for real and lasting heart change. And we take seriously his call to be his instruments of heart change wherever he has placed us.

What does this mean? It means that we not only want our school to be a place of learning, but a culture of grace as well. Rules and regulations are necessary because they work to reveal and restrain sin, but they cannot rescue us from it. It is only God’s grace that has the power to change a person’s heart. So we must always make sure, that in the classrooms and hallways of our schools, that we are not asking the law to do what only grace can accomplish.

What does this practically look like? It means that in our classroom everyday we are taking up God given opportunities to get at heart issues with our students. How do we do this? First, we try to do everything we can to build relationships of love with our students. We want them to know we genuinely care for them and that our relationship with them is a safe place to begin to deal with their heart struggles. Next, we will work to really get to know our students; seeking to understand, at the level of the heart, why they do the things they do. Next, we look for opportunities to speak to our students, helping them acknowledge and understand what is going on in their hearts in ways that they would not be able to do without us. Here we help our students to look at themselves in the mirror of God’s Word, so they can see themselves as they actually are. Finally, we help our students understand what to do with the new personal insights that God has given them. How should these insights result in new choices, words, and actions both inside and outside the classroom? In all of this we are daily pointing them to the help that can only be found in Jesus Christ.

In our commitment to love, to know, to speak and to do, we are working so that our schools would not only be places of academic excellence, but would be shaped by a culture of grace as well. We know that it is only when the obstructing issues of the heart are being dealt with that real learning will take place. And we are thankful for the insights that the Bible gives us on why each of us struggles and for the help for those struggles, in us and in our students, that is only found in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Some reviews of this material:

* The Lord always uses Paul Tripp in my life as He did again at this conference. I do believe Paul has a handle on what Christian Education is; better than anyone I know. I've been trying to figure it out for over 30 years and cannot get a grasp on it. Paul is actually putting it into words. I love it. I feed off of it. I have a school full of students that will benefit from it if we can implement it. I am changing my personal administrative duties for next year to concentrate on the school's approach to students.
- Dr. Samuel R. Pennington, Headmaster, Calvary Christian Academy of Philadelphia

* Paul Tripp is a master teacher. With laser clarity, he applies the Master's principles of Grace to school communities, classrooms, and our own lives -- transforming them all. In a season of educational decline on every front, Paul Tripp has stepped in with a prophetic word. Listen to him.
- Dr. Seth Cohen, Headmaster, Spruce Hill Christian School & City Center Academy, member of the ACSI Board of Directors

* Paul Tripp has helped our school move from a punitive model of discipline to a restorative model that seeks to engage the heart of each student. Paul has challenged our teachers to look beyond teaching content to touching students' lives through the teachable moments that we cannot plan in advance. We have seen that building a culture of grace requires us as faculty and staff to examine our own hearts before attempting to speak into the lives of our students. Paul has inspired us with a gospel-centered vision for our school culture.
- Owen Davis, Principal, City Center Academy

* I learned not only biblical reasons to address sin (for what it is) in my classroom, I gained very specific and practical ways to do it - even a script. It is my job to bring out the fruit of Christian character in my students by helping them realize who they really are - what their Christian identity means. I so appreciate Paul's way of presenting powerful truths and at the same time offering practical applications (how teachers can apply it) in the context of great anecdotes!
- Vicki, teacher