The other day a decision was made in a committee that I did not agree with. I found out about this decision while I was heading to the Fresno Zoo with my family. We met my Mom there and I guess I was wearing an unhappy look on my face (I don’t hide my emotions well) because she asked Christina what I was bothered with and then she said to me, “Christina told me Chad, don’t let it bother you. You can be happy. We know it’s God will right?!” I want to talk just a minute about “God’s Will.” I believe that we as Christians sometimes see God’s will as the way out for everything, and I believe this is lazy thinking and lazy Christianity. I believe everything happens by the permission of God, thus we could say everything happens by God’s will, but what I don’t believe is that everything is God’s providential will. Sometimes things happen, bad things, that are not God’s providential will. Sometimes decisions are made, bad decisions, that are not God’s providential will. In these instances the bad things and the bad decisions are God’s permissive will. We should never be happy with God’s permissive will, it means that we are out of line with what God really wanted, but He gave us our way, and since our ways are not God’s ways, this is never a good thing! Now it isn’t always immediately clear to see if it is God’s providential will versus God’s permissive will, but to simply always chalk things up to “God’s will” and say then we are okay I think can make us lazy, because then we can basically make or take any decision and say, “God’s will”, dust off our hands and walk away. But God’s permissive will which is allowing us to have our will can go terribly wrong:
4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah 5and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD. 7And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” 1 Samuel 8:4-9
God gave the people their will, it was His permissive will. He even chose the King for them, Saul. If you read the rest of the Old Testament you will quickly see that this decision did not go as planned for the Israelites. And when they got a bad king they would blame God, I mean after all it was “GOD’s WILL”
Yes everything is God’s will, but let us be careful not to be lazy and accept His permissive will when what we need is God’s providential will!
Earlier today I posted on the Superiority of Adventist Education. Today I want to make an appeal to all parents that do not yet or have not yet decided to send their kids to an Adventist school. Here is the reality, as much as I believe we should send our kids to Adventist schools and as strong academically as our schools are, we could still do more and there are still changes that need to be made! The only way I see these changes being made is through parents that are interested and engaged, and the more parents interested and engaged the greater reality for greater change!
Why is this so? Because we can only really change what we are a part of! Here are two thoughts connected to this point:
First, many times we make statments like, “When that school changes then I will send my kid there.” The reality is, “that school” can’t change unless you do send your kid there. Why? Because you, the ones that want change, won’t be engaged to change things unless you have something invested in it! I would love to say we all are extremely altruistic and completely generous in our service, but the reality is, most of us don’t engage and lend our energies to things that don’t benefit us directly, which is why people can say they want to help SDA schools, but unless their most precious possesion, i.e. their kids, are at said school, they won’t really be a part of the change process.
Second, an outside voice is not as well received as a voice that is invested or part of the “team”. Here is a story to illustrate this point. Shortly after 9/11 I was at a conference for Adventist University chaplains and their teams. During one break a group of us were sitting around discussing 9/11 our thoughts, our theories, even some of the conspiracy theories. One individual in the group happened to be a Canadian and from one of our sister colleges in Canada, this individual with I believe no true malice in mind made a statement though that was not for an outsider to say. In fact this individual made the comment and immediately three or so individuals got riled up and responded defensively. The Canandian then became defensive and said, “I am only saying what several of you have also alluded to.” I then said to this individual, “Yes, but we are all Americans.” And that really was the reality, we were Americans, we were the ones attacked, we could say what we wanted, but the moment a non-American jumped in we all got our noses bent out of shape. If you don’t send your kids to an Adventist school, or don’t plan to, but want to then tell people what is wrong with their school, it is not well received. We can all agree that people shouldn’t feel this way, we should accept truth wherever it comes from, but we know that is not reality. Think of it this way. How many of you have been irritated with those people who talk about kids and how to raise kids that don’t have kids? I am raising my hand! Then what is worse is when they try to compare raising an animal to your child. Hey sister your cat, your dog, is nothing like having a kid! We have a hard enough time listening to advice from other parents, but we will at least listen, because we know they at least have some understanding, but someone that is not a parent we just shut them out completely! It is the same with our schools. If you aren’t in it your voice is shut out! Unfortunate, but true!
Which is why we need you and your kids in our schools!
I can immediately hear someone thinking, “Well I am not going to sacrifice my kids.” Read yesterdays post, you aren’t sacrificing your kids! In fact many of us that make that statement are products of Adventist Education. And as much as I have made the schools of my upbringing far superior to the Adventist schools I see now, the truth is they really weren’t. I still remember the vice-principal who came up to me at the end of my senior year and said, “Chad I am proud of you for sticking with Jesus. There were faculty members after your conversion that said, ‘it won’t last it is only a fad. Chad can’t change.” Yes those were “Christian” teachers at an Adventist school. I still remember as well the teacher that tried to prevent a number of the students from going to a prayer conference stating bluntly that we were taking “to many religious trips.” Or what about the girl that cursed me out in the hallway in front of a teacher. There were no repercussions. Or what about my own foul mouth before my conversion on the court and off…rarely was there any consequence to this. Yes, this was at an Adventist school. It wasn’t perfect. But it was still better than any other alternative and when my heart was finally softened to hear the voice of Jesus, it wasn’t the church or my parents that reached me, it was through the activities and the connections at the school. So believe me when I say, you are not sacrificing your kids…you are giving them the best chance possible and with you involved in changing what does need to be changed at our schools, you are giving them an even better chance!
I have an unapologetic bias for Adventist Education (Please keep reading:) ). In fact I believe that every Adventist parent should send their children to Adventist school with only a few exceptions: 1.) A child with a learning disability in which the local Adventist school does not have adequate resources to attend to. 2.) A child with a social or mental disability that can cause harm or disruption to other students in the class that again can not be attended to at the local Adventist school. 3.) No Adventist school within reasonable proximity of the family, this is rare for elementary aged kids. 4.) A family cannot financially afford to send their child to an Adventist school. This would be a family that has no cable TV, used cars, no cell phones, and in which the local church provides no financial assistance (in which case I believe the pastor and congregations of said churches will be held accountable by God!). Other than those exceptions if you are Adventist and you have school aged children I believe they should be in Adventist schools (I include home schooling by Adventist parents to be AdEd as well) Why? I’m glad you asked! (Keep reading if for no other reason than to confirm why you believe I am wrong and to tell me so).
The first reason, and reason that supercedes all others, and should be enough for each of us, but usually is not (so I will cover others later) because they teach the things we believe in Biblically! Notice what I did not say, I did not say that they practice everything we believe Biblically! I wish this were true, but I know it is at times not. Someone may ask, “Why would I send my child to a school that doesn’t practice what I believe?” Well if this thought disqualifies an Adventist school than you have already had a jump in logic. Because sending your child to a public school or Christian school that is not Seventh-day Adventist is also a school that doesn’t practice everything you believe, so that disqualifies that argument. But back to my original point, I believe it is imperative for our kids to be in environments where their brains are being engaged with our doctrine and not another doctrine or no doctrine at all. Yes, our schools are not perfect and unfortunately don’t always practice what they preach, but they still are most in line with Biblical truth as we as Seventh-day Adventists understand truth! To understand this concept let us think quickly of the Israel of the Old Testament. Now how often did these people disappoint God? The answer would be, about every other page! Yet how often did God tell the people to forget about Israel, to find someone else, to start a new group that was separate from them? The answer would be, NEVER. Why? Because as wrong as the Israelites were, the reality is that God’s truth and God’s special blessing still resided with those people. If our theology is that we believe the Adventist church has the End Time Message then almost without exception our kids should be in a place where they are regularly engaged in that truth. Another example would be the story of Samuel (I have Kim Thompson to thank for this point): If you read in 1st Samuel the story of when Samuel was sent to the temple for his education as a future prophet for the Lord, you will see that young Samuel was sent to a place that really didn’t represent the Lord. The priest at the time Eli, had two sons that were very poor examples for the Lord. They were bad examples for young Samuel, they did not practice what was preached, and yet, God still had Hannah send Samuel her Son to the temple that was “wicked” but where God still chose to reside with His truth (1 Samuel 1-3). I can hear a parent maybe responding, “Well the non-SDA Christian school is MORE CHRISTIAN than our Adventist school.” Isn’t a statement like this then putting the parent in the position of God deciding what areas of truth are most important and which are not as necessary? Parents we have a responsibility to our kids to teach them continually the truths of God (Deut. 6 & 11 are examples of this reality), if our kids are not with us for 7 or 8 hours a day does this mean we abandon that responsibility during those hours or do we put them in places in which they will still be surrounded by these truths?
Adventist schools teach the things that are most in line with my understanding of Biblical truth, that is enough for me, and I would hope for others based on the above, but if not here are a few other realities about Adventist Education.
Academically Adventist schools are superior: Now I want to just be honest with you, I feel that academic achievement has much more to do with parents than schools. I honestly believe that I could send my children to just about any school and achieve academic success. Studies in fact show this to be true. (For a great analysis of this truth read Malcolm Gladwell’s: Outliers). That said, what role schools do play I want them in a good academic school, it doesn’t have to be the best, because again as a parent I believe Christina and I are the most important factors in the success of our children scholastically, but I still want a good school. So do Adventist schools qualify as good schools? Recently the Christian Science Monitor, a non-Adventist publication published the following article: “For Real Education Reform, Take a Cue From the Adventists” This study actually shows that our holistic approach to Academics: Mind, Body, & Spirit help to bridge the gaps that exist for kids that come from impoverished homes & or communities and schools. More than 50,000 students were observed in this study and here are a couple things they found:
“In each subject category, students attending Adventist schools scored higher than the national average. They also scored higher than their expected achievement based on assessment of individual ability – a factor few other schools measure.”
“One of our most dramatic findings is that students who transferred to Adventist schools saw a marked improvement in academic achievement. The more years a student attended an Adventist school, the more his or her performance improved.”
Both those findings are pretty significant! Here are some hard numbers to put this in concrete terms:
I can state for a fact that in our little Sierra View Junior Academy here in the Central Valley we find these exact same results. The longer a child has attended Sierra View the higher they score in comparison to the rest of the nation in standardized testing. Right now someone may be saying, “well that wasn’t the case with my child”, or “I know someone who…” Yes, we all know someone who! Remember these are the averages which means that there are children that score above and children that score below.
Here is another interesting thing that studies have found. Children that attend small rural schools with very insignificant budgets and the inability to provide all the bells and whistles for their students still score higher than average students in other schools. In fact,
“students at Adventist schools that spend as little as $2,000 to $4,000 per pupil are roughly at the same achievement level as students in schools that spend as much as $12,000 per student.”
That statistic was shocking to me. Since I at times look at other non-Adventist Christian schools and have envy in my heart over the extra computer labs and study opportunities their kids have that mine may never have. Then I read a stat like that and I realize the extra money doesn’t add up to extra benefit for my child in the long run. Wow! This is good news considering 60% of Adventist schools are considered small schools by government standards.
Adventist schools also pay off for your kids academically in the long run!
Adventist Education is not perfect! But I have a 100% bias for Adventist Ed based on my religious convictions, but even without those convictions I believe the statistics back up my bias.
What do you say?
I don’t know if you heard, but Osama Bin Laden is dead. If you haven’t heard I am wondering how you are reading this since you must live in a cave! Well I have some thoughts on the death of Osama Bin Laden that I wanted to share with y’all.
- I am saddened to see this event used as a political grab, although I am not surprised. I see people on Facebook thanking President George W. Bush. I see others thanking President Barack Obama. From a very literal perspective if you are going to credit any President we would have to credit President Obama. He made the call to run the operation to achieve the desired objective of putting to death Osama Bin Laden. George Bush had nothing to do with that call, we can all admit that, Obama did not call up Crawford, Texas and ask permission. But please folk lets not make this out to be some amazing thing that Obama did either. Any sitting President who had the information that Pres. Obama had would make that call. President Obama didn’t personally search for or find Bin Laden, he didn’t provide the tip that led to his demise, he didn’t pull the trigger of the weapon that shot Bin Laden. He made a phone call. If you were President and the objective of the last 10 years, “get Osama Bin Laden” was able to be completed you would have made the same call. It has nothing to do with Democrat (remember Bill Clinton tried to get Osama too and missed during his presidency) or Republican, it is the job and the duty of the sitting president. So lets not make this political! Can’t we just be content from a Nationalistic perspective with the reality that an enemy of the United States no longer exists to be our enemy?
- I am saddened to see celebration over the death of Osama Bin Laden. I am even more saddened that CHRISTIANS are celebrating! If we are to be examples of the Lord and our lives are to be a reflection of the Lord, then how does celebrating jive with this text? “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11) Did you read that? God takes NO PLEASURE in the death of the wicked. So why do we? I was once having a conversation with a friend of mine that is a fighter pilot. I asked him about dropping bombs on people, a statement he made in his response is profound and appreciated, “Chad, you sometimes see guys high-fiving and congratulating each other, but although I believe what I am doing is what I am supposed to be doing, I know I will have to give an account to God for my attitude about what I am doing. So I don’t do any celebrating because I know God doesn’t like to see people die no matter who it is.” I praise the Lord my friend feels that way! I understand that civil governments have responsibilites to protect people and the overall good of a nation, I accept this reality, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it, and I really hope I never get comfortable with it!
- Pastor Pete Wilson tweeted yesterday and wrote on his blog, “I wonder if I would have been as excited if the news had reported that Bin Laden had repented and accepted Christ as I was when I heard he had been killed?” I think it is a great question for us to think about. How would you have responded if Osama had come out and said, I have accepted Jesus as my Savior? Would people have been celebrating in Times Square and at The White House? If our answer is that we wouldn’t be celebrating this then we don’t have the heart of Christ! If we are thinking that this would be impossible or that God would never forgive a person like Bin Laden, then we don’t have the heart of Christ and we don’t know our Bibles! Can I remind you of a story in the book of Acts? In the book of Acts chapter 8 there is a story of a guy named Saul that ravaged the church. He approved of the execution of a Christian named Stephen (Act 8:1), he killed and imprisoned many other Christians (Acts 26:9-11). He struck fear into the leaders of the church even after his conversion (Acts 9:26). Saul was a TERRORIST!: “A person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims.” But then Saul had an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus where he was going to kill more Christians, Jesus stopped him in his tracks and Saul became Paul the Apostle and his life was never the same and neither is the history of the church! (Acts 9). Osama Bin Laden to the best of our knowledge never accepted Jesus. But if he had we should have been celebrating, and what’s more, rather than praying for his capture, we should have been praying for his soul…I know I never did, and now it is too late!
Those are my thoughts. Do you agree? Disagree? What are your insights?
I was recently asked to share some thoughts at a Stewardship Committee meeting at our local conference office. One of my big messages was the way we ask for money, the words we use. They inspire no one. Often times we ask for money with such a negative outlook, “We need your money to keep the lights on!” or “Please give or else we won’t make budget!” We should be asking like we serve the God who owns the “cattle on a thousand hills.” We should ask like we believe God wants to do abundantly more than we could ever imagine with our finite offerings! That He wants to allow us to be a part of changing the WORLD! This video I think speaks to that!
So most folk know, or can find out pretty easily that Adventists live longer than most other people in this country and even in the world. Well it turns out there is an exception to the rule amongst Adventists, Me…well not actually just me, but Seventh-day Adventist Pastors. How crazy is that? The individuals leading the longest living people group die younger.
I wonder why? I have several theories of my own, but I will just share here what I think is the primary reason:
Any other pastors want to testify? 🙂