Reclaiming Authority for Christianity

How What We Teach the Mind Teaches the Heart

Christian teachers today are facing one of the greatest leadership challenges in history: Young people are not sure who to trust or what to believe.

In a recent episode of the Clearly Christian Podcast, Dr. Cy Smith, Superintendent at Mansfield Christian School, sat down with Billy Hutchinson, Educators Specialist for the Colson Center, to ask a crucial question:

How can Christian educators restore influence in the lives of today’s students before culture forms their worldview for them?

Watch "The Credibility of Christianity" on The Clearly Christian Podcast

This is not just a school issue. It’s not just a public school or a Christian school issue. It’s a discipleship issue.

Chalkboard Point #1: Training a Child’s Mind is Training a Child’s Heart

Humans are wired with a desire to search for answers to life’s big questions. We search for meaning and truth because we want to know how to live in this world. What we learn will drive what we believe; what we believe will drive what we value; and what we value will drive our behavior. In this way, the mind and the heart are inseparable in training the next generation.

However, students today don’t automatically trust adults just because they hold a position. Credibility and authority must be demonstrated.  Perhaps educators are failing in that respect.

“Whoever shapes the mind will shape the heart.” - Dr. Cy Smith

Students trust those who know them, care for them, and walk with them in truth, and they’ll grow within that trust, no matter who or what delivers it.  Information deemed to be true is coming at kids fast and from every direction.   When Christian teachers invest relationally and teach a biblical worldview, then authority can be restored.

Chalkboard Point #2: What is taught in the classroom will create the culture’s worldview.  

Many Christian teachers were trained in secular environments. That’s not their fault, but it is their reality. Christian teachers love Jesus, yet may still teach in ways disconnected from a biblical worldview in any school, public or Christian.

“Just because a teacher is a Christian doesn’t mean they are teaching from a Christian worldview.” - Billy Hutchinson

When the English teacher says “What that means to you is the truth,” yet the Math teacher says, “It doesn’t matter what it means to you, and that’s the truth,” what is a child to believe?   Teaching FROM a biblical worldview can help students see that all truth is God’s truth: science, literature, math, history, and human identity.

“Christian education is not just about what students learn, it’s about who they become.” - Dr. Cy Smith

Students are being trained to think that facts live in the real world while beliefs live in the private world. That split has led many young people to treat faith as optional and irrelevant. When we refuse to separate faith from life, students learn to carry their Christianity into every arena and to trust in its authority as real and true.

Christianity isn’t a private preference.

 Listen to "The Credibility of Christianity"on the Clearly Christian Podcast

A Critical Window of Opportunity

Christianity has not lost its power. But Christians can lose their influence if we stop engaging the hearts and minds of our kids. Now is the moment to reclaim authority by faithfulness, by credibility, and with confidence in the truth.

This generation is being formed by someone, one way or another, whether we like it or not. 

What will they learn from us?

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For more information about Dr. Cy Smith, Mansfield Christian School, and/or the Clearly Christian Education movement, click on ClearlyChristianEducation.com.