USING THE RIGHT TOOLS TO FULFILL THE GREAT COMMISSION
Right now, 6 billion precious souls are perishing, and the church is the only thing that will save them by preaching the gospel and teaching them to observe ( = do; obey) all things that Christ has commanded. Necessity will define our goals in a hurry. All things being equal, a thirsty man will seek water and a hungry man food, above all else. Anybody who is practically looking to fulfill the Great Commission of Matthew 28:16-20 will do likewise. While we cannot argue from scripture that many practical expedients are necessary for salvation, logic dictates that they are nevertheless, essential for fulfilling our task, if we really mean business.
God expects His children to be wise, to have common sense in abundance. He that wins souls is wise… and the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.
(So what about those who don’t win souls - aren’t they then stupid?) Jesus chided his disciples saying that the children of this world were often more wise than the children of light. We need to be as wise as serpents, while maintaining moral innocence
For instance, in war, when casualties mount, ammunition that doesn’t fit the gun that the soldier carries will immediately be disregarded after the first fire-fight. Things that don’t work right for the job, tools that don’t fit the task, are soon disregarded for those that do work. In the laboratory of real life exigencies, such as Artic exploration with -60 degree F. winter temperatures, only gear that works will be accepted. Same for submarine and rocket design. What is not workable is disregarded.
I would like to use the same logic for building the case that A.C.E schools are presently the best tool for the job of discipling our youth in the church. This is by both analysis and practical experience gained in running a fairly large ACE mission school for the past 11 years, from which my own children graduated. Before this, we had home-schooled our children on the mission field, primarily using the Abeka curriculum. Then there’s my own personal educational experience as a student in many different private and public schools in both Africa and America as a MK, plus Bible College, where I gained my B.A in church growth and world missions at Roanoke Bible College, Elizabeth City, N.C.
I attended an elite private school for years in Accra, Ghana’s capital – Ghana International School. Here I took French, English, geography, physics, P.E., biology and algebra all at the same time in Class 1 (= 9th grade), having to pass exams worth 50% of my total grade (a.k.a., the British educational system. ) I also took correspondence courses from the University of Lincoln, Nebraska, which was the pre-eminent correspondence school for American students internationally for my 10th grade schooling. Then I finished up my secondary schooling in an American high school in North Carolina, taking the SAT and scoring in the 99th percentile in both Social Studies and English, (I wanted to be a missionary preacher) and acceptably in Math and Science.
My view now is that we must use Acclerated Christian Education as the tool of choice to internationally equip our youth for being skilled personal soul winners and workers for the Kingdom of Christ. (The church) Here’s an analogy to prove my point:
Today, gasoline powered vehicles are the spiritual army’s practical tool of choice for mobility. Without some sort of combustible engines on wheels, we aren’t going to be able to fulfill the Great Commission in our generation. Although the Bible doesn’t command us to use them, nevertheless, logic and necessity dictates that we do so. Horses, trains, motorcycles, walking, boats, bicycles and other means of transportation cannot replace the car at this juncture in time. This is an indisputable fact in this is present physical reality in which we live. Horses, donkeys, foot power, bikes – all cannot replace, at some point, the need to use gasoline powered vehicles if we hope to get the gospel out worldwide. Safety, speed and availability all dictate this fact.
Not only are cars necessary, but many other useful tools also exist that must be used if we are to actually carry out our King’s marching orders in this world today such as computers, banks, passports, printed books, and so forth.
In the same way, if we are really going to save our youth from the secular, humanistic, evolutionary, hip-hop, worldly culture of today, we must immediately make plans to extricate them from all government controlled education and train them ourselves in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Pretending the one is obeying the command of Eph.6:3 by just teaching our children at home for a few hours, and then letting others raise our children all week with totally different goals and techniques, will never do! For instance, the Greek word for discipline is most definitely talking about some sort of corporal punishment involved, which is nearly totally missing from all secular schools ( and most American Christian schools!) today, and is even illegal in many countries.
Just think about it for a moment: How could you hand-over the most important job on earth, (after evangelism perhaps), to non-Spirit led and filled people? Building Christ-like, godly character in children is not a small thing. How could we leave the job in the hands of people who don’t really love our children as we do, with the love of God! It is really inconceivable. People will be more careful with their pets than that…. or their house or garden or business. Yet each day thousands of church kids are blithely sent off to schools whose avowed purpose, as publicly stated (check the documents) is to give the “states children” a humanistic, secular education, to those precious lambs. Would Free Israel have sent off her children back to Egypt for education, after escaping through the Red Sea?!?! Not hardly, if she wanted real freedom to continue. Are not the pagan teacher’s attitudes also being communicated to the students? Can little children be properly handled with mere professional coolness by teachers, who are also perhaps homosexuals, atheists, cultists or maybe “just “ only regular, average sinners – who are bereft of the Holy Spirit, love for God and His church, and the Bible. (DO THESE THINGS MATTER?)
How about other values that children’s role models and mentors should possess, like patriotism, work ethics, manliness and womanliness, gentlemanly behavior, good language, personal integrity, etc? Don’t you and the wife constantly try and do actually model these qualities and more in daily interaction with your children, with the intense hope that your little tykes will absorb such values? I am sure that many (most) secular teachers could care less. And do they pray with the children in stressful times and teach them to look to Jesus for help? Hardly! Against such odds, with non-spiritual, Biblically illiterate, earthly hired-hands handling the children five days per week for up to 7 or 8 hours, how will a 45 minute Sunday School lesson or five day VBS counter such influence on the moldable little minds? You can guess. Evening family devotions - meaning prime time TV time must cease - and regular church assemblies can help mitigate the bad effects, but remember that a “double-minded person receives NOTHING” from God, and that is what we’ll get with secular and sacred teachers competing for little Johnny’s heart and brain, which is it apart in an destructive tug-of-war in the process.
While we talk of winning the hearts and minds of the oppressed Afghans and Iraqi’s to our Western democratic ideals, American foolishly lose their own offspring to humanistic brain-washing at our own government’s, (and hence our own tax-paying), expense by unpatriotic liberal, Europhile teachers with an axe to grind against the USA on our own colleges and universities! (Even high school campuses, to a lesser extent.) How could any society by so incredibly servile and stupid as to mentally massacre its own offspring and turn them into dumbed-down enemies of our own Christian values within our own homes? The enemy is not at the gates, the enemy is within, and he is the grouchy, underdressed, over-stimulated, easily bored and obnoxiously opinionated rebel “teenage mutant humanist” in your own house, in your son’s bedroom. Little Sally and Johnny grow up and lose their innocence, their humility and respect for anything special or spiritual, all with our connivance due to lazy lack of diligent vigilance as to who was training them up and how.
Unless we desire to continue foolishly offering up our children to modern-day Molochs, we must act precipitously to change things around. While the Moslems and Catholics train their children to be devoted Moslems and Catholics, we Christians must train our children to be fervent, fanatical followers of Jesus who love Him avidly… and also love the rest of the of His body, the church, for which He died. Loyal cadres of the spiritual revolution that Jesus brought to earth will not come from casual, comfortable nominal quasi-“Christian” couch-potato families that have little awareness of the issues at stake. Ignorance is definitely not bliss when it comes to awareness of the nature of the intense spiritual warfare going on all around us between God and his would-be nemesis, Satan. If the devil cannot defeat God head-on, then he’ll instead attack obliquely the church, using deceptive, divide and conquer strategies.
God allows this to go on, and it is the churches responsibility to watch and pray and fight the good fight of the faith with truth. Children raised in the world are in no shape to be spiritual war-fighters, as they simply lack the skillful knowledge to do so, particularly due to ignorance as to the actual content of the Bible and an awareness of Satan’s clever schemes. Too much time spent with bad company – ordinary men who 100 % happen to all be sinners - will certainly insure that the children immersed into that world of men will reflect their bad habits and wrong thinking.
Home schoolers have tried to extract their children from this immoral matrix, but individual, isolationist effort will not achieve the best results, in most cases. We need a united front. (See “shoulder to shoulder” in Zeph.3:9 – a prophecy of the church) If the American Indians had united in their opposition to being conquered by the colonizing Europeans, they’d have driven every one of them off the Eastern seaboard with ease. In the same way, united we stand, divided we fall. We cannot ignore the many lost other children who have no good parenting or access to Christian education. And we cannot ignore other congregations worldwide. We must internationally support each other’s efforts through dedicated prayer and information sharing, using the fantastic new media innovations now readily available. By using the same curriculum on the broad, international front, we can exchange teachers and students with ease, like interchangeable parts on a machine or integrated, interchangeable parts for weapons for one army worldwide.
As an example of this, we have had students come into our school from Montana, New York and India, plus our volunteer staff members to America or India. These trained people can easily be utilized wherever they go. In our ministry here in Ghana, we are seeing this synergetic, team effort work as our trained students help open up new schools and then send in students to our school from remote villages for completion of their academic odyssey, started at the village level and continued in the big city. By all schools using the same system and curriculum, we can be interdependent and really help each other. It is the BIG PICTURE that should dominate our strategic decisions as to how we should operate our schools. This is the essence of love, not just thinking of our own parochial or family interests, but far beyond that. How will we disciple the nations unless we have a international strategy that can be adopted worldwide and sustained by all people?
A.C.E, or School of Tomorrow, provides this tool. It is tested and proven in America and Ghana. Other places are now adopting this system, like Cochin, India and in the Philippines. It is relatively cheap and worldwide available.
Just as slavery took years of incredibly hard-fought persevering effort to eradicate from the civilized world, so also it will take similar uncompromising work to extricate Christians from the world’s conforming vice-grip pressure & control attained and maintained by its monopoly over education. Underground railroads run by courageous 21st century Harriet Tubmans of tremendous conviction and courage are needed right now. Naturally, the world educators and sponsoring governments will fight back to keep control. I have already seen it happening in my ministry. Paranoia concerning the “future” of the children, (meaning their fear about the prospects of being accepted by the employers of this world due to lack of validated certificates), is a huge fear here in Ghana.
Opponents have arisen who have charged us with acting illegally and that we are gambling with the children’s future have been leveled against us. This is in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Actually, our students who have diligently carried on and finished our A.C.E based training program are prospering in body, mind and spirit, and it is the dropouts who are otherwise! The fact is we are preparing the youth to be hardcore disciples of Jesus Christ who will not be conformed, but rather transformed by the renewing of their minds, able to swim against the stream as salmon returning home for spawning, majestically jumping over every obstacle blocking their way. Our children are being trained to be modern day Daniel and Shadrachs, Meshachs and Abed-negos – fireproof and lion-resistant.
I am beginning to understand that nearly all opposition to the (truly) Christian education for our youth is actually based ignorance or an underlying resistance to real hardcore, primitive, Biblical discipleship. Making church members as compared to making disciples, who take on the very essence of Christ, are two totally different agendas… and the comfort loving Sunday only church-going bunch are going to kick back. Memorizing entire books of the New Testament? Giving up lucrative opportunities to make big salaries to become servants of the church in missions or Christian education? Marrying at an earlier age in Christ instead of (or in addition to) pursuing further education that would lead to worldly success? Fanaticism! Or so they think.
In Africa and Asia, education is the newest god. It offers its worshippers the access to making money and thus acquiring all the toys of the developed world – electrical appliances, cars, nice houses – in short the American Dream has become the African’s dream as well. Families hope for at least one clan member to “arrive” on the beckoning shores of prosperity and then throw back a lifeline to the rest of the clan, by either making it big in the homeland or even better, overseas. Education, for them, has nothing to do with making a person a better person, a better father, mother, or citizen, not to speak of a better Christian. It’s all about getting the necessary access to money for living the “good life.” If this means putting off marriage, putting off church work, putting off spiritual growth, family times …so be it. The end justifies the means, they reason.
As an example, the Bible college that my dad and some others started in the 60’s in Ghana - as a preacher training school - is now offering all kinds of degrees of commercial value, in IT and business, for example. It is now a Christian university, and no longer a Bible college. This is typical. They will claim to still train up preachers and church workers, but here in Ghana, the pressure mounted to make it offer degrees that could earn the holders more income – ostensibly to sustain the church of course, in its evangelism. Nice theory …but actually hard to do in the real world. Accreditation of Bible colleges is a very slippery slope. The basic question is: Why do they need to make their training programs for church leadership cater to worldly expectations in order to attract more students?? This would be true of the entire “Field of Dreams” philosophy permeating the thinking of modern church leadership. Build a better trap or advertise a better product, and we can get more happy repeat customers, more floor traffic and we’ll be bigger and better … whatchamacallits, whatnots or whatevers. Bigger is definitely better though, and quantity must proceed quality, is the American corporate fantasy. We must not tailor our Christian discipleship training programs, including our educational policy and system for our youth up to and including college, to meet worldy expectations. Pleasing Christ and inculcating good Christian virtues and skills that will enable them to serve God effectively should be our own and only expectation. Not to conform, but transform!
While I can sympathize with oppressed, poor people wanting relief, they are merely trading one problem (poverty) for a worse one, spiritually speaking – of materialistic humanism that makes the government and international mega-corporations their masters. The cost is that of having a community based life with time for people and relationships. What are the rewards? Comfort, and bigger stomachs and high blood pressure, debts, and much stress! Sitting in their new cars in traffic jams for hours, I wonder if they ever ask themselves whether it was worth it. Many want to return to simpler times, but cannot endure the hardship anymore as they’ve become accustomed to soft living.
I have not come to Africa at tremendous cost to my health and family just to give Africans a better physical quality of life, to make them American suburb dwellers. Rather, I have come to give them the truly abundant life that Jesus promised us, which is spiritual. I do believe that the Lord will help the poor and loves them. Surely there are temporal blessings that come with righteous living, even in this life. Yet heaven is the real pie in the sky that is the hope of every true Christian, not “heaven on earth”, experienced by such things as ownership of a big screen TV in the living room and a SUV in the garage. (Most Americans are in the bondage of debt for such things anyway). I will not compromise to the pressure to focus on helping them attain this (elusive) fantasy “good life”. If they can and do so without absolutely any compromises being made to the god of this age, fine, but that is not to be the church’s focus. Using multiplied American mission dollars for this is a misuse and abuse by God’s messenger of the stewardship of His Word to man, the precious gospel.
We must begin emphasizing the cost of discipleship as defined by carefully scrutiny of the New Testament, and all others things will fall into their proper place as regards our life’s priorities. Creating powerful, faith-full, knowledgeable, skilled personal soul workers for winning the millions outside of Christ will dictate our agenda. That includes each person immersed into Christ. We will laugh at the idea of a one week camp or VBS compared to a yearlong educational training program. Or a one-year Sunday School.
Just as we now view the dark age of the slave era, at some future date, we will all look back and marvel at the gross ignorance that the world held over the church through taking over the training of her youth. (Except for those wise enough to have avoided this). Liberation must begin at home and in our each local congregation for the lambs being held hostage by Satan’s henchmen at government expense. We will develop straight arrows who can be fired as missles (missle-aries = missionaries) into the remotest areas of the dark world and light up the darkness with the incredible Light of Christ.
Jesus told us to pray for harvesters. Can we pray such a prayer honestly, without doing all in our power to participate in producing skilled personal soul winners within our families and congregations? Missions will define all our priorities as Christians, since all paths will logically and eventually all lead to getting the Word out as quickly and effectively as possible. If the A.C.E system is the means that the Lord has raised up for doing this effectively - right now, right here - a proven and field tested successfully, and if we intend to collaborate in order to have a worldwide outreach and an international interconnected body of Christ that is the temple of prayers and praise to Jesus, why would we not use it??? Fear? Laziness? Ignorance? Indecision? Distraction?
I believe that we must have the unbending, non-comprising spirit of strident, avid pro-lifers or the antil-slavery, abolition movement participants of the 18th century. Continual advocacy and prayers are needed to resist the evil mind control games of the world’s isms that threaten the spiritual welfare of our young ones and the forward progress of evangelizing the world. William Wilberforce’s of Christian education must raise their voices, as Jay Wilson has heroically done, often as a lone voice crying out in the wilderness.
Once more, if we would only re-examine what it means to be a disciple of Christ, we’d get the picture. Paul spent two whole years daily teaching the saints in Ephesus. They would leave work, homes, siestas and others pursuits to meet with him every single day. This is the type of intense training that people must receive to be re-programmed and prepared to resist evil and take the truth out in the face of intense opposition. Christian education must go even beyond the bounds of merely granting high school diploma certification, continuing unabated for each new Christian for as long as it takes for them to become mature completed ones as Paul mentions in Phil.3: 15-17. Ephesians 4:12-16 speaks of an elite level bodybuilders physique (in the spiritual manner) being developed. From cradle to grave, Jesus should be the most influential person in our life. He should be our hero, role-model, inspiration, and centerpiece.
I wonder whether the words of Jesus to the disciples in Luke 9:62 was intended for only a few select Christians? No, we must not ignore what he told Martha: - “Only ONE thing is necessary… the good part.” (Lk.10:42)
- “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.” (Lk.9:60) So for whom are these words intended? ( Thanks goes to Rhys Thomas for pointing out to me the importance here of II Cor. 4:13: “But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I BELIEVED, THEREFORE I SPOKE, we also believe, therefore we also speak.”)
- Who then are the ones to compel whom to come in, so that the house may be filled? (Lk.14:23)
- “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” (Lk.14:33)
- “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” (Lk.14:27)
- “And if anyone does not hate his own father and mother and his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” (Lk. 14:26)
- “And do no seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying….but seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you.” (LK.12:30-31)
Christian Hercules, we have been assigned an enormous task. But God has also given us the means to accomplish it. Will we rise up in unity of spirit and do it, in our generation? Will you join me in advocacy for making disciples, and using the right and necessary available tools, such as the ACE system? Will you go, give, send and support? Are we learning to lean on God’s incredible, unlimited power, both without and within us, to do what no man could otherwise do, to live holy lives like Jesus by doing what He did, seeking and saving the lost by making disciples who could carryon after our departure? Is there a generational upgrade and improvement, or a descent downwards in devotion like that of David to Solomon to Rehoboam? Just think, David’s grandchild became a pagan idol worshipper!!! The great poet, prophet, warrior and king of God’s own choosing had a bum for a son, (Rehoboam). Moses had to return to Egypt to free his people from bondage. As the most humble man of his age, Moses had to face up to the fact that he alone, basically, had to do the ultimate “Mission Impossible.” And so must we, starting with our own children and extending to every nation on earth.
So how are we doing?