To raise up gospel culture-shapers transformed by the grace and truth of Christ.
Recently, at an educational conference, I have been encouraged to revise our vision statement, a statement that indicates “a life saved or changed.” Before that meeting, a curriculum consultant pointed out that the two most frequent words/concepts I use to describe Veritas vision are not in the vision statement: paideia and truth. So, with these two challenges, after some thought, I revised our vision statement, which is stated above.
Why does Veritas exist? It is to raise up culture-shapers. Gospel-centered culture shapers.
When God created man, Adam, he gave him the cultural mandate, “Go, multiply, be fruitful. And subdue the earth.” That is God’s commission and plan for man—to subdue the earth. To subdue the earth is to take care of it, use its richness to enjoy God’s blessings. But sin entered and made this task of cultural mandate difficult. Fast forward, in Christ, this cultural mandate is made possible. In Mt 28:18, Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and earth is given to me. Therefore, go to the ends of the earth, and make disciples, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” So, God’s mandate is made possible through Christ. And it is made possible through education, an education that is committed to making disciples, which is to transform the whole person, by the grace and truth of Christ, and a transformation which includes obedience.
Based on this and other clear teachings of Scripture, we believe that education cannot be neutral. Every facet of education must be intentionally Christ centered. Children need to first learn to enjoy God, his truth, goodness, and beauty--through songs, catechisms, decoding, number bonds, and most importantly through stories. Every fact they learn is not mere facts, they reflect the glory of God. So, children grow in the joy of the Lord, which becomes their strength.
Which then takes them to the next level. When they delight in the Lord, they are motivated to know God. In Ps 111:2, it says, “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by those who delight in them.” When students delight in the Lord, they want to study the works of the Lord. Did you know that the greatest scientists and mathematicians in history—Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Newton, Pascal, were all great Christians. They became great thinkers and scientists because they delighted in the works of the Lord. We can see this in our students this year, with the theme this year being about STEAM: “Recovering the Glory of God through Science, Math, and the Arts.” Students are not only doing the work of science, but they are discovering the glory of God in doing science, which motivates them to keep asking questions about the great works of the Lord in nature. So, students who are trained to delight in the Lord are also trained to discern good and evil, right and wrong, and be better thinkers.
Finally, as they grow in delighting and discerning in the Lord, they grow in their ability, courage, and creativity in displaying the glory of God. They have come to know that Christ is the Lord over every sector of our culture—our family, our workplace, our society, our nation, arts, medicine, legal system, economics, politics, etc. And since they have learn to delight in the Lord, and the joy of the Lord is their strength, and since they have come to discern, think clearly about what is pleasing to the Lord and what is not, and since they have come to be trained to obey the Lord to do the right thing, they are going to do something about the challenges/problems set before them. And they are going to do it with humility and courage, with grace and conviction.
This is not just our vision. This is a portrait of our graduates. We have 8 graduating classes and 35 students whose lives exhibit a life transformed by grace and truth of Christ, a life committed to shaping a gospel-centered culture.
At the last Faculty Development Day this past Tuesday, we spent some time teasing out the implications of this revised vision and how we could implement them in our Core Values, and our Departmental Visions. By the end of this semester, we hope to draw up specific postures and practices of this vision for each subject for different grade levels.
Please pray for our effort to codify, communicate, and coach our vision to our teachers, students, and parents in the days ahead.