Adventist Education: Where Are We Going?
What challenges face Adventist education today?
What's happening to Adventist schools? Enrollments are heading down, and some schools have closed. Others are cutting back. Forty-five percent of Adventist young people are not in our schools. The church has commissioned both internal and external studies to define the problems and seek solutions.
Problems Outside the School System
Some of the problems lie outside of the school system:
Population
The baby boom is over, and there are fewer children coming along in Adventist families and in the general population.
Stagnation
The church in North America is growing too slowly to increase the pool of students; what evangelistic growth it has is largely among minority groups who, on average, are least able to afford Adventist education. While we rejoice over evangelistic vigor among the minority groups, the malaise in evangelism in white English-speaking North America is cause for concern. And when evangelism sneezes, our schools catch a cold.
Nominalism
The North American malaise affects more than evangelism. Recent studies indicate that on any given Sabbath, only about 50-55% of a local church's members will be in attendance there. Somewhere around half of our members don't tithe. By these measures, a large percentage of our membership is only nominally Adventist, not likely to see Adventist education as worth the cost.
Economics
And cost is certainly a factor, even to those who may want Adventist schooling. A distressingly high percentage of our children today live in single-parent homes, where income may be inadequate to handle school tuition. Others of modest means also have trouble meeting the cost.
The church at large must deal with these problems. We must catch anew the sense of evangelistic urgency and destiny which drove our pioneers to preach a distinctive, crisis message for "every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people," including white English-speaking North Americans. This message calls people not just to be saved, but to be holy. And on the basis of Scripture it points to the uniqueness and seriousness of our times, in which a judgment and atonement are going on in heaven even as the forces of evil marshall themselves on earth. The three angels of Revelation 14 don't mumble—they shout with a loud voice.
The church must find ways to surmount the education cost barrier, both by practicing economy and by finding additional support. And work opportunities must be available for students to help themselves bear the cost without taking crippling loans.
The Fundamental Problem
But a fundamental, nagging problem remains for our schools to address: when Adventist families sacrifice to send their young people to our schools, will they get what they pay for? Or will they feel themselves victims of "bait and switch" advertising?
The bait is that, in the course of receiving a fine education, young people will receive something more: an Adventist Christian perspective on life, on their various disciplines, and a thorough grounding in "the faith which was once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3).
The switch is that in some cases, having paid the tuition, the student may never receive the "something more." Even the religion classes may do little more than teach religious data to be learned. Worse yet is the prospect of a negative impact on one's faith. Rather than helping students to understand and appreciate Adventism more fully, some teachers undermine, challenge or ridicule certain church beliefs, whether in or out of the classroom. Some students have found their confidence in the Bible or the writings of Ellen White shaken or even destroyed. Such tragic experiences are not the rule,* but unfortunately neither are they rare. The college and graduate levels are where these problems seem most noticeable for now.
Failure to take the educational opportunity to strengthen a student's Adventist commitment, and the challenge to their Adventism that students sometimes get in our schools, are among the reasons for attrition of the youth from the Adventist Church. And if more families see examples of Adventist education not delivering what they expect, fewer of them will be willing to pay the price.
What can be done? Students and parents need to let the schools know that they want a truly Adventist Christian education. Delivering the goods is the responsibility of the school system.
What Constitutes Adventist Christian Education?
What constitutes such an Adventist Christian education? What sets it apart from the quality education offered by many other schools? Without trying to be exhaustive, I will suggest three areas where Adventist education must be distinctive.
1. Truth Founded on Certainty
Adventist education bases its search for truth on the certainty of the Truth. Beginning with a belief in the authority and trustworthiness of the Bible, it explores the world around us and the world of ideas to learn about them and to find their points of connection and divergence with revealed truth. Rather than ruling out certain fields of study, it endeavors to give the student a Biblical perspective from which to examine, understand, and at times confront the world and culture in which we live.
With a foundation of revealed truth from Scripture, augmented by the information and counsel from God found in the writings of Ellen White, the student is equipped to study any worthwhile area. As George Akers, General Conference education director, recently said, "Adventist education is not meant to present the student only safe ideas; it is to make the student safe for any idea."
Parents will sacrifice to send their young people to a school offering an education like that. In such a school, the teachers in every discipline demonstrate a commitment to the Bible and the beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with no fingers crossed behind the back. A teacher need not ignore the problems in such areas as the sciences, but should feel an obligation to point out the limits of the scientific method, and to suggest ways in which the data might harmonize with Scripture, without undermining the Bible's plain meaning.
2. Service Over Surface Values
Adventist education teaches the value of service, rather than surface values. Education in America recently has been veering away from the liberal arts toward the vocational. Students want marketable skills, not just an education of the person.
Adventist education seeks a balance here, and more: while providing a broad education, it seeks to give students a way to earn a living by serving others' needs. Its emphasis is not on how to make the most money, how to scuttle the competition, how to rise to the top. It points the students to the soon return of Jesus, to the need for Christians to be salt and light to the world, and to a judgment that separates sheep from goats on the basis of how they have treated one another (Matt 25:31-46). While emphasizing excellence and worthwhile achievement, it teaches the value of cooperation over competition.
The needs and opportunities of mission service will be presented with passion, as will various lines in which one may work for the church in the home field. But education that is truly Adventist will instill in the students the value of service, whether they enter church employ or not. Amid the cutthroat competition of the business world, for instance, the firm whose dealings are based on Jesus' Golden Rule (Matt 7:12) will stand out, earning employee and customer loyalty.
3. Christ Over Crowd
Adventist education maintains a lifestyle that reflects the Christ rather than the crowd. In dress, in adornment, in entertainment, in temperance, Adventist schools must be Adventist. Their standard is not based on what is popular or fashionable, but on pleasing the Lord. He has given both principles and specific instruction to guide us in these things.
There will always be some who want to conform to the standard of the world, who think the narrow way too narrow. They will attempt to chip away, bit by bit, at the outward evidences of Adventist distinctiveness. What they cannot change de jure by appeal, they will often ignore, and try to overthrow de facto.
Faculty and administration must determine that our aim will not be to see how low we can set the standard without doing violence to our Christian commitment, but rather how nearly we can attain to a lifestyle that honors our Lord for its simplicity, purity, and taste.
If the distinctiveness of Adventist lifestyle is allowed to erode from our campuses, parents and discerning young people will find less and less reason to make the sacrifices necessary to attend. The option of living at home and attending classes at the local junior college starts to look more viable and practical. The implications for Adventist education are ominous.
Outside the Adventist Church, the church-related schools that maintain high expectations of behavior from their students are the schools that are prospering. Likewise within our church—certain independent schools with high standards have applicants on waiting lists. An education that is truly Adventist will reflect that orientation in its lifestyle. Following the crowd is not good enough; we must follow Christ, seeking His ideal.
A Call to Cultivate
These three characteristics have been present in Adventist education in the past; to one degree or another, they can be found in Adventist education today. But we are in danger of losing any or all of them, and it can happen in one generation. We need to consciously cultivate them, lest the thorns of this world spring up and choke out the good seed.
To this end we have produced this issue of Adventists Affirm. In its articles you will find many of these concerns addressed in more detail. It is our prayer that Adventist education will be all that the Lord intends it to be, a mighty instrument for building character and for building His kingdom.