Bakery Run #10 – Pat-a-Cake

Pie Buddy: Anton Nortkus

Topic: Christian teaching in High School – A student’s perspective

Anton and I originally intended to meet up at Bakery Girls on Duthy Street, which unfortunately turned out to be closed on Sundays. So instead we drove 1km up the road to Pat-a-Cake. Pat-a-Cake is just a short walk from my work, so I had been there a few times and knew that it delivered the goods. On this occasion, there were only a few pies left (late lunch on a Sunday, so I guess that’s understandable). Anton grabbed a couple of beef mince pies, while I opted for a chunky steak pie and a peanut chocolate brownie. Both hit the spot just nicely. The pies here are among the best I’ve had, and there is normally a good range of all things baked, both sweet and savoury. Perhaps the pies here are a tad heavy on the gravy, but the finished product is highly satisfying. Just like I knew this conversation would be!

Anton and I attended the same Christian high school, and we both felt – looking back on high school after coming to faith – that there were problems with how things were run from a Christian perspective. In a nutshell, it didn’t seem like there actually was a particular or effective focus on Christianity. From all anecdotal accounts, similar problems tend to occur at most Christian schools, so this certainly isn’t intended as an attack on our school. On the whole, the education we received was of a high quality. However, we found ourselves looking back with disappointment on the lack of strong biblical teaching. Given that teenage years have such an impact in shaping a person, we felt it was worth discussing.

“I don’t know if you can really call going to a Christian school a Christian experience,” Anton began. “It depends on the school a bit, but most schools with that Christian label attached to it, which make you think they’re serious about Christianity, seem to be quite nominal.”

“I guess to some extent there’s a sense in which they don’t want to be seen as brainwashing kids to believe what they do,” I suggested. “But then if you send your kids to a Christian school, you should know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“I think if you want to send your kid to a school and you don’t believe in their morals and teachings, well, send them somewhere else. I think faith should be the foremost thing. Education is obviously important though still.”

From that point of view, there is an onus on parents to not feel entitled to secular teaching from a Christian school. However, there is equal onus on a Christian school to be, well, Christian.

“I think it’s important for schools that do have strong convictions to hold to those convictions,” Anton continued. “If you’re going to attach a label to yourself like a Lutheran school or an Anglican school, then you should see that through. If you’re not going to bother with that, then lose the title.”

I completely agreed. “It’s a bit like on an individual level, if I was to refer to myself as a Christian, I should be living a life that reflects that. If I don’t do that, then not only am I not a Christian, but I’m rubbishing the Christian name, just making Christianity a joke.” I should point out in saying this that no Christian will ever exhibit perfect behaviour, but to live a deliberately sinful lifestyle is very different to living a life that, while still sinful, is lived with the best intentions of honouring God. I hope that makes sense.

“That’s right,” said Anton. “You could go as far as to say that they’re capitalising off it. One of the main reasons my parents sent me to our school was because they thought it had strong Christian values. And that was a message that was conveyed during the orientation, that it’s a good wholesome Christian school. But that’s not the case at all.”

We then focused on the rationale behind employing non-Christian teachers. “What’s the logic of hiring a teacher who doesn’t agree with the basic principles of Christianity?” Anton asked. “Yes, they might be good teachers, but I find it hard to believe that there are no good teachers with an ethos and mindset closer to what the school’s trying to portray. You can see how many teachers we had that were so far from that. It’s surprising really. And what was even more disappointing was to realise how many teachers we had that were Christian and couldn’t profess their faith.”

That was a good point, I thought. I wonder if there are evangelistically-minded teachers out there who are actively discouraged from sharing their faith in a classroom setting. And as for non-Christian teachers, I have clear memories from high school of seeing a lack of enthusiasm from teachers in how they responded to the idea of faith and worship, which for me downplayed the importance of Christianity.

We then discussed the teaching of Christian Education. “I remember being struck at how little Christian Ed class actually had to do with Christianity,” said Anton.

I agreed. “You could not find a square centimetre of theology in the whole Christian Ed course.”

“I think subliminally it gave the impression that it was ok to be a nominal believer,” Anton said. “Like you can find out about good and evil from the Lion King. That’s what got me. That project where all we did was make a poster about all the good and evil themes in the Lion King, it’s painting Christianity as just a set of morals, and saying that you don’t even need Jesus to recognise the good and evil in the world. It taught us that the morality we should live by is a human based morality. It was a weird concept for a subject called Christian Education.”

“It’s ironic, but I would bet that nobody actually grew in their Christian knowledge from doing Christian Ed,” I concluded. Anton nodded in agreement.  We then proceeded to discuss other projects that did absolutely nothing to teach us about who Jesus was.

“I think it was just to keep us busy,” I said. “We’ve got to keep these kids busy for three hours a week doing this subject under the guise of being a Christian education school.” Cynical maybe, but probably not far off the mark.

I’m currently establishing the high school age youth ministry at my church, and so the teaching of Christianity to teenagers is something I’ve been thinking about a bit of late. “I’m comparing the things I’m thinking about running in youth ministry with the things we learned in Christian Ed, and I reckon if I suggested some of the things we learned in school to my pastor as youth ministry ideas, he’d rip up my contract on the spot and push me down the stairs!”

(** Editor’s note: That last line was purely tongue in cheek. My pastor is a much more restrained man than that! **)

“Yeah, and so he should,” said Anton. “And in hindsight, I think the most important time for a young Christian is their high school years. When you’re in a school where they’re at least supposedly supportive of Christianity, that is a huge pushing factor about how that person develops. It’s where you spend most time, and get most impact.”

The pointlessness of our Christian Ed class was highlighted to me on one occasion when a teacher who I now know to be a Christian told us in our Chemistry class: “Don’t talk in class, that’s what Christian Ed’s for.” Enough said.

We also agreed that having unbelieving teachers preaching out of obligation was extremely unhelpful. “Getting teachers who clearly weren’t Christians to get up and do devotions in chapel and home class, that’s really damaging for the Christian message,” I said. “The school might feel that’s a box they’ve got to tick, but it’s a real step backwards.” I also had clear memories of teachers openly denying Christianity and uttering some pretty heavy blasphemies.

Anton agreed, and also pointed out the lack of focus on the cross in our chapel worship services. He recalled a chapel devotion on altruism, where instead of bringing the point of the talk back to the cross (which couldn’t have been hard – can you think of a better example of altruism?), the take-home message was ‘try to do one altruistic thing this week’. We also lamented the lack of an ongoing theme in the devotions. Could they perhaps have instead tried some expository preaching, like going through the book of Romans in a term? Sure, it would have gone over some peoples’ heads, but it would have given the students a better idea of how the Bible fits together. With the disjointed range of talk topics and lack of firm Biblical teaching, Anton eventually got to the point where he realised “This isn’t really chapel, it’s just letters to the editor by the teacher.”

Ultimately though, the big disappointment for both of us was that a school full of teenagers is a harvest field full of people ready to hear the gospel message. It’s a huge evangelistic mission-field that, in our limited experience, hasn’t been capitalised on. “It’s such a great opportunity to evangelise,” I said. “I’d love to have 20 kids in my class and be able to share Jesus with them.”

Jesus made it clear that it was the role of his followers to go out into the world and proclaim the gospel message. He used the image of a harvest field to represent the world full of people who don’t yet believe in him.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Luke 10:3)

High schools are an incredibly vast harvest field. Why allow this opportunity to be wasted?

“Yeah,” Anton agreed. “You can give them both practical teaching and spiritual feeding. Whereas it seems to be more just a case of teach them well, make sure they get good grades, and read them a devotion once a year.”

“ And make sure their diaries are signed.”

“And if they put the same effort that they did checking the diaries into giving their two cents on their Christian walk… It’s just a real waste.”

It’s important in all of this to realise that Christian parents have an important role to play in bringing up their children to know Jesus. They shouldn’t be relying on a Christian education to replace this. “At the end of the day though,” I said, “it’s the parents who have the most important job to do. They’ve got to be discerning in choosing a school, and they’ve got to be setting the groundwork at home.”

We finished off by chatting about how some high schools are quite effective at getting quality Christian teachers, through carefully interviewing applicants to get an idea of their relationship (if any) with God. Hopefully I’ll get the chance soon to rub shoulders and eat pie with someone who can give a bit more insight into this process. In the meantime, it’s definitely worth praying that God will be sending evangelistically-hearted gospel workers into these high school harvest fields.