INTRODUCTION

How thankful we must be for the schools God has given us! They are the implication of marvelous truths of Scripture, the fruit of conviction worked into the hearts of many who have gone before us, the outcome of great sacrifice through both years of lean and of plenty. God forbid we take them for granted!

How thankful we must be for our teachers! They sacrifice themselves for the sake of the covenant seed. They strive to develop what has been placed in that seed along the lines of antithetical living to God’s glory in all aspects of life. When I gave the substance of this article and the next as a speech for the teacher’s convention this year, I thanked the teachers for their work and told them I view them as so many vertebra making up a large part of the backbone of the kingdom of God in our midst. In my judgment this was no exaggeration. God forbid we take them for granted!

How thankful we must be for godly parents who faithfully raise their children before, during, and after their school years! These parents also give themselves for the benefit of the school. Busy helping the church and running their homes and giving themselves to other God-given callings, they also sacrifice for the sake of the schools. These parents sacrifice sometimes large portions of their paycheck to ensure the school has the financial backing to fulfill its calling. They also volunteer for committees, boards, and more out of love for the schools. God forbid we take them for granted!

Part of the evidence that we do not take the schools, teachers, and parents for granted is that we live in unity with each other in our schools, willing to die to self to preserve that unity. Part of the sign that we are taking the schools, teachers, and parents for granted is that we fail to express the unity of the body of Christ in the life of our schools. Instead, self-seeking abounds.

But the situation can be a bit more complex than merely saying to all, “Don’t be selfish toward boards, teachers, and parents.” When we face the matter of unity in the life of the school, we confront a twofold concern. The first is concern for the thriving of the whole, and the second is concern for the thriving of the individual. In other words, we must maintain what is bigger than the individual—the whole student body together and the institution itself. And at the same time we must care for the individual student and his/her individual needs. These two concerns can clash with one another. And when not tempered by selfless attitudes, can bring disunity.

Speaking generally, these two concerns are always present whenever there is a collective whole to maintain, and yet the purpose of maintaining the whole is so that the individual thrives. This double concern is also present in the life of the church. The whole church institution must be maintained. At the same time, the individual sheep within the flock have particular needs. This is why when the Scriptures speak of Jesus as the Good Shepherd of the sheep, they speak of His concern for the whole flock together: “And he [Christ] shall stand and feed [shepherd the flock] in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they [flock] shall abide…” (Micah 5:4). And in the New Testament, “And other sheep…shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16). At the same time, Scripture contains passages where the Good Shepherd gives attention to the individual sheep, even temporarily disregarding the needs of the whole to attend to that one sheep: “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing” (Luke 15:4-5).

Sometimes concern for the whole seems to erase concern for the individual. Conversely, sometimes concern for an individual seems to rub up against concern for the whole. A unified school maintains (1) a common foundation firmly undergirding both the whole and the individual; (2) a shared understanding of how concerns for the whole and the individual fit together in the school; and (3) vital spiritual qualities possessed by the majority involved that allow harmony as we live together on the foundation and embrace both concerns.

In this article I will explain the common foundation and introduce how the double concern fits together as told us in Ephesians 4. Next time I will delve more specifically into the double concern and the danger of extremes on both sides. I will also explain the vital spiritual qualities that the majority involved must possess for the two concerns to harmonize on the firm foundation.

THE FIRM FOUNDATION

As is the case in any manifestation of the unity of believers, the unity of believers in the school too is fundamentally rooted in the fact that God regenerates people and makes them new creatures. God creates unity by a miraculous work of sovereign grace uniting people to His Son and to others united to His Son. The result is similar to a grove of aspen trees. If you could trace the root systems underground, you would find that an entire mountainside of aspen trees is bound to one central tree from which all the others developed. The trees are united to that one tree and to each other. This is the unity of the Spirit that elect and true believers from every time, age, place, and various true churches share. They are united by the Spirit to one Head, Jesus Christ, and are united to each other in Him.

Due to various reasons, chief of which is sin, believers are never perfectly united in expression in this life. In fact, the results of sin even produce expressed divisions between the regenerated that must be there in this life even as we are united to Christ and to each other. Sin breeds doctrinal, practical, denominational, and even sadly, personal, divisions (that one prays can be overcome in a right way, but alas, it is not always so). It is not that the Scriptures are so unclear, although some things are clearer and some things less clear; it is that there is a nature inside of each one of us that is rebellious and that sits alongside the new life planted in us in regeneration.

Yet, the Spirit of God has led the church through the ages to develop together an understanding of His Word and to record that understanding in creeds adopted by the church. The result is that confession of truth is not dependent on the whims of any individual man or woman. These creeds are not inspired, but they are marks of God’s working in His church through the ages. They are forms of unity, and they give expression to the faithful teaching of Scripture. Whereas believers may (and delight to) find varying degrees of unity with any true believer in the world, they find and express doctrinal and practical unity with those of like precious faith in the church institutions that stand on these creeds as they do. This too is a unity of the Spirit.

Unity of the Spirit in such a church communion is expressed in various ways. One of those ways is by members joining together to raise and educate the covenant seed according to the truths that unite them. This is the necessary foundation for unity in our schools. Without this we have no solid basis for unity in a school and no shared understanding of the dual needs of the individual and the group. Instead, we become in the words of Ephesians 4:14, “children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” We will pull in different directions, destroying unity. No matter how kind we are to each other, we are no longer building on the same foundation, and unity will fall away. Our schools are Protestant Reformed schools established by Protestant Reformed people. We welcome any who are willing to abide by our creed, but we also deny those who militate against our shared purpose.

Herman Hoeksema explained how the Free University in the Netherlands was taken away from its creedal moorings.1 Dr. Robert Swierenga gave a speech at the PR Seminary a few years ago showing how a number of Christian Reformed schools left their creedal moorings. May it not be so among us.

The unity I have just described is not uniformity. We may disagree on various non-essential matters, but there must be substantial and essential unity on the basis of biblical and creedal truth. If I may put it this way, we do not all wear the same shirt and tie and shoes and pants and skirts and dresses, but we do all wear the same belt: the belt of truth. Both from the point of view of the whole and of the individual, the Christian day-school must operate submitted to one creedal truth to be unified.2

PEACE ON THE FOUNDATION

The goal is expressed oneness in peace, as the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4:3, “Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” True peace is grounded in the truths of Scripture, with the redeeming cross of Christ at the center of these truths. But this peace requires more. The apostle goes on to speak of the concern for the whole on that foundation of truth. “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (vv. 4-6). In that oneness, notice the apostle says there is another concern, to care for (in this case) the individual covenant children in their individual needs and unto the development of their individual gifts: “Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men…for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith” (vv. 8-13). Built upon the foundation of unity in truth, the apostle in Ephesians 4 has this double concern for the whole and the individuals that make up the whole. He also explains that the relation between the two is reciprocal. The concern for the whole is that the institution be maintained so that the individual may thrive. And the concern for the individual is that his or her gifts may be developed and thus serve and strengthen the whole. In this way the double concern for the whole and the individual fits and functions together in peaceful unity.

We maintain peace and unity in the school on that foundation, then, by working to preserve the whole (flock and institution) without idolizing it, and by working for the good of individual students, without idolizing any one of them.

Next time I will apply these matters to the life of the school and warn of the dangers of such idolatry to the bond of peace.

1 H. Hoeksema and H. Danhof; C. Hanko, transl.; H. Hanko, ed., Sin and Grace (Grandville, MI: RFPA, 2003), 35-70.

2 For an early expression of some of these creedal principles expressed for the school, see Herman Hoeksema’s six principles in the August 1, 1932 issue of the Standard Bearer, pages 488- 489. Further, see David J. Engelsma, Reformed Education (Grandville, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2000).