Revisiting a Minefield--Part 3
How might a church educational system look if it were designed according to the previously outlined principles of essential content and primary parental responsibility? This post will deal only with the latter principle.
A critical step in building a Scriptural educational model is to get the burden-bearing teaching straight. Earlier I made reference to classroom schooling being a way people in a brotherhood can help bear each others' burdens. Surely widespread agreement exists on burden sharing being a good thing.
What are we to make, however, of that other verse in the same chapter (Galatians 6) that says "Every man shall bear his own burden"? In trying to understand this, I've turned for help to others who have studied this apparent contradiction with the benefit of some scholarly insight that I lack. From this I've learned that the burdens we are to carry ourselves are the "backpack" variety. The ones we are to help each other carry are the multiple-cement-bag kind. The original-language words make this distinction clear. In a general sense, the focus of this teaching is on providing assistance to others, not on expecting others to help carry our burdens.
How do we apply this teaching--to finances, for example, in a church's educational program? I confess to having resisted the most obvious application for a long time, but obedience demanded of me a change of heart. In short, I believe now that parents ought to pay whatever their own children's education costs, rather than expecting the church or the state to do so. This can happen most easily in homeschools, or in a patron school setup where a predetermined tuition amount is paid for every student. In the matter of finances for education, I see no better way to honor the parental-responsibility imperative in Scripture.
Everyone would pay for their own curriculum, and those parents who don't do the teaching themselves would pay for someone else to do it for them, either in a private tutor arrangement or as part of a classroom school. The financial implications of the various choices would be abundantly clear. If delegation of teaching responsibility happens, it will be deliberate, after counting the cost, rather than by default. This is exactly as it should be. Delegation by default is, historically, and Scripturally, a departure from the standard. To give a homespun example of how this works--Hiromi once explained to someone that if he has a car needing repairs, sometimes he takes the time and spends the money to repair it himself. If he doesn't have time to do it himself, he pays someone else to buy the parts and do the work for him. He delegates it, in other words. Hiromi thought the teaching of children should be like that. Parents should either do it themselves, or pay someone else to do it for them.
I see a variety of possible strategies to handle this. Instead of regular church offerings with a tacit understanding that "Every wage earner owes the school fund this much every month," taking up church offerings for the school would cease. Instead, a scholarship fund would be established that would be open at all times for donations.
Before the beginning of each school year, every family or wage-earner would meet with someone from the church (appointed or elected) to see what the family or individual's needs and resources are. If needs and resources within a certain household with school-age children are well matched, the financial part of the interaction may need to go no farther. The family will pay individually for what they use themselves. If the family has more resources than they need, the church-sent person will note that also.
If parents choose an education model that costs too much to be paid up front, setting up a mechanism for payment and distribution of monthly amounts of money would need to happen. If, after breaking it up into monthly amounts, it is still unmanageable, then there will be an admission of need for access to the scholarship funds. With the need properly noted, the church-sent assistant continues making the rounds, till all the families with school-age children are contacted.
The households without school age children are contacted last. By then, the "assistant" will know where additional funds are needed in families with school-age children. In each of the households without children, there will be an inquiry by the assistant about what amount the household might be able to provide to help someone else. By way of the scholarship fund, grandparents and aunts and uncles could perhaps help those in their family who need help. Where no family connections are present, brothers and sisters in the church function as family. All will be eligible to provide help and all who need help will be eligible to receive it.
In each case, the process is transparent. Every family receiving help knows who is helping them, and everyone who is providing help knows who they are helping. Money does not disappear into an invisible pot, for undetermined purposes. The needy and the helpers all have faces. This goes a long way to help provide built-in accountability and a source of many kinds of non-financial support from the helper, who has a legitimate interest in seeing his investment pay off. Ideally, the helper will feel gratitude extended toward him from the ones being helped. In a natural sense, this has the potential for being far more rewarding than merely meeting a monthly school fund obligation when it's time for the regular church offering.
In financing a church-wide education undertaking there are indeed ways to apply Scriptural burden-bearing principles of both the backpack and the cement-bag variety in ways that preserve the parent-responsibility directives and the group-effort dynamics we idealize. If we aren't using them, we should hardly be surprised when there's more floundering than we would like. We should probably also not waste our time in trying to whip up enthusiasm for a flawed system that produces disappointing results, but set about instead to examine and, if necessary, improve or replace the system. (Oops. That sounded like a 1960s utterance.)
(To be continued)
A critical step in building a Scriptural educational model is to get the burden-bearing teaching straight. Earlier I made reference to classroom schooling being a way people in a brotherhood can help bear each others' burdens. Surely widespread agreement exists on burden sharing being a good thing.
What are we to make, however, of that other verse in the same chapter (Galatians 6) that says "Every man shall bear his own burden"? In trying to understand this, I've turned for help to others who have studied this apparent contradiction with the benefit of some scholarly insight that I lack. From this I've learned that the burdens we are to carry ourselves are the "backpack" variety. The ones we are to help each other carry are the multiple-cement-bag kind. The original-language words make this distinction clear. In a general sense, the focus of this teaching is on providing assistance to others, not on expecting others to help carry our burdens.
How do we apply this teaching--to finances, for example, in a church's educational program? I confess to having resisted the most obvious application for a long time, but obedience demanded of me a change of heart. In short, I believe now that parents ought to pay whatever their own children's education costs, rather than expecting the church or the state to do so. This can happen most easily in homeschools, or in a patron school setup where a predetermined tuition amount is paid for every student. In the matter of finances for education, I see no better way to honor the parental-responsibility imperative in Scripture.
Everyone would pay for their own curriculum, and those parents who don't do the teaching themselves would pay for someone else to do it for them, either in a private tutor arrangement or as part of a classroom school. The financial implications of the various choices would be abundantly clear. If delegation of teaching responsibility happens, it will be deliberate, after counting the cost, rather than by default. This is exactly as it should be. Delegation by default is, historically, and Scripturally, a departure from the standard. To give a homespun example of how this works--Hiromi once explained to someone that if he has a car needing repairs, sometimes he takes the time and spends the money to repair it himself. If he doesn't have time to do it himself, he pays someone else to buy the parts and do the work for him. He delegates it, in other words. Hiromi thought the teaching of children should be like that. Parents should either do it themselves, or pay someone else to do it for them.
I see a variety of possible strategies to handle this. Instead of regular church offerings with a tacit understanding that "Every wage earner owes the school fund this much every month," taking up church offerings for the school would cease. Instead, a scholarship fund would be established that would be open at all times for donations.
Before the beginning of each school year, every family or wage-earner would meet with someone from the church (appointed or elected) to see what the family or individual's needs and resources are. If needs and resources within a certain household with school-age children are well matched, the financial part of the interaction may need to go no farther. The family will pay individually for what they use themselves. If the family has more resources than they need, the church-sent person will note that also.
If parents choose an education model that costs too much to be paid up front, setting up a mechanism for payment and distribution of monthly amounts of money would need to happen. If, after breaking it up into monthly amounts, it is still unmanageable, then there will be an admission of need for access to the scholarship funds. With the need properly noted, the church-sent assistant continues making the rounds, till all the families with school-age children are contacted.
The households without school age children are contacted last. By then, the "assistant" will know where additional funds are needed in families with school-age children. In each of the households without children, there will be an inquiry by the assistant about what amount the household might be able to provide to help someone else. By way of the scholarship fund, grandparents and aunts and uncles could perhaps help those in their family who need help. Where no family connections are present, brothers and sisters in the church function as family. All will be eligible to provide help and all who need help will be eligible to receive it.
In each case, the process is transparent. Every family receiving help knows who is helping them, and everyone who is providing help knows who they are helping. Money does not disappear into an invisible pot, for undetermined purposes. The needy and the helpers all have faces. This goes a long way to help provide built-in accountability and a source of many kinds of non-financial support from the helper, who has a legitimate interest in seeing his investment pay off. Ideally, the helper will feel gratitude extended toward him from the ones being helped. In a natural sense, this has the potential for being far more rewarding than merely meeting a monthly school fund obligation when it's time for the regular church offering.
In financing a church-wide education undertaking there are indeed ways to apply Scriptural burden-bearing principles of both the backpack and the cement-bag variety in ways that preserve the parent-responsibility directives and the group-effort dynamics we idealize. If we aren't using them, we should hardly be surprised when there's more floundering than we would like. We should probably also not waste our time in trying to whip up enthusiasm for a flawed system that produces disappointing results, but set about instead to examine and, if necessary, improve or replace the system. (Oops. That sounded like a 1960s utterance.)
(To be continued)
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
7:23 PM
1 Comments:
Good plan.
Jo
By
Anonymous, at 6/24/2012
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