I then went on to offer two general ways a Christian school can engage in the discipleship of its students. The first way is what I deemed holistic discipleship. Holistic discipleship is the integration of faith into the thoughts and activities of everyday life: habits, meals, learning, and leisure, for example. Holistic discipleship in a Christian school can include Bible studies and prayer meetings, but more often, it occurs organically. One teacher may choose to end her literature class in prayer after an intense debate. Another teacher might catch a student after class to keep the conversation going about the relationship between science and faith. And so on. 

The second way I suggested a Christian school can engage in discipleship is through training students to think through a Christian grid, or worldview. We all approach knowledge and questions with particular assumptions and presuppositions about how the world works. Our students are no different. Likely formed through popular culture and social media, students have grown up within the milieu of a secular society and naturally see the world through this lens. Teachers can disciple their students to think Christianly about the world by drawing attention to secular worldview assumptions that often go unchallenged and going on to lay out a compelling biblical alternative. 

But are these two approaches to discipleship sufficient? Are there additional ways? What about the idea of spiritual formation and the impact it could have on the Christian school’s approach to discipleship? In this article, I will explore the use of spiritual disciplines in the context of discipleship and take a special look at the spiritual discipline of study.

Transformation Through the Disciplines

In his classic book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster argues that spiritual disciplines are the gateway to spiritual transformation. Interestingly, in my first article on discipleship, I mentioned nothing of being transformed spiritually. And yet, is this not central to the aim of discipleship? If growing as a disciple is being conformed to the image of Christ, it will be nothing less than the utter transformation of a person into someone new.

Foster believes spiritual transformation happens first and foremost through receiving the free gift of righteousness. But he goes on to caution that this grace is received, not through passive antinomianism, but through active “sowing to the spirit” (Gal. 6:8). He writes, “Once we clearly understand that God’s grace is unearned and unearnable, and if we expect to grow, we must take up a consciously chosen course of action involving both individual and group life. That is the purpose of the spiritual disciplines” (7).

In a similar way, Dallas Willard begins his book Spirit of the Disciplines with the statement that modern Christianity has failed to take human transformation seriously. Therefore, the church must clarify and exemplify realistic methods of human transformation, thereby showing “how ordinary individuals…can become, through the grace of Christ, a love-filled, effective, and powerful community” (ix). Willard goes on to contend that the church today largely misunderstands how experiences and actions enable us to receive the grace of God. His solution: pursue a life of spiritual disciplines.

It seems to me that Foster and Willard are on to something. If the goal of discipleship is to help someone follow Jesus and grow in conformity to his image, we need to equip disciples with practical ways they can do that will lead to the transformation we desire. Just as a soccer coach has a collection of drills and exercises to strengthen the skill of his players and overtime to develop them into better soccer players, it seems that the would-be disciple-maker would possess a similar collection. And yet so often today, students growing up in Christian homes proceed through their young adult years without this training.

Types of Disciplines

So what are the disciplines that lead to spiritual transformation and which ones can be promoted in a Christian school context? Richard Foster divides the disciplines into three groups: inward disciplines, outward disciplines, and corporate disciplines. 

Inward disciplines focus on cultivating one’s inward life through prayerful contemplation and reflection. These practices include meditation, prayer, fasting, and study. Outward disciplines, on the contrary, are oriented toward one’s interaction with the external, often physical world. These practices include simplicity, solitude, submission, and service. Finally, the corporate disciplines underscore the practices that occur in community with others: confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. 

Interestingly, Dallas Willard groups the spiritual disciplines into only two categories: disciplines of abstinence and disciplines of engagement. Disciplines of abstinence are the practices we employ to gain control over “…the satisfaction of what we generally regard as normal and legitimate desires” (159). He is careful to point out that these desires are not necessarily sinful in and of themselves. But in our sinful human condition, it is these desires that often run “…a rebellious and harmful course.” The goal is to bring these desires back into coordination of a life aligned with Christ. Willard’s list of the disciplines of abstinence include solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, and sacrifice. 

Conversely, the disciplines of engagement are those that realign our desires and practices with proper engagement with God. While disciplines of abstinence counteract tendencies of commission (the things we ought not do), disciplines of engagement counteract tendencies of omission (the things we ought to do). Willard’s list here includes study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission (158).

Whether you prefer Foster’s groupings or Willard’s, the upshot is that there is an arsenal of disciplines at the disciple’s disposal for growing in Christ. While these disciplines take effort and intentionality, when pursued in and through the power of the Holy Spirit, they contain the elements for real spiritual transformation. For those new to the topic, let me clarify that Foster and Willard do not necessarily recommend implementing a spiritual regimen of all these disciplines at once. Rather, they are providing a menu of strategies that encompass a fully-orbed view of a person, and how every facet of what it means to be human can be placed under the transformative lordship of Christ.

The Discipline of Study

It is worth exploring the different ways a Christian school can implement these disciplines for the spiritual growth of their students, but I do not want to be misinterpreted to suggest that all these disciplines should be implemented. Again, we need to draw distinctions between the discipleship approaches of the church and school, and the home as well.

But I do want to suggest that schools are uniquely able to facilitate the spiritual discipline of study. In education today, the act of study is associated with the preparation for an upcoming examination, usually with high-stakes consequences. Thus, study is a word infused with connotations of labor, stress, and deadlines.

But Foster encourages us to step back and think of study as a broader approach to engaging the objective world and, in doing so, to be transformed. It is a discipline that facilitates a state of rest and peacefulness as one contemplates truths that are unchanging, good, and often beautiful. This is quite the opposite of our modern view of study!

Foster frames his chapter on study with Paul’s words to the Philippian church: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). In the Book of Romans, we see Paul’s vision for this discipline, namely, that believers will be “transformed by the renewal of their minds” (Rom. 12:2).

How does this happen? The idea is that as we focus on truth, we align our beliefs and belief processes to the objective structures of knowledge. The things we focus on conform our habits and thinking to the order of the thing studied. The more we fill our minds with God’s goodness, truth, and beauty, the more oriented toward him we become in our intellectual and cognitive disposition. Conversely, the more we saturate ourselves with the opposite, the more oriented we will be toward the cares of the world.

This is one reason why gaining control over one’s consumption of shows and social media is so important. It is temping to think that we can watch whatever we want to and it will have no effect on us. Or that endless scrolling of social media is a harmless activity. But the reality is that these behaviors can and will change us, literally rewiring our brains, as the science has shown, and changing us over time.

What to Study

So what should we study in order to experience spiritual formation for ourselves and for our students? Here are five suggestions:

The Bible: I am sure you saw this coming. The study of God’s Word should be the primary source we engage in this discipline. We want to teach students to study scriptural passages, not merely as a scholarly pursuit, but as an endeavor to connect personally with God. On this note, Willard writes, “Our prayer as we study meditatively is always that God would meet with us and speak specifically to us, for ultimately the Word of God is God speaking (177).

Experiential Classics: In our individualistic culture, we often assume that growing spiritually is a solo journey. We view spiritual growth as a single path that a traveler journeys down alone. But the better metaphor is not a path, but a pilgrimage. Pilgrims travel together. The reality is that there is a nearly endless list of Christ followers who have been transformed spiritually and have written about their experience. From Augustine’s Confessions to Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ to Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, we can select texts to add to the curriculum that form our students spiritually as they study these works.

Nature: The intentional study of God’s creation is one of the most life-giving and peaceful experiences I have come across. In a world that champions the conquering of nature for pragmatic ends, we can help students reconnect the natural world with the spiritual through slowing down and observing the beauty and order of nature. The addition of Nature Study as a scheduled part of the school week is a strategic way to help students grow spiritually as they respond with wonder and worship.

Relationships: While the first three suggestions for study are rather conventional, Foster suggests we can grow spiritually by learning to study the relational interactions around us. How do we speak to one another? How do we use our words and interactions? Are we participating in healthy friendships or discouraging ones? By training students to study and reflect on their relationships, they can grow in their understanding of how these relationships are influencing their spiritual walks.

Culture: While it is true that the heart of the spiritual discipline of study is to align our beliefs and belief processes with objective reality, it is important to be reflective about one’s surrounding culture. We often inhabit our world like fish who are fully submersed in water, yet, if asked, haven’t the slightest clue what H20 is. As with worldview thinking, we can facilitate moments for our students to study the culture they live in and thereby grow in discernment of various cultural elements, from moral values to entertainment.

To conclude this article, Christian schools can contribute to the growth of their students as disciples of Christ by encouraging and, in some occasions, facilitating spiritual disciplines. A central component of being a disciple of Christ is being spiritually formed over time. But this sort of transformation does not happen by accident, even if it ultimately a gracious gift of God. As Paul writes, “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:8). May we help our students reap eternal life through providing daily opportunities for them to practice the sort of disciplines that are the pathways to real and lasting spiritual transformation.

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Like most good questions, we must begin by defining our terms. What is discipleship?

According to Mark Dever, a pastor in the Washington D.C. area, we can define discipleship simply as helping someone follow Jesus. As an expanded definition, he writes that discipleship is “…deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will be more like Christ” (Discipling, p. 13). Greg Ogden, a pastor who served for many years in the Chicago suburbs, defines discipleship as “walking alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ” (Discipleship Essentials, p. 17). Taking these two definitions together, the heart of discipleship is encouraging others in their pursuit of Christ. Disciple-makers possess an others-focused mentality and a Christ-centered end goal.

It seems fairly intuitive to me that discipleship, as defined above, happens in Christian schools. Christian teachers who care about young people growing in wisdom and virtue will naturally care about them growing in their faith as well. And yet, it must be stated that the school is not the church. There is an important distinction between these two institutions, which will impact, and potentially limit, the forms discipleship can take in these contexts.

So I move on to the second half of my question: how does discipleship happen in a Christian school?

A Holistic Approach

To begin, I want to differentiate between what I call focused discipleship and holistic discipleship. Focused discipleship is what we most likely think of when we picture discipleship taking place. Two men drinking coffee in Starbucks, having a Bible study and challenging one another to submit their whole lives to Christ. Women getting together to pray and exhort one another with scriptural truths. In these situations, the meetings are intentional, focused, and usually for a particular duration of time. There may be a set agenda for these meetings or there might not be, but the time has been intentionally set apart by the participants to grow toward maturity in Christ.

The alternative to focused discipleship is holistic discipleship. This approach can be less easy to nail down. In holistic discipleship, believers are doing life together as they integrate faith, habits, meals, learning, and leisure into everyday life. Holistic discipleship includes elements of focused discipleship–prayer meetings, Bible studies, 1-on-1 conversations–but it encompasses these gatherings within a broader context of extended relationship.

It seems to me that there is great potential for holistic discipleship at Christian schools. With the amount of time teachers and students spend together each day, the opportunities for faith integration into daily life are practically limitless. With intentionality, teachers can inspire and lead their students to integrate their walk with Christ into speech, habits, routines, interactions, school work, class discussions, assignments, conversations, recess, and meals on a daily basis.

Incorporating Worldview Thinking

So one way discipleship can happen in Christian schools is through this holistic approach. Another potentially more tangible way is through the intentional formation of a Christian worldview.

In Wisdom and Eloquence (Crossway, 2006), Robert LittleJohn and Chuck Evans explore in their chapter entitled “Worldview and the Liberal Arts” what it looks like for a school to teach and learn Christianly. They begin by defining the term “worldview.” Typically, when we think of worldview, we envision holding the correct or biblical positions on key issues of the day. For example, we want to help students develop a biblical worldview on the topic of abortion, forming the conviction that life in the womb is sacred and worthy of protection.

However, the authors argue, worldview is not reducible to positions or even values. It runs much deeper than what propositions we believe or why we believe them. Worldview is a fundamental aspect of our sense of being that orients us toward a particular vision of the good life (44). It is essentially an inner honing device formed over time by our culture and upbringing. As a result, parents and teachers cannot simply teach a Christian worldview through didactic instruction as useful as this can be. Rather, it is passed on, or “caught,” through enculturating and embodied practices. These can include specific routines like attending worship services and prayer meetings as well as more mundane practices like singing, eating, discussing, gardening, and playing. In this way, harnessing the enculturating power of wordview formation is another avenue for schools to disciple students in a holistic manner.

Holistic Discipleship in the Classroom

In the classroom, holistic discipleship begins when teachers integrate their Christian faith into all subjects, not restricting their faith to explicitly religious moments, such as chapel or Bible class. Teachers welcome their students into a life of discipleship when they lead classes and promote classroom cultures in which there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular. In this way, studying literature, science, math, and history becomes an avenue for exploring God’s created world. Empowering students to use their creative capacities to cultivate beauty is a way of living out their identity as image-bearers of God. When teachers make these connections between faith and learning explicit, students are led forward in their journey of following Christ with their whole lives, beginning with their minds.

While each Christian tradition has their own framework and vocabulary for expressing the heart of discipleship, the end goal is the same: helping believers be conformed to the image of Christ. When teachers approach their subjects through the lens of faith, invite their students to think and interact with an idea from a biblical perspective, pointing to the truths of the gospel, and at times including prayer or scripture in their lessons, they are playing a key role in the disciple-making process.

A Paradigm for Thinking Christianly

So how does a teacher ensure she is not only thinking Christianly, but passing it on to her students? LittleJohn and Evans suggest that all people, regardless of faith, interpret life through a particular grid or framework. While there are a myriad of ways to succinctly articular a biblical “grid” through which life is interpreted, as we think about educating students, we will be most successful if the grid we use is clear, coherent, and concrete. For this reason, I recommend the Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation paradigm:

Creation: God created the world good and perfect in order to bring glory to himself. He designated human beings with the specific vocation of bearing his image as the steward and caretakers of his good creation.

Fall: Human beings, endowed with free will, chose to pursue their own desires over God, thereby introducing sin and destruction into the world. This fall impacted not only the soul of humanity, but all of creation and even social institutions. There is not a single aspect of reality–relationships, nature, government, churches, schools, relationships–that is left untainted by sin.

Redemption: God commissioned Jesus, the eternal son of God, to become human and bear the punishment of sin that humans deserve. Through trusting in the sufficiency of Christ’s death on the cross, humans can find forgiveness for their sin, eternal life, and membership in the everlasting family of God. As God’s kingdom breaks in, Christians can serve as agents of reconciliation, sharing the good news and living out their identity as the people of God.

Consummation: While Christ has come and redemption is possible now, believers await with the hope the day when Christ returns and makes everything right. God’s kingdom will be consummated, evil will vanquished, and the people of God will flourishing on a restored earth for eternity. 

This grid is likely familiar to you and for good reason. While imperfect, this fourfold approach to the story of scripture simply yet powerfully explains the message of the gospel. Additionally, it is broad enough to provide the scope for all of life’s experiences and, relevant to schools–academic subjects, to be understood through this grid. As one example, when studying the history of colonialism in the British Empire, students observe the patriotism and duty exhibited amongst the British as they establish colonies across the globe. Using the gospel grid above, a teacher can lead a discussion in which the benefits of a widespread Empire are properly assessed while also underscoring that no human institution can provide the sort of lasting peace and security we all desire. Only when Christ returns will all be made right.

Discipling Students in a Secular Worldview

While the grid above may be familiar, there is another grid you may not have heard of that could be even more familiar nonetheless. It is the grid for secular thinking. If teachers are going to helping their students follow Jesus through the formation of a biblical worldview, they need to be aware of the counter worldview that is ubiquitous in our world today. This is the secular worldview and here are its tenets:

Existence: There is no transcendent purpose or story behind reality that is beyond reality itself. People, animals, plants, and objects exist as a brute fact. It is up to humans themselves to weave together their own tapestry of meaning. 

Individualism: Each human exists as an individual, endowed with the autonomy to think and live however they please. While humans often flourish in communities, the individual self can come and go as it pleases in order to live out its authentic identity.

Identity: Humans are not only individuals physically-speaking. Each human possesses a sacred inner identity that is unique to the person. This identity is fundamentally good and must be respected by fellow humans. External forces, such as religions, moral philosophies, social systems, and governments, are not to encroach upon this identity. 

Happiness: If there is an objective purpose for human existence, it is to be happy. Happiness is not necessarily related to any particular moral or religious vision. Given the brevity of life and the simplicity of biology, happiness is fundamentally about pleasure and well-being. The moral imperative, if there is one, is to do what makes you happy, and pursue the very best life possible, be it through wealth, status, professional achievement, or experiences. 

The reality is that most of our students have been formed by culture to think according to this grid. Therefore, a central way Christian schools can support the discipleship of their students is through bringing this grid to their attention and regularly referring back to the Christian alternative.

Conclusion

In this article, I have been thinking through how discipleship happens in a Christian school. The school is not the church, and we should not, therefore, expect these discipleship approaches to look identical. And yet, discipleship is not a complicated concept. It is the task of helping others follow Jesus. In Christian schools, teachers can take advantage of the life-on-life opportunities they have as they spend multiple hours with their students each day. This opens the door for what I have been calling holistic discipleship, the sort of encouragement to follow Jesus in all facets of life, be it in the classroom, during mealtime, or at recess. In addition, teachers can disciple their students specifically in their thinking through approaching the curriculum through a biblical lens. As schools train students to “submit every thought captive to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), they will prepare them to not only grow in wisdom and virtue, but Lord-willing, maturity in Christ.

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As Christian educators, it is important for us to reflect on these difficult questions from a theological and biblical perspective. In this case, what we think about humans will dictate to a large extent how we educate them. One of the advantages of the Christian intellectual tradition is that it offers a portrait of what it means to be human that is amenable with many of the insights of various perspectives. In fact, rightly understood, Christianity functions as the foundational framework in which these insights make the most sense when they are true. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” In this case, Christianity equips us to view humans as Homo sapiens, spiritual beings, individual selves, and members of society seeking justice, even if they are not reducible to just one of these definitions.

In this blog, I want to share some ideas for how teachers can educate their students with a Christian worldview in a secular age. Part of what it means to live in a secular age is that our students our growing up within a marketplace of competing worldviews, rather than on a service line with a single product. If our students are going to think Christianly, then, they must not only be taught Christian ideas. They must learn how to carefully scrutinize ideas from differing worldviews with the aim to discern the truth. The starting point for this task, I want to suggest in this blog, is possessing a robust doctrine of revelation.

Grounded in God’s Self-Revelation

The foundation for all of theology is the doctrine of revelation. This is the idea that our knowledge of God is possible only because God first revealed himself to us. Without revelation, there is no theology. In the modern era, people tried to relocate the source of theology from God’s self-revelation to other places. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for example, grounded theology in morality. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) pointed to an inner sense of absolute dependence. These approaches, as well as other attempts in history and psychology, led only to anthropocentric substitutes for a robust God-centered approach. For theology to avoid being reduced to anthropology, the discipline must be grounded in God’s self-revelation.

Theologians typically divide revelation into two types: general and special. The source of general revelation is the natural world and the source of special revelation is holy scripture. In the case of general revelation, as humans reflect on the sheer majesty and order of creation, they cannot help themselves but intuit there is a numinous force behind it all. John Calvin (1509-1564) famously called this intuition the sensus divinitatis, that is, the “sense of the divine.” He writes,

There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has planted in all men a certain understanding of divine majesty.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), ed. John McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Book I, Chapter 3, Section 1

Calvin believed that God hard-wired into human beings an awareness of the supernatural, a reality beyond what lies immanently before us. Admittedly, those of us living in the 21st century might question Calvin’s assumption that all humans possess this awareness of God. After all, with self-professed atheists alive among us, it seems that the modern era has undergone some form of immanentization, “the process by which meaning, significance, and fullness are sought within an enclosed, self-sufficient, naturalistic universe without any reference to transcendence” (James K.A. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular (Eerdmans, 2014), p. 141). In other words, it seems that an enclosure has been erected, making it possible for some people to lack, or minimally suppress, any natural awareness of God’s existence.

Whether our world today is fully buffered from an awareness of transcendence or not, as Christian parents and educators, there are practical ways we can proactively cultivate the sensus divinitatis in our students. We can shape their religious imaginations through telling them Bible stories and have them respond with narration. We can integrate their minds, hearts, and souls with beauty through worshipping in song together in community. And we can teach them to pray with reverence and sincerity by setting a strong example of habitual prayer in the home and at school.

The Grace Common to All

In the reformed tradition, general revelation about God connects to an even broader concept: common grace. This is the idea that although humanity is fallen, God did not abandon us completely. If he did, the goodness we see around us would not even be possible. Instead, in response to the Fall, God bestowed upon the world a grace that would prevent it from going off the tracks completely and immediately. This grace is common to all peoples, cultures, and civilizations. It is the reason goodness, justice, truth, or beauty is possible in a post-Eden world in the first place. 

It is precisely the doctrine of common grace which permits Christian, classical educators to mine non-Christian sources for objective truth. According to this doctrine, it is possible for people groups outside of God’s chosen people to encounter real knowledge, that is, truth, about the world. Rather than shun this understanding, Christians should view it as a gracious gift of God.

In On Christian Teaching, Augustine of Hippo (354-430) uses the analogy of Israel plundering the gold of the Egyptians during their exodus to illustrate how Christians can plunder the truth discovered by non-Christian thinkers. Augustine writes,

Similarly all the branches of pagan learning contain not only false and superstitious fantasies…but also studies for liberated minds which are more appropriate to the service of the truth, and some very useful moral instruction, as well as the various truths about monotheism to be found in their writers.

On Christian Teaching (Oxford, 1999), trans. R.P.H. Green, Book II, Ch. 40

Here Augustine reassures us that we are not “secularizing” the faith when we grow in understanding through non-Christian sources. This insight is particularly applicable today with the vast array of emerging disciplines, ranging from positive psychology to neuroscience, but also with more traditional disciplines like biology or history. Rather than viewing these sources with suspicion, we should train our students to analyze them with a biblical worldview, mining for truth that comports to God’s Word.

As our students navigate the complexities of the modern world, complete with its array of religious and secular options, we need to provide them with the skills they need to carefully “plunder the gold and silver.” The most promising way to do so is through training in the liberal arts, the tools of learning. It is not enough to teach them the factual information they need for an upcoming test. Nor is it enough to replace intellectual skills with practical ones. Don’t get me wrong–students need to learn how to make a personal budget and conduct their lives with financial prudence. But if our students are going to be Christians in a secular world, what they truly need is to be equipped intellectually to navigate an age of contested belief.

Belief Leading to Understanding

There is much more that could be said on this topic, but let me close with this. It is common in the academy today to assume that a naturalistic starting point is a neutral one. That is, scholars should assume in their studies that the natural world is all there is and they should therefore conduct their research in light of this guiding principle. But what I want to suggest is that if Christianity is true, then religious belief cannot so easily be set aside. The doctrine of revelation, coupled with the concept of common grace, does not permit us this option. Rather, when men and women come to believe in God’s existence and the gospel of Jesus Christ, their intellectual framework itself goes through a conversion. A naturalistic premise is as dogmatic as a religious one is in our secular age. As parents and educators, then, we must unapologetically raise our students in the spirit of Augustine: “I believe in order to understand.” May our students believe, and through this belief, truly understand the world around them.

Note: For those interested in a deeper dive into religious epistemology and the idea that religious belief can be justified apart from evidential inference, I would direct you to Knowledge and Christian Belief (Eerdmans, 2015) by Alvin Plantinga.

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