We highly encourage you to read through this page to get a better understanding of the heart of Calvin Christian School.
Mission StatementPortrait of a Graduate
Mission Statement
“The mission of Calvin Christian School, in cooperation with the home and church, is to teach the whole child from a biblical worldview, founded in the Reformation, providing children from Christian families with an excellent education for a life of Christ-centered service.”
Our mission reflects Calvin’s roots in the liberal arts tradition. Because our educational mission is to educate the “whole child,” our approach to mission fulfillment is more robust than just the liberal arts. Our approach is visually captured by a special graphic wall art that hangs in every classroom and office on the Calvin campus. We call the graphic art our “Missional Deep Hope.”
Every organization’s mission statement outlines what it “deeply hopes” is the central outcome of its work. This is undoubtedly true for schools. Sometimes schools might call their “Missional Deep Hope” a “Portrait of a Graduate.”
It is important to know how a school defines its “Portrait Of A Graduate;” it is equally important (if not more so) to understand the school’s approach for helping students develop robustly toward this “portrait.”
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Our Portrait of a Graduate
Simply put, our “Portrait of a Graduate” is that a graduate would know their identity is formed by God’s love in Christ, consequently, to live a life of wonder, worship, work, and wisdom. We desire for graduates to know who they are, and, what they are called to do.
Thus, our approach to achieving this “portrait” is by way of a Christ-centered, whole-person education, which can be summed up this way:
- The Creator God of the Universe is Sovereign, and is Triune – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. All understanding of existence, both God’s and humanity’s, is made possible because the Triune God reveals Himself to us in all that He has created (i.e. General Revelation) and through the Holy Scripture (i.e. Special Revelation).
- Education is primarily formative as opposed to informative.
- These four questions, in this order, matter:
- Whom to love?
- How to live?
- How to think?
- What to know?
First — The Sovereign Triune God & Revelation
The Triune God of the universe is a God of revelation, and revelation is all about what God does, not what humans do, to:
- Make known what can be known by human persons about His nature
- Make known what can be known about the nature of human persons, and
- Make known and make possible, the way for human persons to be in union with God
Reflection upon these three points illuminates the reality that all human learning and flourishing will stem from God and His Revelation. Another way to think about this is that apart from God and His Revelation, all human efforts in learning and flourishing will ultimately end in folly and disintegration. Some have argued that the first four words of Scripture in Genesis chapter one succinctly capture this point, i.e. “In the beginning, God…”
With the tree in our graphic as a metaphor for human learning and flourishing, it is of paramount importance to understand that everything flows from revelation from our Triune God. CLICK HERE to read more about the Triune God and Revelation.
Calvin Christian School’s complete educational program could be thought about in terms of a moment-by-moment invitation to a young person to engage and utilize his/her body, mind, soul, emotions, strength (i.e., their whole being).
Let’s use a planter box full of rich, vibrant soil as a metaphor. The boundaries of the box depict the entire educational world offered to the child. The nutrient-rich soil is God’s Word (i.e Special Revelation). What is planted and nourished are specific learning/skill outcomes, using God’s gift of wonder (which animates reason, creativity, imagination, etc.). As God defines, His Word is life itself.
Second — Education is primarily formative as opposed to informative
A child’s Christian educational journey is ultimately shaping a child’s understanding of their identity — who they are. It is also shaping their abilities, which then have bearing upon their sense of self, or identity. We believe that all of life is vying for a child’s identity. Pastor and author John Mark Comer said, “for those of us who desire to follow Jesus, here is the reality we must turn and face: If we’re not being intentionally formed by Jesus himself, then it’s highly likely we are being unintentionally formed by someone or something else.” We know from Scripture and the rich historic confessions of Christian faith that a person does not belong to him/herself, but he/she belongs to the Triune Creator, who has redeemed him/her by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Succinctly — God’s Word tells us who we are when found in Christ — a truly loved and fully known child of God.
Lastly — Four questions, in this order, matter:
These four questions establish the framework for the curricular and pedagogical work in the classroom, as well as the shaping of the overall culture (ethos) of our learning community on campus.
Question 1: Whom to love?
- In profound, earth-shattering teaching, Jesus tells us all the law and the prophets’ teaching (i.e., all learning and understanding) is summed up by a correct ordering of loves.
- Do we love God with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul and all our strength?
- Do we love our neighbor as we love ourselves
(Gospel of Matthew 22:37-40; Gospel of Mark 22:29-31)
If we get this question wrong, nothing else pursued can be fully right. Christian writers such as St. Augustine from the 5th century wrote about this as piety, or the correct ordering of loves (or human affections), and thus paramount for the formation of a healthy society.
The trunk of the tree on our “Missional Deep Hope” graph art reflect this biblical truth:
Love & Worship God | Love & Serve My Neighbor
Question 2: How to live?
With the Gospel permanently at work, transforming our lives to the image of Jesus, we become capable of loving God and others correctly. Consequently, there is a correct tuning of a child’s heart and training of a child’s body, for the glory of God. As children learn about the history of humanity (e.g., events, art, music, culture, economy, civil life, etc.) in the context of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they develop the ability to discern how to live correctly, in ways which give God all glory, honor, and praise. Thus, the first branch on our “Missional Deep Hope” graphic art reflect this:
Respect & Submit to Authority | Care For & Control My Body
Delight In & Create Beauty | Recognize & Pursue Goodness | Enjoy & Care for Creation
Questions #3 and #4: How to think & what to know?
These questions can be addressed together. Some school programs have forgotten (or ignore) that “learning to learn,” or learning how to think is integrally connected to the efforts to acquire knowledge. This is yet another reason we claim that our whole child Christian education is formative, versus merely informative. At Calvin, we intentionally focus on helping students develop proficiency with the tools for learning. We believe those tools are associated with the beautiful and robust ways God has imbued the human’s mind with the miraculous gift of language, i.e. language with words, and, language with numbers, dimension, shape and space. The wonderful and also miraculous gift of imagination is fueled by language. In Biblical terms, correct thinking stems from reverence for the Sovereign, Holy Triune God. The results for the student is the development of Godly wisdom (i.e., discernment with knowledge) and winsome abilities to speak into culture (i.e., Godly rhetoric). The second branch at the top of the tree on our “Missional Deep Hope” graphic art reflect this:
Discover & Describe Order | Discern & Defend Truth
Embrace & Employ Reason | Love & Grow in Wisdom | Communicate & Persuade Graciously
As stated above, our approach to creating excellent, whole-child education is visually captured by the graphic artwork that hangs in every classroom and office on the Calvin campus. The words at the top of the poster concisely capture the “deep hope” of our mission statement. We understand that all true image bearer learning and flourishing flow from Revelation of the Triune God. The twelve statements outline what we believe should happen with the complex and wondrous capacities God has given His image bearers, to be fully human as He intended and seen most clearly in Jesus Himself.
Soli Deo Gloria!
