I grew up in San Jose, California as the first American-born child to parents whose families immigrated to the US from the Netherlands after World War II. My dad’s family helped start the Christian Reformed Church in San Jose, and my mom’s family helped plan and launch a Christian school there. You’ve got to hand it to immigrant families—they are driven by conviction about what can and should be better, and they’re willing to pour themselves out in pursuit of those ideals. For those from faith backgrounds within the Reformed tradition of Protestant Christianity, those efforts were often focused on the institutions of church and school.
I started my career in Christian education twenty-five years ago after graduating from Calvin College (now University) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My journey from secondary English teaching to administration has taken me to a variety of schools in the Midwest, the West coast, and now the Southwest. In looking at the core values of each of those institutions, along with the demographics of their student bodies and faculties, some fall under a traditionally Reformed umbrella, and others do not. Regardless of which school I was affiliated with as a teacher, I was aware of discussions about target audience, mission, and vision, but those concepts felt a bit removed from my day-to-day world because I figured that I would teach whoever was in front of me to the best of my ability, regardless of their background or beliefs.
Having worked in school administration for the last twelve years, I’ve been thrust into more frequent conversations about who we should welcome or recruit for our schools. I hear stories about days past when churches were “really doing their jobs” and preaching sermons about the importance of Christian education for families. I hear analysis about how younger parents aren’t willing to sacrifice in the same way as previous generations because they’re more concerned about the luxuries of life. Or I see schools pouring massive resources into state of the art buildings and programs, driven by the reality of today’s choosy parents, who seem to be in search of some nebulous idea of “best” for their children.
In Reformed education circles, discussions about who makes up the student body within our schools typically come down to two words: covenant and mission. Proponents of a covenantal approach to education will advocate for an audience of students from Christian families—maybe even families from particular denominations. This is how they understand our biblical calling, and this when they believe Christian education is most effective. Those favoring a missional approach tend to cast the enrollment net more widely for anyone who is open to the teachings and beliefs of the school, even if they don’t share doctrinal unity or aren’t even a professing follower of Jesus.
I’ve met incredibly dedicated, undoubtedly Christian people in each camp of this issue, and their collective thoughts have made me a better leader. I always try to speak highly of anyone’s efforts within Christian education, even if they don’t reflect the same approach I would take personally. Our work requires tremendous sacrifice, and I think we all need as much collective support as we can get. In the incredibly polarized environment in which we find ourselves, I can’t help but sadden at hearing or reading of Christian people using an awful lot of energy, breath, and ink to “slam,” “trash,” or “destroy” (pick your favorite clickbait verb) fellow believers. We’re better than that, aren’t we?
In the last few years have I started to ask questions about the fundamental designations of covenantal and missional Christian education.
All that being said, only in the last few years have I started to ask questions about the fundamental designations of covenantal and missional Christian education. What covenant are we referring to? And what mission? Are they as mutually exclusive as we set them up to be? Can a school be both covenantal and missional? Does either designation affect the day-to-day experiences of students, parents, or teachers in the school? There is some real richness in unpacking this terminology and the biblical history behind it, and we do ourselves and our work a service when we take time to wrestle and come to grips with the roots of our calling.
We all have people who have made an indelible impression on our lives, and one such person for me is Ray Vander Laan. “RVL,” as we affectionately called him, teaches Bible at Holland Christian Schools (Holland, MI), and for decades he has led people on trips to the Holy Land to experience God’s big story and, by way of a whole lot of hiking under the blazing desert sun, earn personal insight into the context and perspective of the ancient Near Eastern audience at the roots of our Christian faith. I’ve been privileged to travel with Ray twice, and those excursions have filled me with far stronger belief, purpose, and calling than anything I’ve known before. Looking back to the story of God and His people just might point us in a helpful direction in the discussion of covenantal versus missional Christian education. I don’t pretend to speak for RVL on any matters. Rather, I’d like to share some of my own insights and conclusions from my time with him.
The concept of a covenant enters the biblical story early on. We read about God making a covenant with Noah and “every living creature” on the earth (Gen. 9:12), assuring them that He will never flood the world again. In another story, the Lord walks a blood-path covenant with Abraham, through whom the whole earth will be blessed—promising that even when Abraham and his descendants don’t keep up their side of the bargain, it’s God who will pay the price. And there’s the mountaintop marriage covenant between Israel and Adonai at Sinai—the one that birthed the law and the Torah, spelling out how God’s people should live. It’s this covenant at Sinai that appears most closely tied to the use of the word covenantal in Christian education, and we’ll unpack it here. First, a little context though.
The ancient Near East was a thoroughly patriarchal society, but unlike some of the negative connotations that go along with that term today, the patriarchy of this culture would engender positive sentiment of being loved and cared for. Noble patriarchs were driven by ga’al, the Hebrew word for redemption. If any member of the extended family became lost or marginalized, it was up to the patriarch to seek them out and pay whatever debt was keeping them apart from their rightful community. The term ga’al had no ties to religion. It was about a transaction through which the patriarch emptied himself to bring someone else back into the family. Once that happened, the rest of the group was required to welcome back the lost person and restore them to their place in the father’s house. On the occasion of a patriarch practicing ga’al, a huge party would ensue—celebrating the fact that things had worked the way they were supposed to and recognizing the love and care of the father. Think of the prodigal son parable for an example.
When patriarchs died, the bulk of their resources, duties, and responsibilities would be passed to their bechors or firstborn sons, so that they could continue the work of ga’al—bringing people back into the family. God is the patriarch of the Bible, and He has three firstborn sons: the people of Israel, Jesus Christ, and the church. It is those groups to whom He passes on the call and the responsibility of redemption—not in a spiritually salvific sense but in the sense of bringing people back.
With that background in mind, we shift to the story of Mount Sinai.
In the interaction at Mount Sinai God establishes a covenantal relationship with the people of Israel that bears all the hallmarks of a Hebrew wedding ceremony and that is meant to last forever. He courts them during their time in the wilderness and makes them His segula—His beautiful, sacred, treasured possession. The people cleanse themselves and wash their clothes before metaphorically standing under the chuppah canopy with God as the cloud descends and covers the mountain. Finally, a ketubah marriage contract in the form of the ten commandments spells out the way this couple will love each other. Just as is intended with the covenant of marriage today, God established a permanent relationship with His people at Sinai—one that we have been grafted into today.
But the Lord did not only take His people to Himself in marriage at Sinai (Exod. 19:4). He also gave them a task—a purpose or mission in this world: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (19:5–6).
They are to be a kingdom of priests, holy and set apart. I think the notion of holiness, or set apart-ness, is probably behind the traditional understanding of the word covenantal in describing Christian education. It makes sense that there’s something unique about the Lord’s people and that the way they live, work, and, yes, educate their children should set them apart from others.
In this ancient world, priesthood was a specific task best described as putting the god on display or showing people what the god was like. This is true for priests of pagan nations, and it’s certainly true for God’s people. Priests are meant to embody the characteristics of the god they serve so that when people interact with them, they will have a glimpse into the nature of that god. Our God, as Father, embodies the patriarchal mission of ga’al, and as His firstborn and His priests, Israel (and now the church) is duty-bound to live out that mission on His behalf. Looking again at the verses from Exodus, we see God’s proclamation that the whole earth is His, not just a little strip of the Sinai desert. And although He already owns it all, He makes us His priests. The Lord wants it all redeemed—the whole earth—and as His pictures of ga’al in this world, it’s our job to take on the task of bringing people back into the family, welcoming and celebrating their return.
This means that the separateness or holiness God designed for us isn’t an end in itself. It’s just a means to the priestly role of putting the Lord’s traits on display and bringing people back into the family. It’s about pouring ourselves out for others so that they can be welcomed into our fellowship. This idea is reinforced in the homeland God chooses for His people. The area of modern-day Israel was literally the crossroads of the earth in ancient times. Any significant international trade ran directly through its borders, meaning that this relatively small group of people was given the opportunity to have massive influence on the world at large, demonstrating the Lord’s love and care to all they encountered. Set apart? Yes. Isolated? No way.
One of the ways that people of the ancient Near East recorded significant events was to set up massive stones called standing stones at the location of the event. Everyone knew what standing stones were, and the Hebrew word for these rocks is massevot. As young people or the uninitiated would encounter the stones, they would use the name as a question: “Massevot?” meaning, “What happened here?” That question provided the opportunity for someone else to explain the significance of the event, searing the story into the listener’s memory.
So when we read in 1 Peter 2:5, “You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood,” we’re reminded of the priestly mission God gives His people. Our lives need to make those we encounter ask, “Massevot? What happened here? How do I become part of this?” Being covenantal was always about a mission to redeem the world. Many of these ideas are discussed with great eloquence in Steve Carter’s book This Invitational Life.
One of the well-known principles from Jim Collins’s immensely popular leadership book, Good to Great, is the hedgehog concept. A well-known fable tells the story of a fox trying to eat a hedgehog. The cunning fox has a wealth of tricks up his sleeve and tries multiple times in multiple ways to defeat the hedgehog, but the would-be predator is thwarted by the same defense each time as the hedgehog curls up in a ball, leaving the fox with a painful mouthful of quills. The moral states, “A fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Collins uses this story to urge organizations to find the one thing they can be great at and focus on that. I can’t help but wonder about the effect of Christian schools willing to eschew the arms race of programs and facilities and instead roll themselves up in a hedgehog’s ball of living out and training up what it means to be God’s “peculiar people,” as James K. A. Smith so often calls us.
As I said before, I try to be generous toward anyone doing the hard work of Christian education, no matter what audience of students they seek. But before we trot out terminology like covenantal and missional, it’s best that we understand exactly what we’re claiming. I’m reminded that in the midst of the Exodus story of Passover, the Israelites weren’t the only ones leaving. Exodus 12:38 tells us, “Many other people went up with them,” or in some other translations, “a mixed multitude.” It seems that, even from the beginning, God’s family was larger than they realized. As we do the challenging, powerful work of Christian education, may we all embrace our calling as a kingdom of priests who put God on display to a world that He wants to bring back home!
Dan Meester has worked in Christian schools in Illinois, California, Michigan, and New Mexico. He currently serves as the high school principal at Rehoboth Christian School in Gallup, New Mexico, where he lives with his wife, Betsy, and his two children, Juliana and Thijs. In addition to Christian education, Dan loves LEGOs, hiking, and spoken word poetry. You can contact him at dmeester@rcsnm.org.
