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God’s peo­ple strive for Excellence

Hav­ing come from a Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity that strives for excel­lence, I thought that excel­lence was almost an essen­tial require­ment for being saved. Every­thing I did, I tried to excel at. I still have that con­cept to do my best for my Lord.

Prov 12:26 The right­eous is more excel­lent than his neigh­bour: but the way of the wicked seduceth them.

1Cor 4:2 More­over it is required in stew­ards, that a man be found faithful.

Luke 16:10 He that is faith­ful in that which is least is faith­ful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
Luke 16:11 If there­fore ye have not been faith­ful in the unright­eous mam­mon, who will com­mit to your trust the true [riches]?
Luke 16:12 And if ye have not been faith­ful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?
Luke 16:13 No ser­vant can serve two mas­ters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye can­not serve God and mam­mon.
Luke 16:14 And the Phar­isees also, who were cov­etous, heard all these things: and they derided him.

The Par­a­digm Shift

Here is the prob­lem that I see. A shift has been made from being faith­ful and bib­li­cal to being excel­lent, as if sec­u­lar recog­ni­tion of a Chris­t­ian school’s “excel­lence” will some­how win the unsaved world to God. The pre­sen­ta­tion of being “Chris­t­ian” some­how is sec­ond or third or fourth to being excel­lent (first).

This shows us how God’s genuis again makes the church the pre­ferred and spir­i­tu­ally blessed method of God, and how the Chris­t­ian school fails. Their view is always on their “bot­tom line”, how much money they make. They judge and direct their admin­is­tra­tive actions by how it affects enroll­ment rather than how faith­ful one deci­sion will be, ver­sus how unfaith­ful or unbib­li­cal the oppo­site deci­sion will be.

God’s Method stands against Peer Pressure

This brings us to a very impor­tant rev­e­la­tion about God’s church. A local church has a small group of peo­ple who fully sus­tain its activ­i­ties, pays its minister’s salaries, and decides within itself what is essen­tial, and what needs to be done. Within this con­text, most all of these mem­bers who finan­cially sac­ri­fice for this min­istry are con­vinced to most of the impor­tant doc­trines and min­istries that the church is involved in. Out­side peer pres­sure is usu­ally from the unsaved, which is met with the con­fronta­tion that we are not friends of the world, but chil­dren of God.

Jas 4:4 Ye adul­ter­ers and adul­ter­esses, know ye not that the friend­ship of the world is enmity with God? whoso­ever there­fore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

A Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity on the other hand is in a very crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion always, and it never gets bet­ter. By the nature of the beast, it has to con­sume dozens of years of sav­ings from the fam­ily of each of its stu­dents, so no stu­dent can stay at a Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity for more than a few years, and then they leave. Schools live or die by enrollment.

While a local church will study the Bible and come to a con­clu­sion and make a pub­lic stand on an issue, the pres­sures against them usu­ally can be resisted very eas­ily. As long as their mem­ber­ship base is con­vinced of the doc­trine, all is well. The church uses its ser­vices to explain and teach the Bible of its doc­trine, and all is well.

A Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity knows that it must float with the doc­trines and pop­u­lar­ism of its day. If the major­ity of the churches where they draw their sut­dents are now into con­tem­po­rary music, they must go that road, or lose enroll­ment. The struc­ture of their whole being is given over to suc­cumb­ing to pop­u­lar pres­sures. One strong state­ment that will rile the anger of most milk-toast churches could be the death knell for them. So by nature, Chris­t­ian schools will always go for the mid­dle of the road on any doc­trine or issue.

At one time Bob Jones Uni­ver­sity had a great fol­low­ing of Fun­da­men­tal­ism in Amer­ica, but that was when they were “out­spo­ken” for truth, and boldly denounced error. Good peo­ple of God came to them look­ing for spir­i­tual lead­er­ship in the bat­tle­field of life. Things change, because a Chris­t­ian school sim­ply can­not hold that posi­tion ever, and if you look over the years, strong con­dem­na­tions against sin, seem to very dif­fi­cult for any Chris­t­ian school to make.

But also look at local churches, and you will see it is very easy and very com­mon for pas­tors and local churches to con­demn homo­sex­u­al­ity, euthena­sia, abor­tion, etc. They can con­demn pub­lic issues and change the pub­lic view­point, or at least influ­ence it, and also let the pub­lic know that there is “another side” (God’s side) to cul­tural issues. Schools don’t work the work of God by their nature. They are “for profit” insti­tu­tions, and being in that sit­u­a­tion, they must attend to their pri­mary direc­tive, make money at any cost.

This is why over the his­tory of Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tion, every Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tion has gone lib­eral. That is where all the peo­ple are, no doc­trine, or poor doc­trine, or unbib­li­cal doc­trine. The true peo­ple of God who hold to the Fun­da­men­tals of the Bible are a very small minor­ity in any age or cul­ture. The mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ties has only aggra­vated this sit­u­a­tion dilut­ing the pool or pie from which these schools draw from. Since evan­ge­lism is def­i­nitely not a pos­si­bil­ity for a Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity, because rather than tak­ing a church’s posi­tion, for exam­ple, speak­ing in tongues (Pen­te­costals, Holi­ness, Nazarene), or infant Bap­tism (Pres­by­ter­ian, Catholic, Angli­can) are unbib­li­cal doc­trines and prac­tices, and a (bib­li­cal) local church will preach against them, a Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity offi­cially becomes non-committal about these things because they need stu­dents from all these churches. They pre­fer to kill the issue say­ing it is too con­tro­ver­sial for them to take a stand on, rather than denounc­ing the error.

This will always hap­pen, and any time a Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity pub­licly and strongly denounces some­thing, it is an anom­ally, basi­cally some strong group that sends a lot of kids into that school gives the school an ulti­ma­tim, denounce this or we cut you off. In them­selves, they want to cut “essen­tial doc­trines and beliefs” to the barest min­i­mum so that as many reli­gious groups can “come under their umbrella” as possible.

1Cor 16:13 Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.
Eph 6:13 Where­fore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to with­stand in the evil day, and hav­ing done all, to stand.
2Thess 2:15 There­fore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the tra­di­tions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

Nowhere in the Bible do we find com­mand­ments to acco­mo­date our doc­trine, beliefs, and prac­tices estab­lished on God’s Word to suit the pop­u­lar view­points of unsaved men. Our wit­ness depends on being faith­ful to God’s stan­dards and doc­trines, and show­ing that in our life before the unsaved.

By cav­ing in on this, they effec­tively negate any pos­si­bil­ity of wit­ness­ing and show­ing the unsaved the strength of God in the Christian’s life. All of this is “auto­mat­i­cally built into the Chris­t­ian School sys­tem.” You can­not get it out of it because its struc­ture is built around being “global”  instead of local. A local church’s mind­set is being a wit­ness locally first and fore­most. Their efforts at being global are mis­sions, and they basi­cally con­cen­trate on the min­istry at home where they are.

When you use this Chris­t­ian School sys­tem to edu­cate your youth, don’t be suprised when they come back with the mind­set of where they stud­ied. Study with a local church pas­tor that is ded­i­cated and given over to train­ing peo­ple locally in his church, and you will get a bib­li­cal mind­set. Many local churches are large enough (with enough men of God to have var­i­ous Bible teach­ers) that they will start a Chris­t­ian Bible school within the local church, and they will use class­rooms and teach­ers (from their own local min­istry), and all of this is exactly bib­li­cal. But when you rip the school from a local church, make indi­vid­u­als the own­ers and pres­i­dent with­out being under the require­ments of 1Tim 3 and Titus 1, then you break the bib­li­cal exam­ple, and make a prob­lem for yourself.