Scripture: John 17:15–17; Deuteronomy 6:6–7
Christian School or Public School? A Debate That Began on Our First Dates
Many years ago, back in 1999, when I first met my future wife, Kim, I discovered on our earliest dates that we had an insane, almost uncanny amount of things in common. We met at this little Bible college in south-central Minnesota, but we soon found out that our parents lived twenty miles apart in northeastern Wisconsin. Pretty crazy thing we had in common. We talked about our fathers, and we found out that our fathers were both born in the same year and they had both chosen the same line of profession. They were in the world of business. We started to talk about our mothers. Our mothers were also born in the same year. Both of them were education majors. My mom taught in a public school. Kim’s mom taught in a Christian school. We found out that we had both grown up with one older sibling. I have an older brother whose name is Chris, and my wife had an older sister whose name was—do you want to guess? It was Kris with a K. It was amazing.
We were both studying for ministry. Both at the same school, both with the same passion, both with the same faith. We had almost everything in common. Almost. But there’s one thing we soon found out that we definitely did not have in common. In fact, the disagreement was so fierce that it turned many of our dates into all-out and multi-part debates. And that difference was this: If our relationship continued, if we ended up getting married, if God blessed us with a future family, where would we send the little Novotny children to school? Oh, that was the question. We categorically disagreed on date, after date, after date, after date.
You see, to my wife, Kim, the answer to that question was super obvious. Especially during those years when you pay more attention to your friends than to Mom and Dad, she wanted our kids to have friends who love Jesus too and come from homes where Jesus is valued and the Bible is open. To her, the answer was so obvious, she sometimes looked at me like I was an idiot. “Like, why would you? If you have a kid and you love that kid more than anything in the world, why wouldn’t you want to give them as much Jesus as you possibly could?” A Christian education, for her, was the obvious answer, to which this public-school kid fiercely disagreed.
That freshman year at Bible college was my first ever year of Christian school. As I said before, I was raised by a public-school Christian mother, and I treasured my public-school experience. In fact, it was formative for me in so many beautiful ways for my faith. I used to poke fun at Kim. I said, “I don’t want my kids growing up in some Christian bubble where you’ve never met an atheist or an agnostic or a Muslim or a Hindu. Where you’ve taken your faith for granted because you never had to learn why you believed what you believed. I don’t want to put them in this soft environment where the first time their faith is challenged is when they’re on some big university campus or out in the real world. I want to shepherd them from the littlest age on so that they can rub shoulders with people with different beliefs and different behaviors, and we can sharpen them in the ways of God and send them out as salt and light into this world.”
That’s what happened to me. I had to learn how to defend my faith. Why did I believe the things that I believed? I couldn’t wait till I was twenty-two to answer that question. I had teenage friends who didn’t go to church. Why would I? I had plenty of smart people who taught me things at school. They didn’t follow Jesus, so why would I? To me, that was an obvious answer. It’s like waiting to give your kid a smartphone until they go to college. Wouldn’t you want to guide them through the process from an earlier age? That made total sense to me. And I tried to persuade her, but she would not be persuaded. And she tried to persuade me, and I was not persuaded until we had kids, and then she kind of won, just for the record.
Can a Christian Go to Public School?
But man, I can tell you this. Both of us were very serious about our faith in Jesus. We were not Christmas-and-Easter kind of Christians, but we had different answers to the question, What kind of school should a Christian family support? I wonder if any of you have ever wrestled with that question. Maybe you’re thinking about college in your future, and there are Christian options and public-school options. Maybe you’re a parent of littles and you’re going to have to decide which kindergarten in your community you’re going to choose. Maybe you have a niece or a nephew or grandchildren or younger siblings, and there are all these options. And today, I really want to wrestle deeply with the question of education and Christianity.
If you’re taking notes, here’s the big thing I want to wrestle with today: Can a Christian go to public school? Now, as you’re writing that down at home or right here in church, you might be thinking what most people thought when I first asked them this question. “Duh, Pastor Mike, what’s controversial? Of course you can. Of course you can. There are plenty of public-school kids and Christian-school kids. We’re not going to have church discipline for families that don’t send their kids to our Christian school. Of course it’s an option.” And I will admit that is the correct answer. As with so many questions that we’ve been wrestling with in this series, you can. There’s great Christian freedom when it comes to your educational choices.
But today, instead of just answering the question directly, I want you to wrestle with the factors you must consider as a person of faith. Whether it’s your own education or the education of a little one you love, have you thought deeply about the pros and the cons of the various paths? Of homeschooling your kids or sending them to a school like the one our church supports or choosing the public school just down the street? Have you really considered the incredible potential and the very serious pitfalls of either path? And have you crafted an intentional plan so that you can leverage the amazing blessings of either path and avoid the very common curses that have happened to all too many Christian families when they’re on that path? Have you thought deeply about the implications and ramifications of whatever educational path you pick?
Why Your Education Choice Matters: 16,000 Hours in a Classroom
Today, I want you to think perhaps more deeply about that question than you ever have before, and here’s why. Did you know between kindergarten and high school graduation, the average student will spend—get this—16,000 hours in a classroom? Sixteen thousand! So whatever the textbook says, whatever their peers believe, whatever their teachers promote, whatever they’re hearing or not hearing, is massively important. How many other things in your life will you possibly do for 16,000 hours? So you and I, if we’re serious about our faith in Jesus and about passing that faith to the next generation, need to think intensely about this question. That’s what I want to do with you today.
What Does the Bible Say about School and Education?
And I have to admit that, like I often do in a sermon series, I looked up every single Bible passage where words like school or educate or education were used. Do you know how many total verses have any of those words? One. Moses was educated in the ways of the Egyptians. That’s all it was. There was no universal public education back in Bible times. You often only got a serious formal education if you were rich, if you were male, and if you came from a certain class of society. It just wasn’t a thing like it is today. So today, we can’t find answers to these questions from direct Bible passages but instead from three key biblical principles. So that’s where I’m going with you today. I want to look at three big, really obvious Bible truths that intersect with the question of education for you and for those you care about.
Truth #1: Christians Are Not of the World
So let’s dive into the deep end today. Grab a pen. Here’s the first truth I want to share with you. The Bible very clearly says to Christians that we should not be of the world. That’s Jesus’s fancy way of saying to not totally conform to the values, the beliefs, and the behaviors that many people in this world might hold to. In John 17, Jesus is about to die the following day, and he’s praying to his heavenly Father about his followers, about Christians, and he says this:
“Father, they [the Christians] are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:16–17).
Jesus was saying, “I didn’t conform to the culture around me, and I don’t want my followers to do it either. Instead, I want them to be sanctified.” That’s a fancy Bible word that simply means “set apart.” The majority of people might be doing what God doesn’t want. “God, I want you to set them apart so they are totally devoted and committed and surrendered to doing your will.” And how is that going to happen? He says, “Sanctify them by the truth.” Whose truth? What truth? He answers that question too: “Father, your word is truth.”
One of Jesus’s greatest goals for you and your family is that you would be set apart from the average American because of the words of this book. That your final answer to all of life’s biggest questions would not be what your mom said, your dad said, your group of friends said, or the latest survey said, but what God himself has said in the words of this book. That’s how you are sanctified by the truth—when you believe this Word is truth.
Public School and the Question of Truth
Now, that means that if you choose the public-school route, like my parents did, you will have to wrestle with some pretty substantial questions. If you or your child is about to spend 16,000 hours in an environment that does not claim to open this text to find truth, you will have to think very intentionally about your education. I know every public school is different. Every teaching staff and faculty is different. In my public-school experience, 98 percent of what I was learning in class from Monday to Friday was awesome. It was the periodic table. It was how to do math. It was the history of the United States of America. But there were a few things that I noticed as a Christian that were in the official textbooks, taught and promoted by my official teachers, that did not line up with what God decides is truth.
For example, where did Mike Novotny come from? On Sunday, my pastor said, “In the beginning, God created.” Psalm 139 says God knit me together in my mother’s womb. I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. I’m not an accident of time and chance. There wasn’t just some big bang that, as my pastor used to say, started with the goo, then led to the zoo, and then ended up with you. Humanity isn’t like, “Wow, isn’t it so crazy that we’re here?” No, it’s not crazy, because an intelligent God knit us together with incredible complexity in our mothers’ wombs. I believed that my life had value because this was not just survival of the fittest in some jungle, as the official theory of evolution taught me. No, I believed that because of creation, my life had immense value—not just because I said so but because God himself had declared it so.
It was no small thing for a kid version of me to go to class and have people who were way more intelligent than I was say, “Nope.” It’s no small thing for a kid to open a textbook that feels so factual—it’s official, bound, vetted by the educational system—and read things that Jesus would not agree with. That was no small thing. When you’re sending your impressionable teenager into an environment where they’re not listening to Mom and Dad as much as they used to and they’re listening way more to their friends than they used to, what will those friends believe in? Will they be sanctified, or will they be part of this world? Will they think that God’s Word is truth, or will they think that the truth is somehow inside their hearts to be discovered and explored? These are massive questions that Christian families must wrestle with, and I hope you wrestle with them too. Find for yourself, for your children, and for your grandchildren good resources, amazing answers to life’s toughest questions, so that you can be in the world but, as Jesus said, not of the world.
Truth #2: Christians Are Called to Be in the World
Speaking of which, that brings us to truth number two. On the same page of the Bible, in the same prayer that Jesus prayed the night before he died, he did not just ask his heavenly Father that you would not be of this world or like this world. I want you to write this down too: He also literally prayed that you would be in the world. Let me read to you again from John 17. He said:
“[Father,] my prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:15–17).
That’s funny to me. It’s almost like Jesus is clarifying with his heavenly Father. “Hey, when I say I don’t want them to be of the world, Father, what I’m not saying is that you totally physically separate them from the world. No, I want them to be in the middle of it.” In fact, Jesus would say soon after, “Go and make disciples of all nations.”
Here’s why Jesus had to pray for that. If you get beautifully serious about following Jesus—if one of your greatest goals when you wake up tomorrow is not to make money or to be super fit and healthy or to have the perfect family, but your greatest goal is to love God with your heart—you’ll start getting really uncomfortable with sin. Many of you know this is true. Getting drunk used to be fun and it used to be funny, but now that you love Jesus, you love sobriety and self-control, and it’s not funny anymore. Friends used to say, “Oh, Jesus Christ” or “God,” and you never thought about it before. Now it grieves you, because that’s the name that saved you, that forgave your sins.
And what so often happens—statistics will say this—is that as soon as a person becomes a Christian, within about three to five years, they will have almost zero non-Christian friends. Those old environments will just bother them. Sometimes it’s tempting, and most of the time it’s just uncomfortable. “People are saying things I don’t agree with, and it gets kind of awkward, and we don’t have the same values. It’s just much more comfortable when I’m with my Bible study friends. It’s just so much easier when we all feel the same way about Jesus.” That’s absolutely true, except that’s literally the opposite of what Jesus prayed for. Are you catching that? He literally said, “Father, don’t let that happen. Don’t let them be so passionate about fellowship, about spiritual growth, about holiness, that they forget about other things that matter to our heart, like evangelism and outreach and love. Don’t let them lean so much into a good thing that they end up creating an unintended bad thing.”
The Pitfall of the Christian Bubble
Friends, here’s why this matters if you choose a Christian education or a homeschool education for your kids. Percentage-wise, from like 7 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m., you and your kids are going to spend the vast, vast majority of your time with people who already believe in Jesus. And then if you join the band or you play on the basketball team, you’re going to spend from like 3 to 5 p.m. mostly with people who believe in Jesus. And then you’re going to spend a billion hours with a sore butt on the bleachers with other parents who send their kids to the Christian school because they love Jesus Christ too, and it’s going to be more fellowship and more in-reach. And then you’re going to go out for a shake or some cheese curds after the long tournament, and you’re going to be sitting with people who, of course, want to pray before they eat because they’re already Christian people—that’s why they sent their kids to the Christian school.
And you’re going to find out what some people find out. Sunday rolls around, and the pastor says, “Hey, you should invite your non-Christian friends to church next Sunday.” And you’re going to think about it. And you’re going to realize, “I don’t know if I have any.” You go to this Bible study and that one, you go to this church service and that chapel service, but you might lean so far into not being of the world that you actually contradict Jesus’s prayer in John 17—that you’ve stepped out of the world. It’s the monk-in-the-monastery mentality. And many Christian families who say things like, “We want an education that embraces our Christian values,” forget that one of Christianity’s greatest values is sharing the gospel with non-Christians.
Here’s what I’ve learned. Knocking on the doors of people who’ve never met me before and telling them about Jesus is a very ineffective method of evangelism. Sharing Jesus Christ with people that I know, love, and trust and who know, love, and trust me right back is the best and most effective way. But if I lean too far into my own sanctification and holiness, I can lose out on something that Jesus values very much.
How to Stay in the World: Investing in People Who Don’t Know Jesus
So here’s how I personally wrestle with this. Kim and I used to debate where we were going to send our kids to school. I don’t want to admit it in public, but she won—officially. Our kids got a Christian education, and here’s even the worst part: I work in an environment with 100 percent Christians. I can’t go next door to Pastor Timothy and say, “Hey, do you want to come to my church on Christmas?” He’s like, “Yeah, I have to.” So I have to be super intentional, because of my kids’ school and because of my work situation, that the limited amount of time I have left is deeply invested in people who maybe don’t know Jesus just yet.
Here’s what that looks like for me. Every single week, I take time to mentor kids from our community. For the last eight to ten years, I’ve intentionally chosen not to mentor in Christian schools but in the public schools down the street—the elementary school, the middle school, now two separate high schools—where I’ve been walking beside these young guys. I love meeting the faculty and the teachers. Amazing, incredible people who have blessed me. And it’s opened doors of opportunity. One of my mentees asked me years ago, “The Bible, that’s like an encyclopedia, right?” Nope. “Pastor Mike, what does Christianity say about . . .” Just beautiful conversations, because the kids have never heard it before. I have to invest the limited amount of time I have in places where not everyone is convinced about Jesus Christ.
Some of you have made the mistake of asking me if our church will ever publish a Christian business directory, to which I say no. Well, we could, but as long as I’m here, we’re not going to, because I don’t want you spending your limited time only buying things from Christian people, only running back to support Christian friends. Those are beautiful things—I love Christian businesses—but I know you don’t have a lot of time in your schedule, and I want you rubbing shoulders with people who don’t know Jesus just yet. I want to make sure that the limited time you have is the answer to Jesus’s prayer that you would not be of the world and yet, at the same time, you would be in the world. Mentoring, going to a barbershop and getting a haircut from guys who don’t necessarily believe in Jesus, not having church sports leagues—these are the ways that I stay connected to our community and in our world.
How about you? Here’s your homework. If you can’t think off the top of your head of three non-Christian people who know, love, and trust you because you’ve invested your life in them, pray about that today. And ask God to tweak and to change your schedule so that you can be the answer to Jesus’s beautiful prayer in John 17.
Truth #3: Every Christian Parent Is a Homeschooler
Now that brings us to our final truth for today. Grab a pen. I want to borrow a quote from a pastor I heard, and I love this quote. He said that all Christian parents are homeschoolers. Whether you officially homeschool or choose a public school like I had or a Christian school like Kim had, all of us are called by God to bring Jesus and the education of the gospel into our homes. Our last passage for today is from Deuteronomy 6. It says:
“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).
God knows that his Word is so good that the best thing you could do will not happen outside the walls of your home but inside of it. To talk about the commandments of God, the promises of God, the love and the mercy of God when you sit at home. Don’t delegate the discipleship of your children to anyone. Dads, moms, this is the greatest gift that God will give you—to make sure that Jesus Christ and his Word are your home’s daily bread. The gospel is such a beautiful thing that we don’t want to limit or restrict it to 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. from September to May. We don’t want our kids ever to think that they graduate from the goodness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t want you to have to wait until next Sunday to hear the glorious name of Jesus again. I want that to be part of your life and your home. So bring Jesus home.
Bring Jesus Home: Help for Christian Parents
Parents, if you don’t even know where to start with this—if you come from a background where your mom and dad never prayed at home, never opened the Bible in your home—go to our church’s website and find a program called Solid Ground, where our family pastor has literally given you a step-by-step guide to bring more and more and more Jesus into your home, so that the greatest love your kids experience doesn’t come from you, from Mom, from Dad, from Grandma, or from Grandpa, but from Jesus himself. Statistically, when faith is homegrown, faith grows. And I pray that your faith grows too.
Where the Gospel Gets the Last Word
I’m going to leave you with one picture today. A couple weeks ago, I had a chance to travel down to Miami, Florida, and share the good news of Jesus with about a thousand teenagers in middle school and high school. I presented on taboo topics like gender and sexual orientation, suicide, depression, race, politics, anxiety, addiction, pornography, and all the other things. And after my presentation was over, without fail, there would always be a kid who approached me quietly and shared something he had never shared before.
And I had this moment in the middle of my presentation as I looked out at this sea of students and saw all these teachers at this Christian school, and I thought, “If these kids will confess that to any educator at their school, I know exactly what they would hear. They’d hear about Jesus.” They would hear not just, “It’s okay, you’re not the first one.” They would hear prayers and support and gospel encouragement. They would hear about mercy and forgiveness and the unfailing love of God. It overwhelmed me as I thought of my kids’ own Christian education. When they struggle, and they will, and when you and I struggle, and we will, we have a place we can run to and hear more than the world’s advice. Instead, we can hear the best promises the Word has to offer about Jesus.
Friends, at the end of the day, this is what we want for you. Whether it’s in the school you and your loved ones attend or the home that you come home to every day, we want Bibles to be open, we want Jesus to be declared, we want God’s love to get the last word. So can a Christian attend a public school? You absolutely can. Just be careful you don’t become of this world. Can a Christian homeschool or attend a Christian school? You absolutely can. Just make sure you’re still in this world. Can a Christian choose any educational path? The truth is they can. Just make sure to bring Jesus home so that you and those you love can hear about God’s love every single day. I pray that your home may be a sanctuary today where the truth is heard and where the gospel gets the last word.
Let’s pray.
Thank you, God, for all of the people who care so much about our education. For the formal ways it happens in our community at both Christian and public schools, for faithful homeschool parents who work doubly hard to give their kids so much time and attention and a great education. God, help us to lean into the blessings of whatever path we pick, whether it’s in-reach or outreach or the time we have with our kids. And help us to be honest and humble about the pitfalls and the drawbacks and the common curses that we might face. Give us wisdom to overcome them so that the way we are raised brings us closer and closer and closer to your Son, Jesus.
It’s in his name that we pray all these things—and all God’s people said, amen.
