By Dr. Vernard Gant, Director of ACSI Urban Services
One cannot engage in a conversation with Glenda Harvey, an urban Christian school educator, without hearing a reference to “kingdom schools.” Kingdom schools are Christian schools that exist for the purpose of doing today what Christ sent His disciples to do in their world. There are four instances in the Scriptures where it is recorded that Jesus sent out His disciples to bear witness to Him and His kingdom. Consider the passages below (the emphasis has been added) and see if you can identify the common theme and thread of each passage.
And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease….And as you go, preach, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. (Matthew 10:1, 7, 8)
Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons.…So they went out and preached that people should repent. And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them. (Mark 3:14, 15; 6:12, 13)
Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. (Luke 9:1,2)
Whatever city you enter, and they receive you…heal the sick there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” (Luke 10:8, 9)
When Christ sent His disciples into the world, their primary task was to declare that the kingdom of God was at hand. Along with this proclamation was a demonstration of the power of the kingdom, which is the ability to affect change where it is present. In every instance when Jesus dispatched His disciples, they were to address people at their point of brokenness and administer healing to them. The Greek word for “heal” is therapeuo. This means that the kingdom of God carries with it the therapeutic power to address the sick, the leprous, the demonized, and the diseased.
This concept of God’s concern for the broken was not introduced in or unique to the New Testament. Speaking to the prophet Ezekiel, God reproves the shepherds who had been entrusted with the care of His people for their failure to properly feed and nurture them. He pronounces condemnation upon them, saying:
The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor sought what was lost. (Ezekial 34:4)
Because of the great love that God has for His sheep, He commits Himself to addressing their plight, promising the following:
I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick. (Ezekial 34:16)
As a result, He promised, through the prophet Jeremiah, that He would raise up according to His own heart who would feed His people with knowledge and understanding (Jeremiah 3:15). Of course, we know that the ultimate fulfillment of this promise was His Son, Jesus Christ, who came as the Good Shepherd and gave His life for the sheep (John 10:11). He is the shepherd who is so concerned for lost sheep, that He would leave the fold of ninety-nine sheep to search for the lost another occasion, “Those who are well have no need of a physician” (Matthew 9:12). He had come to address the plight of the sick.
This emphasis on the kingdom as an instrument of healing and deliverance was the central theme presented by Christ at His first recorded public address. Upon launching His earthly ministry, Jesus said:
The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to [proclaim] deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to [proclaim] the acceptable year of the LORD. (Luke 4:18, 19)
The activities of healing, liberating, and restoring, as well as proclaiming, would both accompany and manifest the operation of His kingdom. The kingdom would be seen most clearly in the way it addressed broken people. Such manifestation would be as obvious as light in the midst of darkness and as salt present in savorless food. It would have such an impact as to cause even the casual observer to sit up and take notice. It would provoke inquiry that called for some type of explanation. That explanation, of course, would be that the kingdom of God is present. What would be observed would be the power of the kingdom to make an impact (effect change) where it is present.
Kingdom schools operate in much the same way. These schools target and serve children who are broken in society. In urban centers throughout this nation, children are suffering from societal ills that threaten their lives and their futures. These children can be compared to the sheep of Ezekiel 34 and categorized as academically weak, emotionally sick, economically broken, socially driven away, and spiritually lost. They constitute the lost sheep that God has on His heart. And in response, He is raising up a generation of Christian schools to facilitate His own heart for these children—schools that feed them with “knowledge and understanding.”
Glenda Harvey and other urban Christian school educators refer to these schools as kingdom schools because they are endeavoring to make a kingdom impact upon the lives of the children and the families they serve, as well as upon society. When an academically sick child is made academically whole, or when a socially broken child is given what is necessary to function effectively and successfully in society, then the world has to take notice. When a school demonstrates that kind of power, it naturally provokes inquiry. That is, when a school demonstrates that it can take a child who society has concluded is academically at risk because he is undereducated, uneducable, learning disabled, or socially and culturally deprived, and provides that child with an education that undergirds the child for life, society has to acknowledge that something unusual and out of the ordinary has occurred.
I am often reminded of a conversation I had with a critic of Christian schooling and school choice. He accused the Christian schools of cheating. When I asked what he meant by that, he used the analogy of a card game in which the Christian schools picked up the deck of cards from the table and selected all the aces, the kings, and the queens for their hands. They would then put the cards back on the table so that the rest could be dealt to the other players. When the time comes to show the hands, the Christian schools would place their face cards on the table and then brag about how good their hands are and how much better their cards are than the other players’ cards. “You know what we call that?” our critic asked. “Cheating!” was his immediate reply to his own question. When schools select only one type of student from only one type of family, students who are already performing at a relatively high level, and then boast about how well their students perform, the world is not impressed. They do not see the power in the outcome, nor is there anything that provokes inquiry.
However, as I countered with our critic, there is a group of Christian schools who basically do the same type of thing with the deck of cards but for another reason. These schools also go through the deck, but instead of selecting the face cards, they pick out the 2s and the 3s from the deck. As a matter of fact, these schools tell society to give them any card that they want them to have, although they prefer the 2s and the 3s. And when these schools show their hands, the hands that should have been losing hands have been transformed to winning hands. The 2s and 3s are transformed to aces, kings, and queens. “Do you know what we call that?” I asked. “A Miracle!”
Our Father in heaven is noted for taking nobodies and using them to accomplish great things His kingdom. As He stated through the apostle Paul,
But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are. (1 Corinthians 1:27, 28)
By the same token, God can take children that the world considers foolish, weak, base, despised, and raise them up to show His great love and His mighty ability to effect change in their lives. In doing so, the world is provoked to call for an explanation of the miraculous change that has transpired in the children’s lives. To such inquiry, the Christian educator responds, “The kingdom of God is in our midst” because the kingdom of God has the power to effect change where it is present.
The Meantime Volume 1 Number 2