Growth, Grace, Stewardship, and the Heart of Summit
Growth, Grace, Stewardship, and the Heart of Summit
Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Psalm 100:3
In the last 7 school years, Summit has had 5 different leadership changes or structures. In the past 3 years, there have been 3 different campus structures.
Change like this is less than ideal.
Yet, each one of these changes has been providentially ordained. We know this to be true, but we also recognize that change is hard.
Many times last year I heard people refer to the “Summit project.” I quickly realized this phrase was used for a couple reasons. First, because in many ways, Summit has been in a startup phase for the bulk of its existence. We have humble beginnings, with a handful of parents starting the project only 15 years ago. We have grown into what you see today relatively quickly–and we are continuing to develop. The phrase is also used because our school is a unique project in its goals, methods, and tradition.
We are all currently benefiting from the arduous work of the families and leadership who have built Summit into the school it is today.
In all startups, flexibility is required. But significant, regular unpredictability is not sustainable. Changes create uncertainty. Add to all these changes an incredible amount of demand and growth, and an organization has a recipe for pronounced growing pains.
In the past 4 years our enrollment has scaled up from 101, to 144, to 185, to 225. That is 143%, 128%, and 121% growth, respectively. The overall growth during these years is 223%.
Yet, with all of these changes and growth over the past few years, our school has retained its heartbeat - which is formative discipleship. Our vision statement articulates this:
Summit Classical Christian School exists to cultivate joyful disciples of Christ, rooted in Truth, to the glory of God.
The foundation of our school remains the same. We are building on the original vision of the school. Our school was built upon the idea that a student’s parents are his or her first and most important educators - that God has entrusted each child to his or her parents - and that, because parents have been entrusted with this honor, right, and privilege, He has entered into a covenant with them as they disciple, teach, and train their child.
The substance of our school remains the same. We are building on the original mission of the school. Our school is distinctively classical. And, within the rediscovery of classical and Christian education and being a part of this movement, we have continually grown in our understanding of how to rightly view education in its proper scope, articulated outcomes, and context. The liberal arts leads to a virtuous, liberated, gracious, free-thinking, articulate, winsome, and fully-developed graduate.
The growth in our school is a gracious blessing that is truly from the Lord; it is something to be stewarded with prayer. It takes strategic planning. It takes development. It takes systems, and policies, and operational design. It takes a community who, like the servants in the parable of the talents, want to take what God has given them and grow it in faith.
When a new family is welcomed into the Summit Family, there is often a sense of joy, relief, and gratitude to the Lord for his provision in their lives.
So, to those who are new to our Summit Family, we want to warmly welcome you to this special community who is dedicated to, in community, partnering together to help you in your endeavor to raise your sons and daughters to discover their God-given potential while developing and stewarding these gifts to the glory of God. To those who are returning and who have been a part of building this community, thank you for laying the foundation and building our school.
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Call To Action
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
-Aristotle
I hate to be the one to break this news, but our school is not perfect. And our school community is not perfect.
We are a bunch of beautifully redeemed, beautifully broken individuals seeking to come together to build something that is greater than any of the individual parts.
It is the school’s foundational vision that has continued to appeal to and draw new families into our community as we continue to seek to be a beautiful display of what building the Kingdom can look like.
We all have a role to play in maintaining that vision. We all have a role to play in maintaining our school’s culture. It is a shared responsibility. We teach our children God’s Truth. We train them with the virtues found in our honor code – respect, integrity, obedience, and truthfulness. We hold ourselves, and our children, and those around us accountable (within our community) to our core values – courage, integrity, love, respect, humility, joy, perseverance, and charity. (See how these work together in the beginning of our Parent/Student Handbook).
In Life Together, Dietrich Boenhoeffer says, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
Furthermore, he states, “I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.”
Implicit in the vision of our school is to cultivate this type of generational, Christian community – not to replace the necessary fellowship, confession, and accountability found in the local church – but to be a part of the Gospel moving forward in our region and world as we spread the light, hope, and love of Jesus to a lost world as mandated in the great commission.
In order to fully accomplish this sort of vision, it is essential we walk with each other in love and humility. We must charitably and courageously engage through conflict, disagreements, and sin. We must joyfully rest in our primary identity as image-bearers of God. In short, we must embody our core values.
Summit is more than just a school. We are something entirely different. We are serving as the ministry of education as we, collectively and individually, seek to cultivate generations of joyful disciples of Christ, rooted in Truth, to the glory of God.
Thank you for partnering with us to this end! Soli deo gloria!
Greg Forrest