How to THRIVE and not merely SURVIVE as a Christian school!
Originally posted by Dr. Barrett L. Mosbacker
The Christian School Journal
I recently read an interesting article by the CEO of Yahoo! titled The Peanut Butter Manifesto. For the purposes of this blog article I want to focus on the following statement from the memo because it is instructive for us as school leaders.
"We [Yahoo!] lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything -- to everyone. We've known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don't talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn't to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics ...
I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular."
The Christian school movement is not particularly healthy. Based on recent statistics that I have seen, the number of Christian school and overall enrollments are stagnant or declining.
Although there are external forces beyond our control that affect our schools, many of our problems are self-inflicted.
One of our self-inflicted wounds is similar to that articulated by the CEO of Yahoo!--we are often not strategic in the allocation of our tangible and intangible resources and as a consequence we are not offering a substantial marginal value to our current and potential clients. I am referring to our parents a clients because notwithstanding our missions as Christian schools, our parents are essentially paying clients who make economic calculations in deciding whether to enroll or re-enroll their children in our schools.
If our schools are to survive, much less thrive, we must stop "spreading the peanut butter too thin." We need to think far more strategically. Where should we place our resources? What is the basis for our decision? What programs should we eliminate? What programs should we add? The the marginal value of our schools been stagnant or declining?
These are important questions that we must answer with ruthless honesty.
Click here to read the rest of the post on The Christian School Journal.
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I just scanned Dr. Mosbacker's article and admit that I have not digested it completely, but at first glance Dr. Mosbacker is right on! Christian schools do not charge the cost to educate though this makes no sense. We often admit students with very specific personal or educational needs that our school's ability to sddress is questionable. We often pay our teachers poorly, and the truth is that while our schools have wonderful, godly people willing to make the sacrifice, there will be a trend over time that low wages will result in our hiring less than optimally skilled teachers. I disagree with Dr. Mosbacker that "finances are not religious". I happen to believe that finances have a very serious and particularly spiritual aspect that we have ignored or simply not done well with in Christian day schooling. We have "muzzled" the ox in our low pay of our teachers. We have put our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ's name on buildings and school programs that are far less than excellent, though Jesus is the exemplar of excellence. If we are guilty, we are guilty of wanting great things for our kids through the ministry of Christian day schooling and we honestly have not figured out the financial support problem. I really appreciate Dr. Mosbacker's article as it tells the truth about the financial condition of many, if not most, of our Christian schools. May God help us get our financial circumstances in order, and may the Body of Christ fall in love with the ministry of the local Christian day school! One of the major reasons for our lack of financial support is the lack of interest of God's people in Christian schools. One would think that 18,000 hours of messages like "God is dead" (or at least irrelevant) and "People are only highly evolved animals" being taught in the public schools would cause alarm among Christian parents. Not so- many of our Christian parents are only interested in their child getting into the "right college" so he can get a high paying job. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
ReplyDeleteTom Wieland at TWieland@hcs.nu