A PLEA TO ADMINISTRATORS AND TRUSTEES OF OUR CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS

Churches of Christ across America are experiencing conflict and turmoil because of a flood of unscriptural changes that are being promoted to the point of division. The well-spring of this “progressive” change teaching can be traced to several of our Christian Universities.  Faculty members are issuing a stream of books promoting change and students are being filled with their new ideas about the faith and worship of the church. They then come home and sow the seeds of change in their home congregations. Young preachers are being educated and sent forth who do not understand or appreciate the concept of restoring the original faith and practice of the church. This article is an appeal to those responsible for the direction of those schools associated with us.

• As a matter of integrity, consider and respect the intents and purpose of your founders. Not a single one of our schools was started by brethren who believed that one could be saved before his baptism. Not one of them believed that instrumental music was acceptable in Christian worship. Not one of them believed that women could fill leadership roles in the church. None of them thought the church of Christ was a denomination. They sacrificed to establish and build up your school in order to advance the cause of Christ, to provide an educational setting so that young Christians could be trained in an environment that would sustain and strengthen their faith, not undermine it.

• Love, honor and respect the church which you exist to serve. Your school was not founded nor financed to promote denominational teachings and practices.  It was never intended to take upon itself to impose changes to the faith and practice of the Lord’s church.

• Do not allow teachers to fill posts in your school who are not faithful members of the church of Christ. Virtually all of our schools had that proviso in employment requirements in days past.

• Do not keep on your payroll those who have departed from the faith of Christ as revealed in the New Testament. A man who prefers Baptist doctrine should be teaching in a Baptist school.

• Feel a deep sense of personal responsibility to the parents who have entrusted their children to you for their education, trusting that you would help make them stronger Christians, and useful members of the church of Christ.

• Respect all of those saints who have given their hard-earned money to keep your school afloat in days past.  They bequeathed to you their estates, firmly believing the faith they held would be perpetuated to future generations by your teachers.

• If you no longer believe in or respect those basic fundamentals of New Testament Christianity, held and preached by past generations of the churches of Christ, then do the honorable thing and resign your post and allow others who still believe to carry on.

• Weigh your decisions carefully against the Christian virtues of fidelity, honor, justice, respect and loyalty (Phil. 4:8). Our schools have been entrusted to you for a few short years.  When you have finished your term of office they should be better than when you started, certainly not worse.

They should in every case be a blessing to Christ’s church and never a hindrance.