Episode 36: Homeschool

To the Ruled Church podcast.

Christ Is King and the Church Is Not a Democracy

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it. The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Episode 36, Eddie. How's it going?

Man, it's going good.

How are you?

Well, I feel like I just saw you.

Yeah.

Is that because I did just see you?

That is right. We're trying to bank an episode or two here so that we can kind of stay ahead. We know that summer will get busy, so.

That's right. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast, episode 36. I'm Pastor Allen Nelson of Perryville Second Baptist Church. And with me is my co-labor in the ministry, my friend, brother in Christ, Eddie Ragsdale.

Say hello, Eddie.

Hello, everybody. And I'm the pastor of First Baptist Marshall in beautiful Searcy County, Arkansas. Man, isn't it just beautiful when you come to the Buffalo River region?

Yeah, it's great. It is a beautiful part. You know, we were in Kentucky not long ago last week, but when this episode comes out, it'll be further than that, but we went to the Ark, and it was great, beautiful area out there in the hills and stuff.

But when you get up into the Ozarks, you know, there and where you're at, boy, boy, that's a beautiful part. It's a rural area, you know, relatively. It's not like over there in Fayetteville or whatever, but it's beautiful.

I think Searcy County has 8 ,500 people.

Yeah.

Well, that's a little bit more than Perry County. Actually, it's got like 10 ,000. This is gonna be a shorter, a little bit shorter episode, I think, but sometimes Eddie and I get to talking, and we go on a little bit, but we do have a little bit of a time crunch.

Responding to the Nashville School Shooting

But, you know, this week, this'll come out a couple of weeks, but this week's been a very tough week in the news. On Monday in Nashville, there was a school shooting, and I know the first temptation, let's just jump in and get political and talk about, you know, this or that, but can we just say first and foremost, it's absolutely heart-wrenching.

The way I understand it, six persons lost their lives, and three of those, or was it six persons and the shooter?

I haven't kept up real close with the details, but I do know that the daughter of the pastor, who's the church that ran the school, it was a Presbyterian church, PCA church, I'm pretty sure, that ran the school, and I know the pastor's daughter passed away, was murdered.

There's like three children, I believe, ages nine. So our heart hurts for that. I also think about the policemen that charged in, and they released the body, and that body cam, I don't know if you watched that footage, but that body cam footage is hard to watch because you just feel the anxiety of the situation, but, you know, I just want to say, praise God for courageous men and those courageous policemen, and it was, they truly were heroes in that situation, and it's just really no words to describe the tragedy of what happened.

Right here in, you know, the Bible Belt, Nashville, Tennessee, it's not very far from us.

Yeah, that's right. And, you know, often, me and some other brothers were discussing this yesterday morning, and we were just kind of talking about how, you know, sometimes we can think that these kinds of things will happen in some far off place, but honestly, they happen in places like this.

You know, it's a long time ago now, but these were the first school shootings that really were on my radar growing up were the school shootings. Some people will remember in Littleton, Colorado, in Paducah, Kentucky, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, that these things don't only happen in Chicago or Portland or Los Angeles or New York.

They happen in places like Jonesboro and Nashville.

Yeah.

Christian Parents, Public School, Private School, and Homeschool

So it really wasn't this a few weeks ago. We talked about talking about this subject, but now it's in the, now it's kind of in the news and all that. And in the subject of schooling with our children and the options really that are out there, public schooling, private schooling, homeschooling.

And so we wanted to give some thoughts today as we think about how it is that God has entrusted parents, really parents are entrusted, not the state. Parents are entrusted with the education of their children and raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

I'll start out by saying, and then feed this over to you. It's not, I just want to be careful the way I say this. It's not that public schooling is necessarily intrinsically bad. I know that that's going to turn off some people and some other people, I know there's some people in so many sides of this, but if you go back 50 years ago, 70 years ago, and you go to some of these rural public schools in the Bible Belt, you will have something similar to what private schools are doing today, right?

But the problem is over the last century or so that the public school system has really become very, very public in the sense that the state has now, especially in the last maybe 20 years and just even 10 years, I mean, just so rapid, but the state has really taken over in such a way that it's trying to produce good little, I think what's Voddie Backham say?

Good little Romans.

Good little Romans or whatever. So what do you think about that initial statement?

Yeah, I think that's true. What I've said for a long time is that it's not that I don't believe that Christians can faithfully raise their children if they send them to public school, but I think it's way harder.

To do so faithfully is you're adding a level of intentionality to the protection, to the deprogramming, to this last weekend you were at our church really talking about family worship and the importance of it and even the practical workshop on kind of how to do some just practical ways to do it.

But the reality is it's not as if, well, the homeschool families, they need to do family worship. I would actually say you need it all the more if your children are going out into the world.

And let me say that

Not to say that homeschool families don't need to be doing family worship. I don't want anybody to hear it that way, but I'm just saying to faithfully send your children into the public schools, parents, you can't just kick it into neutral and coast.

Well, a lot of people might be hearing this and they're like, yeah, but see, we live in a small town, our school, and I do, I'm appreciative of our schools. I'm not opposed to our schools. And so you might say, yeah, but we don't have to deal with the LGBTQ stuff and nobody's doing the weird stuff, teaching inappropriate things and reading weird books to kindergartners.

Like that's happening out in California, but it's not happening here. But I want to push back just a little bit and just say, even I remember even me being in school, the theory of evolution is taught as though it's just scientific, like this is true.

And like, let me just say, you cannot hold the scriptures and the theory Darwinian evolution hand in hand. It's got to be one or the other.

That's right.

And it's interesting to me how many people who profess to be Christians just accept that and be like, oh yeah, well, just figure it out. And I was like, no, no, even that, like, it's not true. And it's undermining the scriptures.

And what's trying to happen is, and this is really pushed, let me give you a kind of philosophical thought here position. But what's trying to happen from the state's perspective is you can do whatever you want in the privacy of your home per se, but just don't bring it out to the public square.

And so they're trying to teach even in the school system that look, you really can't, your Christianity, you have to separate that from biology. You have to separate that from, you have to separate that from your work.

You have to separate that from your public life. If you want to be a Christian in the privacy of your home, that's fine. But you see how foolish it is. We all know that the earth evolved and things evolved over millions of years.

Earth is billions of years. We all know that. You could just have to take that, keep that Christianity out of this place. You understand what I'm saying? And so it's more than just LGBTQ stuff, although that is a serious issue.

And here's the thing. I think a lot of times I hear people say, well, we have good Christian teachers in our public school, amen. I'm not gonna dispute that. I do think we have some good Christian teachers in some of our local public schools.

Not gonna dispute that. We have people in our church who are former teachers. I have relatives that teach in the public schools that I think are wonderful. I have a relative that's a teacher here in the local school in Marshall.

And I think she is as fine a public educator as there could possibly be. That being said, it's not just the teachers though. It's the system and it's the other students. You are melding all of the different cultures in all of these different families.

And your children, especially your young children are being exposed to a lot of things that they wouldn't be exposed to in your home. And if you're saying, well, our local school, I'm sure it's good. Well, then parent, I would urge you over the next semester, sign up to be a substitute teacher and spend just four or five days over the next semester substituting in your public school.

Yeah.

So that you can know. I think that would open a lot of eyes. If every parent would substitute four or five days over the course of a semester, Christian parent, I think one, it might improve the schools.

But what it will probably do is open the eyes.

Of a lot of parents.

I wanna echo what you said about Christian teachers. I 100 know we have some in our church. They're faithful, godly Christian teachers in public schools. I'm grateful. I truly am. I'm grateful for them.

I'm grateful for their witness. I'm grateful for that. I will also say, I know that there are some what you would call nominal Christians. They just say they're a Christian, but they're actually not. And they're actually a hindrance upon the kingdom of Christ because you're sending young little Johnny to school and he's like, oh, that's what a Christian is.

And you're like, well, no, that person just says they're a Christian. Though there are actual genuine Christians, Christians that will pray with students and counsel students and open the Bible students.

Again, I know that there are those because I know some of those personally, know some of those. And I praise God for them. But I think a couple of reasons that people don't homeschool, a few reasons, if we can kind of mention that.

One reason is, well, it doesn't matter where we start, I don't guess. One reason is socialization. But the reality is when you talk about socialization, often you're going back to what Eddie said. What you're talking about is subjecting your children to other children, the peer pressure socialization.

And let me just say this, that doesn't end in public school, does it? You might be taught it in public school and learn it in public school, but you feel that pressure the rest of your life to fit in with the crowd, to not be different, to stay on the broad way.

And I understand there, let's just call a spade a spade. There's a reason that some people think of homeschool kids as weird because sometimes they're weird.

Am I wrong? No, no.

And hey, you know what?

Looking at the culture we have now, I want to be weird. Compared to the culture that doesn't know, that can't rightly place people in the correct gender and doesn't know how to use pronouns correctly and has the kind of confusion where we have drag queen story hour in public libraries.

I want to be weird compared to that culture.

There you go. That's right. And furthermore, I would say that you, most of the homeschooled children that I've interacted with are much better interacting with people of all ages. They know how to work with adults.

They know how to speak to adults.

One of the early experiences that pushed us toward homeschooling before we had actually begun to homeschool, I used to work in the cell barn in Searcy, Arkansas, not Searcy County, not here in Marshall, but in Searcy over in White County.

And there was a homeschool family that ran the little cafe inside the cell barn. And so the sale was on Tuesdays. And you know, their children, their elementary age children would be in there helping the parents and they could make change and they could look you in the eye.

Their eight-year-old could look you in the eye and say, yes, sir, and no, sir, and take your order. And I mean, they were better than the service you'll get at the local McDonald's or Burger King, for sure.

And I was like, look at these kids. This family is so impressive. And so, yeah, I think that's absolutely true.

So if that's your argument, why I don't want my kids to not have a social life, I don't think it's a good argument. It's for number one, it's okay. If your kids are a little weird, that's fine. But the other thing is, the other way is if you're involved in a local church, well, how are your kids not gonna be around other kids?

Right?

And that would encourage you to be even more intentional about not just showing up on Sundays, but spending time. So I don't think that's a valid excuse, but then you get to these other excuses, these other two I wanna address.

And I do think there can be some more validity here, and it might be a little more challenging to have to deal with these. The next one is, I'm gonna say cost. So we have the husband and wife are both working, and we're barely making ends meet.

How in the world could the wife not work outside the home and we'd be able to make it? Well, I have a few thoughts about that. The first thought is you might actually be in a situation that you're gonna have to say, okay, for the next year, we're gonna have to keep our kids in the situation they're in, but we're working toward this goal.

So that might be one thing. But I'm just gonna tell this, and this is the harder thing. Maybe you aren't able to afford two car payments, a camper payment, a boat payment, vacations to Disney World, you know what I'm saying?

Yes.

There are things that you actually, so there are situations, and it could be for a variety of reasons, that you're not able to afford one income. And so you have to work towards that. But then there's other situations where actually the only other income, we've been in situations where we've seen families, pretty much the lady's working, the wife's working outside the home, and it's just barely covering childcare.

Right.

So there might be things that you need to cut out of your life. Maybe you can't eat out four times a week.

Right, yeah.

And I'll tell you for us, we've had to make, I mean, we drive old vehicles, old paid-for vehicles. And part of the reason is because, yeah, on my income, we can't afford to drive newer, nicer vehicles.

It's just a fact of it. The other thing I would say, and this is true kind of for both of us, it doesn't mean that your wife can't do anything that earns an income.

Oh, absolutely.

So my wife has a part-time thing, she's a nurse. And so she has a part-time job kind of as needed with the local drug store. And she gives shots and stuff for them. And so sometimes, certain times of the year when they're giving out a lot of flu shots or whatever, she might work three days a week for a few weeks.

But then like right now, she hasn't worked in like a month. You know, so, and it's not a lot of money, but it helps. Now, look, as a nurse, could she make dramatically more money, probably more money than I make if she was working 40 hours a week?

Yeah, yeah, she absolutely could. But our children are more valuable.

Yeah, amen.

And there's creative things. My wife right now, which we're working towards being done with this, but my wife keeps some kids. So, you know, that might be an option, or my wife also has a part-time job on a online bookkeeping.

You know, there's ideas out there. And so you're not saying, you're not saying if a wife brings in income, it's wrong. No, not at all, absolutely not. You're just saying, I don't think anybody will read the scriptures.

Any conservative Christian would read the scriptures and say, oh yeah, God's design is for the husband and wife to be out of the home all week. The kids would be at school and you're never seeing each other.

You're seeing each other a couple hours at night. I don't think any person that actually loves the Bible, loves Christ would look at that and be like, oh yeah, this is what we're supposed to do. Not ever be together.

As a matter of fact, I would even say to men, I know our culture doesn't give us to this, but men, if you're homeschooling your children, you ought to be, you ought to have them with you as much as you can.

Like going back to before industrialization, you know, even into the scripture, but even post after the scripture, most boys were apprenticed by their fathers first into how to have a good work ethic, how to be good men.

And girls were apprenticed by their mother, but they seen their father working in the fields or doing his trade. So it's just to say this, it's not just mom who is leading and teaching dads, it's on us too.

We have a responsibility to educating our children. It's not just, my wife is the homeschool teacher. Now my wife does do the bulk of that educational teaching, but I have responsibilities as well in educating our boys.

Well, I think, you know, certainly dads in a lot of situations can't take their kid every day of the office or anything like that. But there might actually be times that you could and there might be times that you're going on, you have to do a business trip or something like that and you actually can.

Whereas if your kid's in public school where they can't miss so many days or whatever, but, you know, you end up being able to take them. And, you know, you might say, well, if you're, you know, public school, I want my kid to play sports and school sports.

And in Arkansas, number one, we've got to let go of the idolatry of sports.

Amen.

But number two, they can play, they can still play sports. Like my kids are going to have to sit out a year because we were homeschooling then not and now back to homeschooling. And so, again, I understand being in a situation where you're like, you just feel overwhelmed and you can't homeschool, but yeah, your kids can still play sports.

But, and I would say on the sports thing too, my kids aren't into sports, but, or not those kinds of sports, but like my children are in a local co-op, homeschool co-op in Conway. And one of the pastor actually of the church where they meet his son, his sons do play basketball, but they play on a homeschool team.

That's all homeschoolers.

Yeah.

And they play in a homeschool league. I mean, so it's

I'm just afraid so many parents are going to look up. They feel so busy. They're going to look up and their kids are grown and they're going to realize they spend so much time in sports.

Right.

Not near enough time. You know, that's all their memories. Their whole family centered around doing sports, you know, but anyway, that really wasn't the topic. So we're trying to work through some excuses.

One, my kids will be weird. Okay, so be it. Two, financially. Now, again, that can be hard. You have to pray. You have to maybe set a goal for a year or six months. You may have to cut out some things in your life.

Your standard of living may have to change a little bit. You may have to cook, learn to cook more at home or plant a garden or whatever. And then the third excuse, and I think this might be the least of all, is like, I just can't do it.

I'm just not smart enough to do it. My pushback there is twofold. One, God thinks you are. How did children for the last 6 ,000 years ever learn to make it in society? The vast majority of those have been educated at home.

So that's number one. Number two, man, praise God for the world that we live in today in terms of technology and resources and help and co-ops and all these things. It's not nearly as difficult if you're like, but I hate algebra.

It's all right. There's lots of resources out there that can help you do this.

Yeah, and there are even, I mean, I'm not necessarily saying do this. This isn't what our family does. But I even seen, I was watching a YouTube video of a guy and I wouldn't wanna recommend him. His theology is not good.

He's heretical in some things. But he does like homesteading and stuff like that. And this guy, his wife passed away. They live on a farm, rural area. But they homeschooled and his wife passed away. Well, he still had to work.

He still had to provide a living. And so what he had to do because he wanted to continue to homeschool was enroll his children in an online program. And then he oversees that while he's still able to do his regular work.

And I think it involves the grandparents helping and stuff like that. But it's just to say, there's almost always a way. There's almost always a way. If you feel inadequate, well, there are resources, like you said, to where you can still be leading your family that way.

And I think it comes down to this. You're responsible. You won't be able to turn your children over to the public school. And then if things go badly on the day of judgment, say to the Lord, well, that was on the school.

No, mom and dad, you're responsible for the children the Lord gave you.

Wow, that's powerful right there, brother. I mean, right on. You have to take ownership. God has entrusted you with these beautiful children. Psalm 127, four says they're like arrows in the hands of a warrior.

You've created these arrows. Don't blunt their tips. Don't change them into paintbrushes. You're raising arrows, arrows, to shoot into the kingdom of darkness, to push it back, to further the kingdom of Christ.

Raise your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Eddie and I can't possibly come into every family that happens to listen to this and be able to articulate all that needs to be done, but we can give these general principles that we've given today, and we can give what Eddie is saying, like at the end of the day, you're gonna stand before God one day and be held accountable for your children.

Are you sending them into pagan lands to be discipled by pagans? If so, you need to figure out the way that you can fix that. There's other options out there. It might be hard. It might require sacrifice, but each family has to pray and think about the situation that they're in and then figure out the best way that they can steward the most precious resource they've been given in this life, and that is the raising and nurturing and admonition of children.

So I know we're running late, and so I'll try to be quick with this, but I feel like we would be not doing our due diligence if we didn't deal with one other objection, and that is that our children are missionaries, that our children are missionaries.

And first of all, I would say, well, are your children even Christians? Because we're Baptists, and they weren't baptized into the new covenant upon birth. They've gotta be born again, and even if your children are genuinely born again, are you saying that you're ready to send them off into a pagan culture?

You're ready to ship them off to another country, and you'd say, oh, no, no, no. Well, that is what your public school is. It is a pagan culture, and we have a responsibility to raise up our children and then to shoot them out as adults, as those arrows, and not to take them while they're unprepared and just cast them into the pagan culture.

And so I really wanna push back on the idea, because I've heard it from faithful brothers and sisters who do love the Lord, but it's not our job to send our kids in to be missionaries. Once again, going back to, I'm so thankful for the godly Christians that are teachers and administrators in public schools.

They are missionaries into that pagan culture, but not our children.

Yeah, yeah, you know, the reality is the public school system is probably never going to end. And so I'm not necessarily saying that all Christians everywhere need to abandon teaching positions and principal positions, those sorts of things.

I'm not saying that. In fact, that's great. But that doesn't mean you could even teach at a school and not have to send your children there, right? That you're not saying that you have to subject your children to all that.

I mean, we really, this is a different episode, but we really misunderstand missionary. A missionary ought to be a preacher and a church planner, you know, not little Johnny who's interested in, you know, little Susie to be his girlfriend, you know, whatever.

That's right, you're right, you're right.

Come on, man. I mean, it's just not a great argument to say we're going to win the culture with our eight-year-old.

You know? Yeah.

Instead, raise him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and when he gets to be 20 years old or whatever and married, and then he's, you know, carrying on the legacy of Christ, as it were. Anyway, none of this can be separated from the local church.

There's lots of homeschool families out there that are doing it wrong. They're homeschooling because they're just anti-government or they're homeschooling because they just want to be different. That's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about under the authority of Christ, seeking to please him, being connected with the local church. All this ties in together. But yeah, it's about time to shut it down. What you think?

I think, man, the one other thing I would encourage is it's so great if your local church can be a place that has a community where this homeschooling is encouraged. I'm not saying, man, don't, pastor friends, if you're listening to this, I'm not, don't pound your pulpit and condemn everybody whose kids are in the public school.

Don't do that. But I am saying, let's have a, an attitude within our culture, within our local churches, where we encourage families to take up the responsibility and accountability to raise up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

And to do that in a way that is best served in their family, whether that be an online academy or homeschool curriculum, or however you figure out how to do it. But mom and dad, train up your children in the way of the Lord.

Yeah, and even if they're in public school for a season, you know, that's not taken away from this responsibility. Like you say, in fact, it's adding all the more, like you said earlier in the episode.

So, you know, the principle there, applying the truth of God to every individual situation, sometimes things can look a little different, but the principle here remains, and everyone who loves the Bible and loves Christ is gonna agree with this.

You have to pour into your children intentionally and raise them up intentionally in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Right.

Thank you guys for joining us on this episode of the Rural Church Podcast. Podcast, podcast. Say goodbye, Eddie.

We'll see you guys next week.

The Church, the Home, and the Responsibility of Parents

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemos, the masterpiece of God.

How are you gonna respond?