Florida pastor Melvin Adams knows a few hours of church programming every week is no match for the more than 30 hours children spend at secular schools, absorbing lessons that he says run counter to their family’s Christian beliefs.
Like other theologically conservative pastors in Florida and beyond, he decided his Nazarene church in the Orlando suburbs could do something about it. Now the inaugural semester of Winter Garden Christian Academy is underway at Faith Family Community Church, educating K-4th grade students within the church’s biblical worldview.“We’re making disciples and we’re doing it not just on Sundays, but we’re doing it all week long,” said Adams. “I feel like we do have a leg up here in Florida.”The state has an expansive voucher program in which taxpayers help to pay tuition for all families who want to send their kids to private schools. While that’s not the primary reason Faith Family Community and other churches are launching Christian schools on their campus, the vouchers have made it easier.
said pastor Jimmy Scroggins, whose Family Church in South Florida is launching four classical Christian schools over the next year. Rather, he said it’s about giving parents more schooling options that align with their Christian values.Family Church is responding to an ongoing demand that rose out of heightened, pandemic-era scrutiny of what children were being taught in public schools about gender, sexuality and other contentious issues, he said. In Christian classrooms, pastors say religious beliefs can inform lessons on morals and character building, teachers are free to incorporate the Bible across subjects, and the immersive environment may give students a better chance of staying believers as adults.A push for a Christian education reformation“Our hope is to help accelerate this movement of Christian education. … That every Christian church with a building will consider starting or hosting a neighborhood school,” said Scroggins. “We’re not trying to burn anything down. We’re trying to build something constructive.”
Scroggins makes his case in “The Education Reformation: Why Your Church Should Start a Christian School,” a new book he co-wrote with Trevin Wax of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. Scroggins’ large, multisite church also is Southern Baptist.They have company in their cause from school voucher advocates.On the national level, for example, Family Research Council senior fellow Joseph Backholm made a similar argument in his 2020 report, “Why Every Church Should Start a Christian School,” while pushing for more public funding for private education. At the state level, the Ohio Christian Education Network launched a school planting initiative for churches in 2021.“We believe the church has a responsibility to rise up and meet what we see as an educational crisis in the United States,” said Troy McIntosh, the network’s executive director. So far, they’ve helped start two schools and hope to add more, likely beginning as small learning environments known as microschools, he said.
Ohio passed so-called universal school choice — taxpayer money available for private school tuition without income limits — in 2023. They were part of a wave of pro-school voucher laws passed in Arizona, Florida, West Virginia and other states following key Supreme Court rulings in recent years. This year, universal school choice became an official national Republican Party policy, including equal treatment for homeschooling.School voucher trend divides stakeholders.
In addition to discrimination concerns and church-state issues, opponents worry school vouchers take money from public schools, which serve most U.S. students, and help higher-income families already in private schools.“The problem isn’t churches starting schools. The problem is taxpayer funding for these schools, or any private schools,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in a statement. School vouchers, she said, “force taxpayers to fund religious education — a clear violation of religious freedom.”
They’re failing in preparing them for adulthood,” said McCoy, who is worried for the future of public-school funding since he expects more parents will use vouchers for private education.“We’ve got to attack this problem head-on,” he said. “Since they’re not doing it, somebody needs to do it.”
