It was such a joy to finish the month of January celebrating Lutheran Schools Week together! It was a delightful and spirited week of fun traditions, special time of fellowship, and giving thanks for this wonderful ILS community and for being a part of the broader community of Lutheran schools across the country. Thank you to the PTL for launching the week with a wonderful Chili Cook-off on January 25th., We loved seeing the great literary character costumes our students and teachers selected on Monday along with the Bible characters on Thursday, and delighted watching the Lower School students decorating their classroom doors all week. The competition was fierce as Upper School House teams worked on their Peeps Dioramas, and participated in the Academic Bowl. Seeing the Lower School students enthusiastically participate in their House Teams was so much fun, and we all enjoyed a change of pace with Teacher Swap Day on Wednesday. Your generosity was tremendous as you supported our 4 missions throughout the week in the Penny Wars. And we loved watching the community come together to conclude the week with both the Lower School Showcase and the Upper School Talent Show.
As the new month begins, we’re bringing you our latest "What we're reading..." feature with a new selection of articles and features that we hope will inspire and engage you in our ongoing conversation about how we shape our culture together at home and at school.
We give thanks for each of our families, and the wonderful opportunity to partner with you in the important work of educating and nurturing children. Thank you for engaging with us in these ongoing conversations and for sharing items you have read that may be inspiring to others in our ILS community! Please feel free to share a link in the comments to email us any time!
Life Comes from God Alone, and Humans Owe it Reverence - Pastor Christopher Esget, Sermon before the March for Life (Published in The Federalist)
“That’s the problem, that we have forgotten we are made. Made by God. Yes, yes, you believe in creation. But don’t run so quickly past it. Psalm 100 hints at the implications: “Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.”
The godless philosophy of our age has cast aside God for the myth of mutation. And make no mistake, that’s not science, that’s philosophy masquerading as science. “It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves”—but we ourselves cast aside God with every act of covetousness. We rebel against our Father when we calculate how much money a child will cost, as though He who gives life will not give us our daily bread. We rebel against our Father when we look at evil images, as though a human body is an object to be used and discarded. We rebel against our Father when we worry about tomorrow, as though He does not order our days.
When we put off praying, we confess, “He has not made me, but I make myself.” With every thoughtless bite of food; with every evening that ends without confession and thanksgiving; with each consent to greed, gossip, revenge, lust; with every lie we believe the lie, that we can be as God. In a thousand small, insidious ways, our lives say, “It is not He who has made us, but we ourselves.”
The problem is not abortion. Abortion is the symptom of the problem you and I have. We have lost God as maker. And with that loss, we have forgotten that we are made, that we stand as recipients of His life, under His ordering and stewards of His gifts. The culture of death infects us all.”
4 Elevator Pitches for Classical Education - Joshua Gibbs, Circe
“1. Walker Percy once said, “You can get all A’s and still flunk life.” A classical education is simply the kind of education you pursue when you believe this statement is true. In American schools, grades have risen steadily over the last twenty-five years, but so has mental illness and suicide rates, and attention spans have become microscopic. Classical educators don’t believe there is any value in grasping good things if they cannot be enjoyed by good men and good women. A classical education is chiefly concerned with virtue, which is the health and goodness of the human soul.
2. Almost nothing lasts. Buildings crumble. Clothes wear out. Cups break. A ceaseless flood of fashionable ideas comes and goes. What was though progressive and enlightened just ten years ago is thought vulgar and primitive today. Things don’t last. Ideas don’t last. Almost nothing lasts. But a very precious small number of things do last. Some things don’t fall apart with time— they grow. A classical education is only concerned with bringing those rare things— the things which last—into our souls so that our souls can last, too. ”
Am I Relevant? - Pastor Peters, Pastoral Meanderings
“Over and over again today Christianity is confronted with the fear of being irrelevant and pursues relevance in any way that will prevent the Church from being tossed aside like yesterday’s leftovers. This quest for relevance has led churches to adopt culturally friendly views of the earth, sexuality, worship, and truth. But the result of our preoccupation with what the world thinks of us is that the Church is weaker and more fragile than in her infancy when she was being killed in arenas. Yet the relentless pursuit for relevance goes on.
What the world means by relevance, however, is not exactly what the word meant originally. Relevance is defined today as being in step with the times or sympathetic to the prevailing winds of thought and belief. Relevance means constantly changing or adjusting to where people are or what direction people are headed. The sacred text of such relevance is written by poll and survey and in pursuit of such relevance the Church must constantly take the temperature of the world around her.
Though we are bombarded by the demand for a relevant Church, what this really means is that Church must abdicate to the whim of the moment and to random thoughts unsecured and unrestrained by concepts of eternal truth. To be sure, we must be cognizant of the world around us and of the particular opportunities afforded us by the times as well as an awareness of doors that have been closed by those same times. Who in Scripture could have foreseen such things as gender confusion or in vitro fertilization or machines that prolong the life of the body. Relevance requires us to be able to address what was never even on the radar of the faithful of old. But how?”
Why Church Bells Ring - Mrs. Marie Greenway, CPH Music Blog
“Directly outside the main entrance to our church sits a squat, square brick structure, the last remnant of what I’m told was once our church’s bell tower. As I recall, some weather catastrophe compromised the tower, and the church bells no longer ring out.
Frankly, I wish we still had that bell tower. There’s a certain charm to church bells, a certain quality that, at least in much of the United States, we don’t experience anymore. I haven’t seen much of Europe, but my husband tells me church bells regularly ring out there. I’m not about to tell you that Europeans must be more committed to their churches to still cultivate the art of church bell ringing. Instead, I assume ringing church bells are simply part of the culture in many parts of Europe, a continent with churches much older than those of the United States, in a way they are not in our own country.”
Remembering Our Reading - Christine Norvell, The Imaginative Conservative
“Bestsellers aside, book recommendations do abound, and I trust you already have a continuing list of things to read. As it is, I have a towering stack on my desk. Make that two. I’m always adding another group of essays, an historical novel, a poetry collection, a journal, fiction, spiritual study, nature memoir, children’s literature, and such. There are so many categories and subgenres and rereads, but that is not my focus here.
The better question to ask is how what you read affects you. More importantly, how do you remember your reflections and track your reading over time? Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs. Darcy recorded a podcast episode last month sharing helpful ideas her readers used for that very thing.[2] Yes, Goodreads was the mainstay, but the majority of readers had developed their own systems using spreadsheets or handwritten reading journals tracking books read over the years. It wasn’t so much about tracking numbers as the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge does, but more about reflecting on the book’s meaning at the time in life you read it.”
Upward and Outward: The Tree of Wisdom and Its Prudential Fruit - Phaedra Shaltanis, Classical Academic Press Insights Blog
“Picture the grandest tree you know: maybe a live oak or a tropical monkeypod. Envision its breadth and height. Notice the span of its branches, their interconnected tangle. Imagine its roots sprawling underground, ever reaching for nourishment to sustain the tree’s grandeur. Such an example of ancient life can be a profound teacher, and long has the metaphor of the tree fed the souls of those who ponder it.
There are many reasons the tree is ideal for analogies. It’s magnificent yet commonplace, glorious yet humble. It’s familiar, comfortable, and knowable. We see the extended metaphor woven throughout God’s Word, from the Fall in Genesis to the Tree of Life in Revelation. Yes, a tree is suitable for strong comparisons indeed.
Historically, classical education has been illustrated as a tree whose seven branches progress in rigor from grammar to astronomy. These branches of study, aptly called the liberal arts, are those which serve to make a man free (from the Latin liber, meaning “free”); they are essentially skills or tools used to discover truth and promote learning. As such, they contain lifetimes of wisdom gathered and presented to all who would delight in them. They make free people.
Sadly, many contemporary educators eschew these arts, trading them for more pragmatic studies aimed toward a specific goal. They target a distinct profession, train students in the appropriate skill set, and call the education complete. Many of us were schooled in such a way ourselves, but we can see the results of this folly: men and women trained to do a specific job but left feeling trapped and despondent. Even worse, we see people filled with despair and jaded from too many years of feeble, misguided study. For some, the joy and wonder of truth is deeply dormant. This is tragic, for as St. Irenaeus said,
The glory of God is man fully alive.
Fully alive. Seeking and growing all the days of his life. There is too much goodness, too much truth, to remain stagnant in our plot of earth.”
Studying Virtue in Painting and Poetry - Monica VanDerWeide, Hillsdale College Blog
“Each year, millions flock to Vatican City to view the art that defined the Italian Renaissance—including the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museums. While marveling at the artistry of these works, we may ask what we can learn from these frescoes, particularly about teaching students the virtue of prudence. Like Raphael’s frescoes, poetry also offers visual and mental representations of these concepts. What role does poetry play in educating students about the virtues? Dr. Ellen Condict, literature teacher at Hillsdale Academy and a lecturer in English at Hillsdale College, offered insight on these questions in her lecture: “Classical Education in Plaster and Poetry.””
Teaching Little Ones About: Pastor’s Vestments - Beth Schultz, CPH
“Church services can sometimes be confusing for little ones. Why is it so quiet? Why does pastor wear that funny robe? Why do we say the same thing every week? Teaching young children about the individual parts of the church service can seem daunting. And it starts with learning yourself what it all means! This is the first of a series of posts on teaching our youngest churchgoers about the parts of service.
We thank God for the work that our pastors do for us. God uses them to turn us away from our sinful actions and to give us His forgiveness, love, and grace. God uses the pastor to care for the spiritual growth of His people. Pastors have a job that is very important: we call the pastor’s job the Office of the Ministry. What pastors wear can help us to understand their office.”