The Elephant in the Room: Church Schools Are Drowning-Champions Needed!

I write this book to do something that most would consider unwise as a current employee of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I call or appeal for systematic change--change in policies that have kept the financial support from tithe and other sources to Adventist elementary and other sources to Adventist schools at minimal.

Please don't think of me as a brave one who dares to go where many have not gone before. I am not... I speak out because we need policy changes at every level.

"Fairness is not giving everyone the same thing but to give each person what he or she needs to succeed."

Many businesses are rethinking how to move forward post the pandemic. We, too, as a church, need to do the same.

In the Old Testament, God instructed his people to pass on their faith to their children by intentionally teaching them God's statutes and commandments (Deuteronomy 6:4-8 and Isaiah 54:13). Similarly, the Christian Church receives its marching orders from Jesus in the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:16-20. Jesus directs the church to make disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching. Church schools are needed to partner with parents and the church as a whole to educate children.

Ellen G. White, cofounder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, who earlier encouraged the Seventh-day Church to focus on foreign missions, stated--in addressing church schools in the book Testimonies for the Church, volume 6--that the children are not to be neglected. She writes, "We cannot call ourselves true missionaries if we neglect those at our very doors who are at the most critical age and who need our aid to secure knowledge and experience that will fit them for the service of God." Her solution to financing church schools is simple: "Let all share the expense."

Enrollment in Christian elementary and secondary schools have been dropping nationwide. Many families in North America, especially new immigrant families, are not able to afford the tuition to send their children to church schools. Several church schools have closed.

In this book, Dr. Sadrail Saint-Ulysse, an ordained minister and educator of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, addresses the challenges of operating Christian schools at the elementary and secondary levels after serving for nearly twenty-five years as a pastor and educator, with the hope that the burden of operating church schools can be shared by the entire church--local, state, national, and worldwide--to alleviate this burden. The book challenges parents, teachers, principals, school boards, church members, and church leaders at every level to make the needed policy changes to ensure that church schools are financed in a sustainable manner.