“Only a disciple can make a disciple.” – A. W. Tozer

There are two common ways Christian schools have traditionally walked out discipleship with students: 1) by dispensing information about God to students in Bible classes, and 2) enforcing a set of standards for conduct, dress, and speech.

These are good and needed practices.

But Genesis 3 gives a clue as to the root of where the process of spiritual formation actually begins, and therefore, what we as educators and parents must understand and embrace.

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” –Genesis 3:6 (ESV)

Desire

Eve desired to be wise, and the crafty serpent presented the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as the means to become so. Her desire for becoming equal with God was birthed, and her will to attain that desire determined her next course of action.

Spiritual formation is rooted in desire. We pursue what we desire, and so we must pay careful attention to what we lift up as good and desirable when discipling students to become more Christlike. To start with behavior modification is to attempt to change the output, but the output, or behavior, actually finds its source in the desire.

In a living education, we are working to shape the desire and set a child’s affections toward God.

And so we are very intentionally making that which we should desire, desirable. We’re helping the child to desire what is good and right and beautiful and true. The goal that we have for each child is that they become more like their Lord, more like Jesus Christ Himself. Academics, then, falls under the larger umbrella of Christian formation.

Spiritual formation and academics are one; they aren’t separate things in an Ambleside education. Every piece of curriculum is carefully chosen accordingly.

In math, for instance, we’re not really concerned with what the child now knows. That will grow as their capacity for knowledge grows. But who is the child becoming? How can we use the subject of math to help the child become who they ought to be?

This doesn’t diminish the role of academics, but rather, elevates it. We have to have a definite goal in mind for what the child should be becoming. There should be a definite goal — not just what a child should be doing but who he or she IS.

Intellect

We start this process of becoming Christlike by informing the intellect. We cannot desire that which we do not in some sense understand. So the intellect is necessarily involved. But there is a necessary step beyond the giving of information, and that is the intentional setting of affections on what is good, true, and beautiful.

We go through the intellect, if you will, to get to the heart, which is the seat of the child’s emotions and desires and affections. Then we start to inform those desires and inform those affections which shape the heart. We get at that through the whole of the curriculum.

Once desire is established, then follows will and action, as it did with Eve.

Habits

The next step in spiritual formation, then, is habit formation, one of the pillars of a living education. Habits run along the lines of the desires that are already in place, but they strengthen those desires, confirming and solidifying them. With the youngest of children you can start to put habits in place to reinforce the desires that are being formed over time.

Habits act to reinforce and strengthen, but they are not a replacement for having love for Christ in the heart. Habits alone are not enough.

When we put beautiful things before a child, something within them responds to that beauty. God has created them so that they will only be satisfied with the highest beauty. They will not be satisfied with anything less than what is most good and most true and most beautiful, which is Jesus Christ Himself.

Caleb Douglas

Headmaster

The Augustine Academy