For a church or school to stand out for endurance through time on the island requires at least a century to reach tier one. But on the mainland, 50 years is more than enough to gain renown. Next week, Bay Area Christian School will celebrate with a half-century banquet and a long look back at their history.
Today, we’ll share what two students and several administrators recall about their success, and how to build a school which will weather changes in both demographics and culture.
IN THE BEGINNING
Carol Bishop Pierce was one of the few there at the very humble start of what is now our county’s largest, and possibly oldest, Christian school off the island.
“I was one of the original students who was in attendance on the first day that the school opened,” she told Our Faith. “I was a 1981 graduate. My mom was also a member of the original school board.”
Fellow student Jessica Peck graduated in a class of 30 in 1995, for which she’s grateful.
“I am so thankful for my teachers and classmates who not only spoke truth, but lived it out in their everyday lives,” she said. “My former classmates have since gone on to be lawyers, musicians, missionaries, ministers and mothers. Many of my former teachers are still at BACS, but now they’re teaching my children and children of my former classmates.”
Like many modern teens, Peck came into the school with little motivation or incentive. She explained that being at BACS provided a complete refocus that challenged her to engage with her faith and future.
“I started at BACS as a timid student with little ambition or future vision, but left to become the first woman in my family to go to a university,” she said. “Now I am a pediatric nurse practitioner and a doctoral professor at Baylor University. This gives me the opportunity to serve in a vocation of compassionate caring for my students, my patients and their families that reflects the transformative power of the gospel.”
It’s changed her family, too. Her daughter just graduated from BACS as its valedictorian.
VIEW FROM THE TOP
Students benefitted, but it was the leadership who directed the distinctive traits that have given this school its half-century of growth.
Freddie Cullins, one of its early and longest leaders, was in harness from 1978 to 2013.
“I have a million great memories,” he said. “I was always impressed by how God used different individuals to supply our needs over the years and to answer our prayers. For instance, one June in the 1980s we needed $10,000 the next day to make the payroll. That day we got a check for exactly that amount from a generous donor who did not know of our need, praise God.”
But for Cullins, although funding is essential for any school, he emphasized that wasn’t the primary miracle.
“Above that, the greatest blessing was hundreds of children who came to trust Jesus and who will have eternal life,” he said. “The money is gone, but eternal life is forever.”
Jason Nave’s experience as head of BACS overlapped the COVID pandemic. He cited the support of parents here as moving the school forward.
“It was God’s blessing through the people of our school,” he said. “Our families were genuine, and they would do all they could to support our school. For example, whenever we went to away sporting events, our visitor’s side would have more people than the host team’s home side.”
Bay Area Church, then Bay Area Baptist Church, was another key foundational element.
“I also loved the missional focus of the church and the school,” Nave said. “It was a great partnership, and so much was accomplished because of the unique relationship between the school and church.”
THE LAST WORD
So, now we turn to the lead pastor of Bay Area Church, to whom we’ll yield the last word. While few churches currently support Christian schools, the Rev. Brian Haynes suggests that an allied school can provide a significant benefit in amplifying a congregation’s outreach and impact.
“My peers often ask me, ‘Why pastor a church with a school?’” Haynes said. “It’s a decent question really, because it can feel more complicated and less nimble than being a church without a school.”
He went on to explain that being able to share spiritual truth with the next generation all week instead of just one hour each Sunday was part of the payoff.
“Can you imagine investing Jesus in about 1000 kids a day almost every day of the week?” he asked. “Second, being a pastor of a church with a school is like planting a tree of which I may never enjoy the shade. The students don’t even all go to my church. It’s really a ministry for the kingdom of God for generations to come. Hopefully, they bring the refreshing shade of the gospel of Jesus Christ to a world in desperate need of hope.”
Focus: Our Faith once profiled the local priest who was assigned to support NASA astronauts in the early days of spaceflight. Now, we find out that there’s actually a bishop — of the moon. Various publications and websites have noted that because of a quirk in Catholic canon law, wherever explorers go, the bishop of their departure point gains jurisdiction over the lands they discover.
So, central Florida’s diocesan leader, Bishop William Donald Borders, automatically inherited the moon, as it were, when Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong made that first, dramatic step onto another world.
The position is a sinecure and remains so obscure that popes are reportedly also unaware of it.
Next week in Our Faith: How to make a successful church merger, Part One.
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