Join the Journey to a Faithful and Flourishing Christian School
Almost thirty years ago, I began refining my skills as an ethnographic researcher. I’ve always been intrigued by cultures and communities, so I decided to figure out how to study them in a formal way, taking the best stories and lessons, and sharing them with others. I found myself embarking on a lifelong quest to observe, listen, learn, and share. I studied everything from first-generation online communities to hacker and Amish communities. However, my greatest interest was and is Christian learning communities of all types.
Twenty-five years ago, I began my journey of interviewing, observing, reading everything I could get my hands on, and sharing what I learned with others. Through it all, I ultimately wanted to know what it takes to create and sustain a truly faithful and flourishing Christian school—one that is unquestionably and entirely aligned with its stated mission and, by almost any reasonable standard, flourishing in doing so.
After more than a thousand interviews and exploring hundreds of different learning communities, I put my findings into a book—a guide to help other schools in their journey toward fidelity and flourishing. Thanks to the wonderful team at Concordia Publishing House, God willing, that book will release in the Summer of 2025. In the meantime, and well after that, I also decided to create this publication as a place to share progress.
I’m starting this Substack publication without a clear plan beyond my desire to connect with others who care about nurturing faithful and flourishing Christian schools. However, here are a few things that I’m planning to do at this point:
Keep you posted about the progress of the publication, when pre-orders are ready, and when it is available for purchase.
Continue my quest to learn more about faithful and flourishing Christian schools, and share what I discover.
Invite the experiences and perspectives of others with the same passion, and share those conversations through recap articles, podcast episodes, or some other medium that seems useful.
Let you know when I or someone else is presenting online or in-person on a topic relevant to faithful and flourishing Christian schools.
The book includes a roadmap/template that a school can use for continuous growth and improvement, so I’m thinking about finding some schools who want to go through the process together—then I can share what we learn in those groups.
Perhaps other things will emerge from this publication as well, and it may be that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with these five goals. Regardless, if you’re intrigued and want to join the journey, please consider subscribing. Since it’s free, the only thing you have to lose is the time you choose to spend reading.
So, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and let the learning and networking begin!
Together in His Service,
Bernard
P.S.
I am indeed an author, Christian education leader (at the time of writing this, I’m humbled to be a Christian university president), and ethnographic researcher. I’ve developed a few skills over the years, but I’ve made some big mistakes and fallen short as well, and I continue to do so. I don’t claim to have it all together. I’m just a stubborn student and a dogged learner, despite my limitations and flaws. So, I don’t ever intend to come off as some sort of expert who knows exactly what your school should do. I am overjoyed, however, to see if we can learn a few things together, honoring God and being a blessing to others. So, again, please consider subscribing and following along.
Disclaimer: Do you use AI to write the articles on Substack? The ethical use of AI is an important topic. When new technologies emerge, they often evolve faster than our ability to make sense of the ethical implications. As such, I offer this disclaimer to provide a transparent picture of my own journey and approach. I’ve already made mistakes, even embarrassing ones, but I will strive to quickly learn from them and provide a transparent view of my present approach. As such, this disclaimer will be updated over time.
The full initial draft (in writing or as an audio dictation), words, and ideas for my Substack articles always come from me. From there, I often use AI for editing Substack articles. I regularly use Grammarly and/or Microsoft Word’s built-in Spellcheck or Grammar Check (both of which are a form of AI) to aid in proofreading and editing my work on Substack. In instances where I use AI for something other than background research or editing my original work, you can expect that I will cite or note it in the article.
I also regularly use DALL-E to generate the images for many articles. In addition, I sometimes use royalty free images. If credit is required by law, requested by the creator, or simply the courteous thing to do, you can expect to see the credits right below the image.
I continue to evolve in my experimentation with the use of ChatGPT, Grok, CoPilot (and various other ChatBot technologies) to serve as an editor for my Substack publications.
What does this mean? There are three common scenarios, though I hope to experiment with others in the future (and I will update this accordingly):
I write a full first draft in Word, Grammarly, or a word processor, and then submit it to the ChatBot, asking it to serve as an editor, akin to how I have one or more people edit almost anything that is published in my formal capacity. This is also similar to how editors review my manuscripts when they are submitted to a journal, newspaper, or book publisher. By the way, when I write for any of these partners, I never use AI beyond the basic spellcheck / grammar check available in Microsoft Word—not even to use and then cite it.
I record myself speaking on a topic and then place the recording in a ChatBot to transcribe, remove disfluencies, and provide a draft transcript that I can refine before publishing it. This is where I’ve made the most past mistakes. Because the ChatBot is transcribing, it adds its own grammatical interpretations and even takes liberty with sub-titles, organization, corrections, and adding clarifying language. As such, I’m still learning to use prompts that ensure my words, voice, style, and intent dominate—while also achieving a quality, personal, but streamlined approach to sharing ideas. Because this is an evolving practice for me, and also because it sometimes creates a final draft that can be flagged as AI-generated content, expect that when I use this approach, it will be noted at the beginning or end of the article.
I use ChatBots to conduct background research related to topics that I’m writing about, akin to an interactive and advanced search engine. If there are quotes or unique ideas that I include in the article, you can expect that I will give some sort of citation or in-text credit.