Hectic Days Behind and Ahead

I woke up this morning with much on my mind.  I looked back at the days recently gone by and I can only exhale a sigh of relief.  My life was tugged in many directions, often at the same time during the past seven days.  Behind the scenes of busy-ness was a second layer of events that weighted on me as much if not more than the others.  But God is good—all the time.

Friday provided me the opportunity to speak for the Friday Chapel at GAA.  It was a full house.  There was a sweet spirit in the room as they sang songs and were led by their principal, FL.  I was greeted by some of the children who have gotten to know me over the last couple of years.  I enjoyed sharing some good news with them.  They seemed to enjoy the stories.  I will trust the “seeds” of the Gospel landed on fertile group.

I had a very fruitful conversation after the meeting was over.  Life is crazy!  People are going through all types of complications that life throws our way.  We prayed—that was a good moment. 

Friday night I was finally able to bring together the AWC elders.   It was a great evening of visioning and prioritizing the ministry of the elders at AWC.  We spent a thoughtful couple of hours in honest dialogue about the future of AWC and how best to serve God.  We ended our evening with a season of prayer in the back yard of our host’s home.  I also had my fill of some delicious “haystacks”.

Sabbath morning took Penny and me to AWC to enjoy the service.  Actually Penny stayed in the car putting her final touches on a presentation we were going to give at the South Mountain Church in the afternoon.  She joined me in time for church.  I attended the youth class—and I was blessed.  I even came out with a sermon idea having to do with Nebuchadnezzar—go figure.  CM preached a long but powerful sermon on the two sides of the “Why Me?” question. 

The original plan was to have a board meeting at an elder’s home immediately after the morning service.  This plan was dashed by the breadth of the sermon and a realization that the afternoon seminar I thought was scheduled on the downside of 3 o’clock was actually slated for the early side of that hour.  There was no way I would be able to have even a short board meeting and still get to southern Phoenix in time.  So I quickly rescheduled the elder’s meeting until next week (they are pretty flexible at AWC) and Penny and I rushed home to pick up some “eats” to enjoy on our way to the church.  We got there with a couple of minutes to spare.  Actually, we got there with a couple minutes to spare before the scheduled time.  It was a good 45 minutes before we began. 

Penny and I gave a seminar following a presentation given by a couple who had been married 57 years.  They spoke of the ingredients that it takes to make a marriage last.  It was somewhat humorous that after they concluded this presentation on “marital bliss” we were called up to make a presentation on “Couples in Crisis.”  Life is full of ironies.  We shared some concepts we have learned along our 33 years together and other material we were able to glean along the way.  The people appreciated the presentation. 

From there we rushed home to change clothes in order to go on to our next commitment at the DH home.  It was a special evening planned for individuals of “means” (I was not one of them) who were being enlisted to be part of the renaissance of Adventist education in Arizona.  It was a very encouraging evening.  More than the money that was pledged or given, what was of most import was the ripples that the meeting will produce as these people expand the circle to others.  The future of Adventist Education is getting brighter.  Pray hard!

Late night—tired but satisfied.  Penny and I even went outside our duplex close to midnight to see if we could catch any of the “falling stars” from the remnants of Haley’s Comet that the news said would be visible between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.  We were disappointed.  Too much light pollution!

Today will be consumed with catch-up work, the fair, and the Fall Festival at GAA.  I think my stomach is up to it!  (219.8)

Thursday in Tucson

I find myself in Tucson at the Saguaro Hills School doing some observations before heading off to the Desert Valley School for their school board meeting later this afternoon.  The Saguaro Hills school is a school that provides a solid and nurturing educational experience to all their students.  When I arrived they were enjoying a time of outdoors activities.  Older student were enjoying their time with younger students.  The tiniest ones were paying with their age group.  There was a visiting family with three children visiting that day and their children seemed to be enjoying the experience.  Pray for SHACS!  They have some enormous challenges facing them now.  They face tumultuous days in the absence of a miracle.    Pray hard!

This morning Penny and I had to make a pilgrimage to Nogales to renew some documentation that streamlines the international border crossings we occasionally enjoy.  I had never been to Nogales.  Our GPS apparently had never been there before either.  It took us to a church rather than the governmental office we were seeking.  We figured it out and arrived late (but on time) for our appointment.  Luckily the government runs a little slow in Nogales.

This has been a hectic week, in which I was not able to make a significant dent in my work in the office.  TCE and TAA required some extra TLC this week.  I even forgot I had a school board meeting on Tuesday night at the Adobe school. 

A very busy weekend awaits me…for now I better get back to more pressing work.  Pray hard!  (219.0)

Nonsense

This Sabbath finds me back in Southern California for the second weekend in a row to attend a funeral for someone struck down too early in life.  Last week I participated in a funeral for a student of mine during my academy teacher days.  He was only 33 years old—with a wife he dearly loved and a daughter he adored!  Today, I will be at funeral for a friend and contemporary.  He coached my three children in the Adventist Softball League when they were children in elementary school.  One day he is fine—the next day he is gone.  Life does not make sense at times.

I survived the week of meetings in Ontario.  Next week will be hectic if for no other reason than the fact I was away for most of last week!  Too many things to do and not enough time to get them accomplished.   There are challenges propping up their threatening heads in certain places across the conference.  Prayers are requested for the situations and the people involved.  For now, Sabbath is here and rest is desired.  Enjoy.  (219.9)  

More Meetings

I am still in Ontario.  More meetings are slated for today.  K-12 Curriculum meetings follow WASC training, Elementary Associates and ECEC Board meetings yesterday.  I will survive!  At least Penny is here.

Sunday Morning Scribbles

Well, it’s a somewhat lazy Sunday morning.  I slept in until “7-ish” and then read for an hour or so.  Penny is in California on a 5K walk so I had free reign of the house.  I will be hopping on a plane this afternoon to Ontario, California for some Educational Leadership Committee and K-12 Curriculum meetings.  It should be full week—although meetings are simply not what I was created for.  Others may have that gift, but I believe I was designed to be “out of meetings.”  I arrived at that description after considering many other phrases that may not have been understood in the spirit in which I was writing it.  Suffice it to say that if I ever choose to leave this line of work—one reason will be my low tolerance for meetings and committees.  For now it one of the necessary evils I must do in order to participate in those things I enjoy.  It really is an odd thing; I enjoy people, but I do not equally enjoy committees that are simply a group of people.  Go figure.

In any case, I digress.  Yesterday was indeed pretty busy day.  It began with early service at the PV church.  The quartet consisting of TA, CM, AF, and myself were scheduled to provide special music for both early and late worship services.  It was an enjoyable morning.  TA preached two hearty sermons on “pressing on” even in times of transition and trial.  I certainly needed to hear that.  I stayed for potluck, which most of time would not have been noteworthy, except for the fact that I had chosen to fast for the day.  Good thing Penny was with me—we split what she wanted on two plates so as not to make my dilemma too obvious.  We enjoyed some pleasant conversation with our tablemates.  Good times.

After a brief downtime at home, I transported Penny to the airport to catch a flight.  I returned to TAA to participate in the Sabbath School Workshop, where I had been asked to share some thoughts and ideas related to Junior Sabbath School—in Spanish.  Time flew—it was six o’ clock before you knew it.  The event began at 3 o’clock!  The group that chose my seminar stayed awake, which is good.  I enjoyed making the presentation.

Ironically I felt rested at the end of the day.  I did not even think about eating, although this morning I do have a sense that food might be a good idea.  “Do you feel you are ready to die for your God?—try living for Him first.” (218.2)

There and Back

Today took me on a whirlwind trip to Riverside, California for a WASC Chair Training session at the University of California-Riverside.  I will be chairing a WASC accreditation committee this coming spring for San Fernando Academy in California.  The all-day meeting was very helpful, since the process is always being adjusted.

The day began early as our plane left at 6:05 a.m.  Penny got to come with me for only $5.  Southwest Airlines “Companion Fare” is truly a blessing!  In any case, while I was in my meeting she got to go visit family and get some errands done.  We arrived back at home at about 9:30 p.m.

My new schedule is working, but my truncated weeks are keeping me from getting ahead, instead I am just barely keeping up—and by keeping up, I mean keeping up sufficiently to see the front of the line at a distance but my no means is it near.

It was a rough week at TAA.  It is always sad to see young people make misguided decisions that end up impacting their lives and the lives of their families.  Sometimes consequences can be avoided, other times they hit like a ton of bricks and leave a permanent mark.  Let’s keep these young people in our prayers, as well as the rest of the students who remain and who process these events in different ways.  (222.2)

Wednesday Inventory

There seems to be something in the air and I really do not know what it is.  There is plenty of good news to go around.  Enrollment numbers across the conference are significantly up from last year.  That means that parents are making a renewed commitment to invest in their children’s future.  That’s exciting.  But there is a dark lining to this particular silver cloud (I just made that up!).

We have an unfolding crisis unfolding in Adventist Education that has been developing for years but we have left it alone perhaps hoping that more students would solve our problems.  It will not happen, in fact, it may make our malaise even more severe. 

Let’s move beyond the challenge of the shift by many of our parents to a “cost” over “value” assessment of Adventist Education.  In brief, if cost if what is the basis for considering education in our schools, the cost will never be low enough to warrant a decision to enroll a child.  We will have to continue to lower and lower tuition to convince them to grace our schools with their children.  Our challenge is to highlight the value of Adventist education.  Once that is established, then cost is inconsequential, since people find a way to acquire things they value, regardless of the cost.

But there is concurrent problem gnawing away at our system.  Ironically it has to do with cost, i.e., the true cost of education.  In Arizona, the government has realized that it can actually save money by giving people the option to redirect their state taxes to private schools and have them educate the children.  While our schools continue to cut tuition to make enrollment more attractive, the cost of education continues to rise.  Thus as tuition rates hover around $4,000 per year at the elementary level and $8,000 at the high school, the true cost of educating those very students is closer to $10,000 and $15,000 respectively.

This “true” cost of education is what it takes not simply to survive one more year, but to truly fund the cost of a thriving school, with sufficient staffing, resources, and facilities to meet the needs of the student body.

Add to this that even the tuition rates are heavily leveraged by church subsidies, conference and union scholarships, tax credits, and the like.  Thus the actual liquid funds available to a school to meet its baseline expenditures can be regularly tested and often exhausted.  The cost of rescuing the schools from these times of deficit spending falls upon the local churches or the conference.  But remember that this is intervention is simply to assist the school to reach the tuition rate and not the true cost of running a school.

Unless we rally as a conference family and formulate and new paradigm for funding Adventist Education (Evangelism funds for instance or a redistribution of tithe funds sent outside the conference) and/or milk the tax credit dollars before they disappear, we will certainly experience the ultimate closure of more and more of our schools.  The local churches can no longer carry the burden of sustaining the schools in areas where socio-economic and generational shifts have taken place thus altering the support system that existed in those places a mere 30 years ago.

We are going to have to get serious about this challenge.  Prayer must become our first priority at home, at school, at the churches.  The schools must be returned to the front burner of our mission as a church.  We are losing our young people at alarming rates—this rate will only increase as larger and larger numbers of our church children receive their education outside of the Adventist system.

You probably weren’t expecting this treatise when you came to this website.  It is where I was tonight as I pondered and took inventory of the state of our schools in the Adventist system in Arizona and beyond (North America and Europe).  Pray hard!  (221.2)

That's All for Tonight, Folks!

It was a long day today.  Pastors’ meetings were held most of the day at the conference office.  No significant personal work got done today!  That means tomorrow will be totally consumed with finishing the major projects that have been waiting all week.  I had a great weekly AWC pastors’ meeting in the evening!  Thank you, PM, for the very special Pastor Appreciation gift. (221.2)

Monday on the Road

Monday night has arrived peacefully on the valley.  Penny and I arrived not long ago from a quick trip to Tucson to share some Tax Credit information with our sister school in the south.  It was a very encouraging meeting, but the stakes are very high.  As most of our schools, finances are tight and traditional sources of income are drying up.  Our schools need to tap in to the Tax Credit opportunities in an organized manner in order to stabilize the system and give it a chance to catch its corporate breath.  We’ll see.

Today, as most Mondays, was short day at the office.  Come think of it, every day is a short day at the office, considering my days usually being at TCE.  It’s a good thing I like what I do at TCE, especially in the mornings—I enjoy meeting parents as they arrive at school.  I am beginning to get the student names down.  I still mix a couple of them up.  Mr. C. is back after his two week absence.  He is an asset to the front office.  The truth is that TCE has a good set of teachers—each bringing a unique and valuable contribution to the whole.  We’ll get it right!  I’m learning.

Tomorrow is the Arizona Conference Fall Ministers’ Meeting at the AZ Conference Office.  Note: I did not refer to the meeting as the “Workers’ Meeting,” as if teachers and other conference employees are not workers!  We definitely work—more hours on average than most people.  But it’s what we do—and what we love to do.  We are changing lives every day.  Pray hard!  (221.5)