GLOBAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL LEADERSHIP SUMMIT: February 2017
WORKSHOP: INTEGRATING THE CULTURAL COMMISSION
Gavin Brettenny
Presupposition: The Bible story about God and the world requires relationally
restorative human responses to a variety of learning topics, AKA: The cultural
commission.
Therefore, Christian schools should equip students to be able to reason and
develop a relationally restorative biblical view of the world. In this view, many
learning topics are about service learning.
Students can be equipped to identify and integrate biblical values that naturally direct
the ethical application of a learning topic’s knowledge in the world. In other words,
effective biblical integration of special revelation (biblical values) and general revelation
(subject content) directs human behaviour. This approach develops understanding
(conceptual thought) and wisdom (discerning modes of action with a view to their
results).
This workshop suggests four useful components for constructing learning experiences
that foster relationally restorative responses to world issues arising from any variety of
learning topics:
1. Understanding the cultural commission: Directed student behavior in the world
requires convincing incentive. Scriptural motivation: Mark 16:15 (going into the
world and preaching the gospel to all of creation) & 2 Corinthians 5:18 – 19 (we
are called to bring a message that serves to reconcile the world to God). Biblical
reconciliation requires biblical integration.
2. Thematic Velcro: The biblical story identifies 4 relationships requiring
reconciliation: Man to man, Man to God, Man to creation and Man to himself as
imago dei. Most learning topics relate more or less dominantly to one of these
four relationships in terms of a restorative response.
3. Truth Table: The Truth Table serves as a distinguishing instrument between
correlation and integration. Distinguishing between correlation and integration is
important because integration is more effective at directing ethical action.
4. Topic Template: ‘Fill in the blanks’ approach that combines 1, 2 and 3.
CONSTRUCTING LEARNING EXPERIENCES THAT FOSTER
RELATIONARY RESTORATIVE RESPONSES.
FOUR USEFUL COMPONENTS:
1. Understanding the cultural commission: Article
2. Thematic Velcro:
Focus question: What is God’s heart for the relationship between (insert
topic) and man’s relationship with (insert one of 4 relationships)?
God’s heart: Search for biblical values inherent in the focus relationship
and the accompanying scriptural directive/s that lead into a restorative
response. Consider the biblical sequence of creation, crises (fall) and
restoration (redemption, reconciliation)
3. Truth Table: Use this table to discern integration practice. A relationally
restorative response works best when identified as ‘Moral Law Direction’
CORRELATION
INTEGRATION
A relationship or connection in
which two or more parts are
complementary
The combination of parts that work well
together
synonyms
synonyms
Connection
Incorporation
Link
Amalgamation
Parallel
Assimilation
PRACTICE
PRACTICE
Natural law fact:
Scripture provides few natural law
facts that parallel discovered natural
laws.
Object lesson:
Learning topic facts are indirectly
linked to biblical truth (analogy)
Moral law direction:
Incorporated scripture provides moral
directive for human behaviour through
application of learning topic in the world
Character of God:
Scripture insights of God’s character are
part of the natural laws of intelligent
design.
4. Topic Template:
TEACHER’S TOPIC PLANNING SHEET
Grade: 7
Learning Area: Economic Management Sciences
Teacher: G. Brettenny
Topic: Financial Debt
Focus question: What is God’s heart for the relationship between financial loans and man’s
relationship with other people?
GOD’S HEART: Restoration
CREATION: The ideal of mutual love, support, care.
CRISES: Access to credit can be an open door to the temptations associated with greed. People exploit
others through excessive interest rates. People borrow according to their material wants that are beyond
their needs and means and remain in poverty, often to the detriment of their families.
Psalm 37:21; Proverbs 22:7
RESTORATIVE VALUES: Biblical guidelines for sound financial management & relationships. Financial
loans were one way of ensuring economic stability to give everyone fair opportunity for a decent quality of
life. They were allowed to help people become financially independent and were not intended for unfair
personal gain.
Deut 15:4 & 7 – 10; Mathew 5:42
FULFILLMENT: A life free of financial bondage: Romans 13:8. Have as little debt as possible, have debt
only to become financially independent, have debt for as short a time as possible and do not deal in unfair
interest.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
KNOWLEDGE: Students must be able to list four different kinds of loans such as a mortgage for a house
and credit card debt when buying a flat screen television on credit.
SKILLS: Students must be able to calculate advertised interest rates for the purchase of at least three
different items to see the difference between cash and credit.
VALUES: Live a life of love, not debt. Students must be able to differentiate between positive and
negative debt on Biblical grounds
ATTITUDES IN ACTION: Balance a fictitious household budget that includes choices of different kinds of
debt repayment
LESSON ACTIVITIES
 Teacher presents three different popular press adverts for purchasing items on credit and helps
the class calculate the cash and credit price for each item
o Discussion on the results of the calculations
 What motivates people to pay so much more?
 What is God’s advice to people about debt?
o Is there positive debt and negative debt? Positive debt helps a person become
financially stable. Negative debt is most often associated with the undisciplined purchase
of material goods according to human wants
 Discuss four kinds of debt
 Balance a fictitious household budget that shows repayment of selected debt.
ASSESSMENT
Knowledge: Short class test on kinds of loans
Skills: Test ability to calculate interest
Values: Choosing not to get into debt for negative reasons
Attitudes in action: Careful budgeting
CULTURAL COMMISSION: CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
Is the gospel about personal salvation from an evil and condemned world or does the gospel
include hope for the world? The question asks the reader to make a choice. Wrong question!
Christian education about ‘the world’ as a place to be loved and evaded should not ask students
to make a singular binary choice encompassing their faith and the world.
Simple faith-based
binary choices inevitably result in an ‘us and them’ comparison and judgement, creating a faith
that is too easily the extension of human ego. The binary practice of separation and control is
human religion contained in a worldly system. Jesus spoke strongly against the ministers of
such religion. They are portrayed as rigid, judgmental and unhappy people reliant on public
affirmation of their righteousness. Religion without personal transformation creates people who
know what they are against, but too often have a poor sense of what they are for.
Christian education should educate students to negotiate paradox. Being vulnerable to paradox
in scripture takes the learner beyond immature ‘us and them’ divisions, leading to deeper
spiritual insights and a life that unifies. A biblical view of the world will be helpful for enabling
students to live in the world whilst not being of the world.
Biblical references to ‘the world’ refers to ‘the systems’ that humans habitually construct:
egocentric behaviours of security, status, pleasure, power and, most importantly, control.
Exploitation of the vulnerable is evidence of these systems. People of The Way, Christians, are
not expected to love these human systems. Christians are, however, meant to love the world to
the extent that they are willing to serve as agents who bring healing and wholeness to
destructive and exploitative systems, reconciling a world in crises to God. Jesus likened this
approach to the penetrative qualities of yeast, salt and the mustard seed.
Mark 16:15 (NIV) He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all
creation.”
This scripture speaks about ‘all the world’ and ‘all creation’, or all the created world.
“Go: Lead over, carry over, transfer …
World: ‘kosmos’ the sum all things earthly, world affairs / systems… the human
constructs.
Preach: public proclamation
Creation means: The sum of all things created: every building, every creation, every
creature, every ordinance. This speaks of what God and humans have created.”
(Strongs Concordance)
Your faith should not separate you from God’s created world, rather faith should enable us to be
ministers of God’s reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:18 – 19: All this is from God, who through
Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation so that we may be
agents who reconcile the created world with God.
True faith matures us. We are enabled to live beyond ego so that we may respond to the
world’s systems with love, grace and wisdom, bringing liberty, rather than mere self-serving
certainty and evasive reaction.
Mathew 5:43-48: You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy." But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you
may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun shine on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what
recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your
brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just
as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The parallel text in Luke (6:36) says, "Be merciful just as
your Father is merciful."
Original blessing in Genesis does not follow a devastating story line of condemnation, but love
and redemption through relationship. The purpose is reconciliation of relationships with the
concomitant effect of blessing on what we call ‘the world’. A world God loves and made for us
to enjoy.
This biblical view of the world gives direction to the application of all knowledge taught in
schools. Original blessing was found in relationships between people, people and God, people
and creation and people with themselves in terms of understanding their glory as God’s image.
Every school subject falls more or less dominantly into one of these four relationships. History
speaks of human relationships, natural sciences of our relationship with the physical universe,
life-skills of our understanding of ourselves, Religious Instruction of our relationship with God,
etc. Learning how to integrate a biblical worldview into school subject content across all ages is
a learned teaching skill and a redemptive act.
Motivational direction for learning is important because we are not designed to find meaning in
learning alone, revelatory truth gives meaning for learning. Without direction you keep learning,
but never come to a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:7).
Schools with no plan to translate a kingdom-worldview into teaching and learning,
unintentionally separate secular and sacred, practising dualism and teaching secularism.
Young people with Christian hearts and secular minds live with an uneducated tension that too
often results in harmful Christian practice in the world.
With revelation from God, truth comes to learning. The image recognizes itself, its source of
life. The image bearer / the child encounters his or her Father close enough to receive the
breath of life and that which was temporal clay, ego, begins to breathe eternally in the world.
For God so loves the world that he now sends you.