ADAMS: Welcome to The State of Education program this morning. We are delighted to have you all with us. Our special guest today is Jeff Keaton. Jeff Keaton leads an organization called RenewaNation and we’re going to learn more about that this morning.
We’re going to be talking about the world of Chrstian education and Biblical worldview. We’re going to be talking about some of these ideas and concepts, so I hope you’re going to enjoy this session.
Jeff, welcome to the program.
KEATON: Thank you, Melvin. It's great to be with you.
ADAMS: Why don’t we start off by telling a little bit more about yourself so our audience can know who you are. And then, about the organization, how it got started, and what your focus is. Take it away.
KEATON: Alright, Melvin. Well, obviously, my greatest claim to fame is: I’m your brother-in-law.
ADAMS: There we go! Full disclosure.
KEATON: For those of you who don’t know anything about me and Melvin: Melvin taught me how to drive and Melvin taught me how to swim. He came into my life when I was in fifth grade and started dating my older sister. So Melvin and I go way back. Melvin was here for the first eight years, helping launch RenewaNation, as well. So we have a deep history.
I was raised in a family of nine children, a ministry family, as you know, Melvin, so well. My whole life has been wrapped up in trying to do something to help people and build God’s kingdom on earth. I was a pastor for almost twenty years. In the course of that, I ended up getting into education.
My first foray into education was in public schools where I had thirty-two Christian clubs. I had a Chrsitian club in every middle and senior highschool in Broward County, Florida when I was pastor down there, that we led as a church. That really got me into that realm. Inner city, Broward County, Florida, Fort Lauderdale…there’s a lot of rough and tumble there.
I start to say, “Wow, man, there’s a lot going on and we need to do something to fix some of this stuff.” Then I got into Chrsitian education when I became a pastor in Virginia and launched a Chrsitian school here and saw the power of weekday discipleship with kids. Then, in 2007 God burned on my heart the vision of RenewaNation.
Our vision is to transform our culture by giving millions of children a Biblical worldview. Our mission is to inspire and equip the family, church, and school to give the children in their care a Biblical worldview. So, Melvin, you were there from the first day. You were the first hire for RenewaNation, back in 2008. It’s taken a lot of years to get it established.
You and I went through some great days together and some tough days together, in the early days. But today, we’re working all across America. Our biggest division is Chrstina education. Right now we have contracts launching eleven new schools as I speak and many more in the pipeline. We have a program to rebuild struggling schools. Our latest renewal is in the Bahamas, actually.
Ron Gordon said, “Hey, my wife and I are doing that renewal.” I said, “Yeah, right!” And then we have teacher training programs, we have an online school, we have a homeschool coaching program. So, that’s our biggest division and that’s what this podcast is related to, is education. We do have a church and family division, we have a camp down in Tennessee—800 acres where we do training.
Lots going on. Our passion is to give children a Biblical worldview through any and all means.
ADAMS: That’s great Jeff. It is exciting to see what has been happening in the organization. For those who are listening though—I heard, already, a lot of different terms. Some might not be familiar with those terms.
We’ve heard “Christian education,” we’ve heard “Biblical worldview.” Obviously there’s your homeschool division or your online program. You’ve worked with existing schools to revitalize them and help start new schools in communities. I guess let’s start with: how would you define Christian education?
KEATON: I have an actual definition for that. Let’s see if I can give you the purpose of education. I say the purpose of education is to develop the knowledge, talents, skills, and character of young men and women so they can take dominion of the earth and bend Creation back towards God’s original design. In doing so, show the world the beauty and glory of God.
That’s my definition of the purpose of education. I call it my “working definition.” I share that with a lot of educators. I think all education—again, the reason I’m such a committed Chrstian is because you can actually teach them what God’s design is and what it looks like to bend Creation back to God’s design.
I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s my definition for the purpose of Christian education.
ADAMS: Okay. When you talk about God’s design and bending back towards God’s design…go into that a little more. What does that mean? To the person who’s just listening and this is all brand new to them…what are we talking about?
KEATON: Yeah! It goes back to the idea of what is a Christian worldview and what is a Biblical worldview?
Every human being has a worldview. It is your core set of beliefs that determines how you see reality and how you react to reality. The reason I’m so committed to the Christian, or Biblical, worldview is because I think it works out best in the real world.
In my 55 years of living, I’ve discovered everybody has a belief about every big question. Where did we come from? Who has ultimate authority in this world? What is our purpose for being here? Who sets the rules? Who determines what’s moral and what’s not? What’s right and what’s wrong? Every worldview is simply trying to answer all the great questions of life.
When you compare the Christian, or Biblical, worldview to all other worldviews, I consistently see it makes the most sense in reality, in the real world. Take the Biblical teaching on family: one man, one woman, coming together, married for a lifetime, and producing Godly offspring. When you compare that to other worldviews, when it comes to family, all statistics show—I don’t care if it’s a Christian research project, per se, or non-Christian—that the healthiest, happiest children in the world are children born into and raised by a mom and dad who stayed together and healthily raised their children.
That’s an example of God’s good design working out in the real world. Now let’s go back to bending back Creation towards God’s design. I’ll give you an example that people might not think about. If God were to call someone to build homes, how does that relate to bending Creation backwards? Well, in the Garden of Eden, according to the Scriptures, Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world—a world where there were no storms, no wild animals, no burglars, no murderers.
They were living in such a beautiful place, they didn’t have to worry about anything. Weather, evil—nothing. It was all beautiful. When sin came into the world and they were cast out of the garden, suddenly there were violent storms, there were evil people, there were animals that would attack them. Somebody came up with the idea that in order to get us back—to restore paradise lost—we’d better build some shelters.
Today, when a young person is called to build homes, they’re actually bending Creation back so people can live in safety and security like they did in the garden, in Eden, before the Fall. Our goal is to help young people understand God’s truth in the areas of business, medicine, law, government, ministry, and implement God’s thinking in all of those areas.
As we do that—as we align our world in every one of those areas with God’s good design—we search and discover what is God’s design. For example: our founding fathers knew, they believed, that man was born with evil in their hearts. Therefore, they created three branches of government. For what purpose? For checks and balances of power. Their Biblical worldview informed how they built our government.
I was on a plane sometime ago, sitting next to a Palestinian Muslim woman. She looked at me and she said, “You Americans don’t know what you have.” I said, “What do you mean?” She was the sweetest lady in the world. I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “The rule of law is so strong in this nation. I can drive from the East coast to the West coast and I feel safe. I can’t drive a city block in my country and feel safe.”
I said, “Do you want to know why the rule of law is so strong in this nation?” She said, “I do!” I took her back to our founding principles. I said, “Our founding fathers built this nation on a Judeo-Christian ethic and understanding. It’s created the most safe and prosperous and productive country in the history of the world.”
Now, America’s not Heaven. We have big problems these days. But the bottom line is, when you implement a Biblical worldview in all areas of society, you come up with the United States of America where everyone in the world is still trying to get here, just about. That’s what I mean by helping young people take dominion—we’re given that right in Genesis—take dominion of the earth and bend it back.
Now, the dominion mandate was given before the Fall. We’re were going to rule over the earth before the Fall. But once the Fall happened, now it’s much harder, but the more we can create human flourishing, what we’re doing is restoring a little of the paradise that’s lost. So that’s my passion. That’s why I’m so committed to training children in truth, because truth is what sets people free.
ADAMS: I think that last statement is significant. I think, ultimately, everybody—of course, everybody has, these days, their own “truth”—but at the end of the day, there isn’t a pluralism of truth. There is truth as it relates to any given matter.
It’s either true or it’s not true. In our culture today, there are so many lies becoming foisted into the culture. And particularly through education, these days. The issues that we’re facing in our schools, society, and culture at large…introducing things that are not scientific. Really, it comes back to nature’s law, right? For example, there’s the law of gravity and those foundational principles.
Over in Gatlinburg, Tennessee—we’ve been over there different times together—and there are some of these buildings that look like they’re built upside down. Yet, if you go and look at the blueprints, the foundation of that building is not upside down. The foundation has to be very specific and meet code. Why? Because without a proper foundation, it’s not going to stand. The house above the ground looks like it’s upside down, but everything that you don’t see is built to code.
The reality is, I think, that also is a great example of getting back to truth and bending things back to those first principles and, as you were defining it, those Biblical truths, those Biblical principles, God’s design in and for the world. When we follow those, we get very understandable and positive results. When we don’t, everything falls apart.
KEATON: I like to say “truth corresponds to reality.” It fits reality.
I was just thinking this morning that if our young people who are being taught the truth these days—they better start businesses. I’m not trying to be political, but a lot of the leftist ideas do not correspond to reality. The people who are going to be successful are the people who build their business on truth.
So much nonsense is happening in our country right now, especially in the whole social justice movement and that kind of stuff, that our young people who know the truth, they’re going to be super successful if the government in this country doesn’t turn against that so much that they don’t even allow these kids to thrive. But anyhow, another point.
Truth—when you build anything on truth—you’re going to get a good result.
ADAMS: What I’m hearing you say is—just to boil it down—you’re trying to get education focused back in the direction of truth.
KEATON: Absolutely.
ADAMS: Instill an understanding of what truth really is, how it works, and how it’s critical to one’s life and to everything around them.
KEATON: Absolutely.
ADAMS: Isn't that what education ought to be all about? Regardless of where a kid is going to school. Parents are clearly the first educators and if the parents set that child in the right direction, they’re giving them truth as they understand it, as they were taught it. That helps that child start, and if that continues on out…
Of course, there again we have the whole “my truth, your truth, his truth, her truth.” It’s kind of like the whole pronoun issue, these days. But at the end of the day, that’s not how reality works.
Let’s jump to another subject because approximately somewhere between 80 to 85 percent of America’s K-12 students go to public schools. The rest of them are divided up into private schools—which fits in the category of parochial Christian, faith-based, all of those. The homeschool element, and then you got various elements of charters. But even many of the charters are public and so forth.
For parents—and there are arguments we hear all the time like, “The problem with Chrsitian schools is they’re taking funding away, they’re taking the best students away,” etc, etc. There’s a lot of things like this. You hear that all the time, I’m sure, as you are an advocate for Christian education. What do you have to say about that?
KEATON: At the end of the day, I believe parents should be 100 percent in control of their child’s education.
I don’t believe that the government should be ultimately in control of what a child learns. That is the parent’s right: to choose. As far as Christian schools “taking away”...I don’t care about that, frankly. What I care about is: how are they educating children?
Children attend school from kindergarten to twelfth grade for 16,000 hours. What they learn in those 16,000 hours will absolutely determine who they become. There’s no two ways around it. Most parents don’t teach anywhere near that amount of time, even though they’re in their presence about that amount of time. They don’t teach during that whole time. They are teaching by example and all that.
The church gets kids for about 1,000 hours from kindergarten to twelfth grade. The church isn’t really the dominant influence. It’s really pop culture, media—which gets them for 15,000 to 20,000 hours—and education, which gets them for 16,000 hours. They’re going to spend 30,000 hours between school and pop culture and media.
What got me into Chrsitian education—and again, let me just say this to you real quick. Melvin, I know you’re focused heavily right now, and Noah Webster is, on putting excellent on school boards. And that’s fantastic. The way I see this—this is how I see this: the Titanic is sinking. We have 60/70 million K-12 kids in America. The Titanic’s going down because so many of those kids are not being taught the truth.
Be it public schools or private schools. There are plenty of private schools that aren't teaching truth. What we have over here is: I have a lifeboat. It’s called RenewaNation, it’s called Christian education, it’s called homeschooling, and we’re going over and trying to get as many kids off the sinking ship—secular education, be it private or public—and pulling them back and teaching them the truth.
What you’re doing is a different kind of lifeboat. You’re going over and you’re trying to make sure they teach the truth more on the ship and stop telling kids all these lies. What I say is we shouldn't be fighting each other over what lifeboat we’re using. We should be working together to make sure children are learning truth.
I care about children and that’s why I’m involved in what I’m involved in. But I don’t care about the government losing any money. Right now, in the last three years, we’ve gained about five million children in Christian education and Christian homeschooling. Everywhere I go. I’m going to schools that had 250 kids years ago, they have 900, 1,000 kids right now.
I’ve been doing that this whole spring. I’ve been going to huge schools. I was in one school that has 600 hundred kids on a waiting list right now. What has happened—and it’s helping what you’re doing, it’s helping what I’m doing—I call it “the great parental awakening.” God used COVID to awaken parents. At the end of the day, what I want to say to people is when you’re thinking about the education of your child…Mom, Dad: you be in charge. If your kid’s in a public school, you get yourself down to that public school, you examine everything they’re learning, you go to those school board meetings, and you object to what’s bad.
But don’t just object. Give new ideas. Here's what we could be teaching, here’s how we could approach that in the context that we’re in. I think the problem we have right now, in the public school system, is that all the parents are seen as the troublemakers, or negative, because they’re coming to these school boards and saying, “You’re not putting a boy in my girl’s locker room,” which is exactly what they should do.
Unfortunately, too many public school administrators are now at odds with the parents. That’s the last thing that should be happening. Now, this can happen in Christian schools too. I tell Christian schools all the time: “You don’t have the authority to teach that child. You only have delegated authority from the parent and you need to work with the parents and engage the parents.”
So, my response to that is: I don’t care one bit about the government schools losing money. What I care about is kids learning the truth and parents being in absolute control. I was just speaking in a very large school in Iowa a few weeks ago. They just passed a new, universal school choice: 7,800 per parent now goes to any kid in the state. That’s creating a unique set of challenges for Christian schools, believe it or not, because most of them are getting hundreds and hundreds of kids out of public schools. And there’s a culture issue now. We’re getting kids whose parents don’t care as much about the Christian side of it, they just want them in a better school, in their mind.
Anyhow, I don’t mean to ramble on and on, but my take on it is: parents should be in control, the government shouldn’t be in control, and parents ought to stand up and fight until they win these battles. The transgender issue, in particular—what they’re doing to children is child abuse. I’m not being radical here. It’s pure child abuse.
I just spoke at a big church up in Pennsylvania. The pastor came to me, and he has a massive ministry in the public schools. He’s in every school in that community and it’s a large church. He said to me, “Jeff, in one of the schools I’m working in there’s a girl who has declared herself a cat. They’re letting her go to the restroom in a kitty litter box.” This is a pastor who’s totally not involved in Chrisitan education. He’s involved in public schools trying to rescue the public school kids. He is blown away.
I was speaking at another camp and a high school senior came to me and said, “There’s a girl running around our school barking all day long and they won’t do anything about it because she now identifies as a dog.” What I’m saying to parents is: don’t ever let that become normal. Here’s my fear, Melvin: is that in three to five years this whole nonsense about boys playing girl’s sports, boy’s in the girl’s bathrooms, transgenderism, hormone treatment behind parent’s backs—if parents don’t act now, they’re going to wake up in three to five years like the frog in the kettle and they’re going to think it’s normal.
I say we have a three to five year window to either change what they’re doing at public schools or parents are going to have to make really, really big decisions.
ADAMS: Jeff, I couldn’t agree more. We’re hearing the same thing and we’re hearing people all the time. Ironically, yesterday I was speaking with a young man who is a middle school student. His sister is in elementary school, a public school. He was telling me how, at her school, there’s this girl that goes around hissing at everybody and she says she’s a cat. He said, “Man, things are getting really crazy.”
Look, if the kids understand that, surely adults should understand that. The reality is, things are out of control.