Portrait of a Graduate

PORTRAIT OF A GRADUATE

Madison Christian School seeks to provide an education that will serve as a foundation for living as faithful disciples of Christ.

We aim to "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness" (Matthew 6:33) and to "make disciples" (Matthew 28:19-20) with the understanding that other desirable outcomes may be "added unto you" (Matthew 6:34).

Our primary motivation is to educate for eternity rather than to focus on test scores, grades, sports recognition, job placement, patriotic citizenship, career pathways, or even college preparation. However, the type of education we seek to impart will likely lead to success in many of these subordinate pursuits. Our objective is to lovingly educate students to live their lives in relationship with and in service to God for the rest of their lives.

What follows is an attempt to capture what it means to live with this end in mind. The portrait of a Graduate should be viewed not as goals that end upon graduation, but instead as the trajectory for the rest of one’s life. They are indicators of living a life rich in knowledge, wise in application, and virtuous in action.

college ready

A Madison Christian School Graduate:

1. ARDENTLY EMBRACES the gift of the Gospel, submitting to its transformational power.

We have no greater desire for our graduates than that they place their faith in Jesus Christ and “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8). To live out the Christian life is understood to be simultaneously a work of God and a work of man (Philippians 2:12-13). Christ’s call is exacting; the truth of the gospel transforms every part of a disciple’s life and requires complete submission to Jesus as Lord (Luke 9:23). We pray that our graduates will be fervent in faith, hope, and love, pursuing God through prayer, Bible study, participation in a local church body, and living out their faith in righteousness and compassion. A life that has been genuinely transformed by Christ is a heart that loves what God loves.

In order to attain this vision, graduates must lay aside the desire to earn their own salvation, instead admitting their sinfulness and surrendering to God’s grace. Further, they must reject the apathetic comfort of lukewarm Christianity, which invites them to enjoy the promise of salvation while indulging in all the pleasures of the world. At the same time, they must guard themselves against the pride that can so easily accompany devout faith.

2. PERSISTENTLY HUNGERS after God’s character with a mindset on truth, as revealed in God’s Word, a will determined to want goodness, and affections that love beauty.

Education is as much a matter of training the heart as it is teaching the mind. Students who learn to recognize and love what is True, Good, and Beautiful desire to embody those characteristics and produce more true, good, and beautiful things to benefit others and glorify God. This is especially important in a society that is unable to recognize Truth, confuses self-centeredness and partisanship for Goodness, and reduces Beauty to self-expression. If MCS graduates walk away with superior knowledge and skill, but do not have their affections set on the highest things, we have created nothing more than what C.S. Lewis termed “clever devils.” Our ideal graduate will exhibit:

A commitment to the Truth, regardless of personal convenience.
The pursuit of Goodness, especially through the virtues of prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.
Appreciation for God’s Beauty in His creation and in those works of man which are praise-worthy.

When Truth, Goodness, and Beauty order their loves, students are better able to orient themselves to live as ambassadors of Christ in a disoriented world.

3. GENUINELY DELIGHTS in pursuing wisdom and virtue as the end of true education.

Christ calls us to a life of ongoing growth and improvement. Students who learn to love learning embark on a life-long journey of discovery and spiritual formation that will enable them to apply the lessons of the past to the complexities of contemporary life in wise and virtuous ways.

Graduates will be inquisitive individuals who marvel at the vast wisdom of God and seek to better understand and appreciate His character and works through a unified examination of His Creation. They will possess the skills to read, study, and contemplate meaningful ideas with depth and to confidently and articulately respond to the great questions of the ages from a foundation of Scriptural knowledge and familiarity with the works of the great thinkers on whose shoulders we stand.

4. SACRIFICIALLY SERVES their family, local church, and community through generous giving, compassionate evangelism, and fervent discipleship in Christian community.

The conviction that good works are a natural outgrowth of faith will lead graduates to action as they are moved to compassion by the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit (James 2:14-26). A life of service and sacrifice is a life worth living (Luke 9:23-24; John 15:12). We are designed to live in a community of discipleship (2 Timothy 2:1-2). This means we are active in the church (Hebrews 10:25), we faithfully tithe (Leviticus 27:30), and we graciously serve those who are in need, locally and universally (Matthew 5:42; Luke 12:33; Acts 20:35).

5. PRUDENTLY ENGAGES with the culture by embracing Christ’s call to be simultaneously “in” but not “of” the world.

The Christian is called to be “in the world” but simultaneously “not of it” (John 17: 14-15). Because the “days are evil” we are also called to “walk circumspectly” (Ephesians 5: 15-16). Yet, we are called to engage in culture, because “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” (Abraham Kuyper).

To engage a culture antithetical to Christ’s kingdom requires great wisdom–wisdom that can be gained through a careful study of the past and the enduring legacy passed on through tradition. Almost nothing lasts, so if something good has stood the test of time it should be studied carefully. A Christian, therefore, is someone who seeks to “understand the times” (1 Chronicles 12:32) by loving the wisdom of the past–and by extension seeks to pass on that tradition to the next generation.

We are not against change, but all change is not progress. Progress must be defined by the eternal standard defined in Scripture, not by the fleeting, temporal obsessions of this world (Psalm 100:5; Isaiah 46:8-10).