Craig Kwiatkowski and Sara Kraushar | Education and Christian Values | August 24th, 2025

I want to throw uh props out to uh those who start did the video with some of the video work, Weston and Ben and uh many of the other team.

Thank you so much for putting that together for us.

That was awesome.

It's always nice to actually check in on um what's happening at camp, and I was able to go this year, and uh some of the kids said all the messages were all amazing.

So I want to just say thank you to that because we had some incredible speakers that were out there, and uh kids came back with a lot going on.

How many of you know?

Uh I mentioned last week I came second on the brisket cook-off, and I just want to know that actually the healing has begun and I'm getting better.

We had a date night this week, and uh when I'm mini-golfing, I just want to announce that Natalie and I won the date night golf night.

So it's part of the healing process that God uses to take care of the most arguing.

Yes, we needed it.

They gave us a gift card.

Try and repair this, okay, for Sunday.

Uh, before we hear from two of our lead team today, some incredible leaders who are responsible for uh building what we see here at KCCS, I want to set the stage with a bit of a reminder this morning.

For over 40 years, uh KCC has been living out a conviction that the church and by extension our schools and our missions programs are not just human organizations, but God's design.

And uh when we pray, when we sing these songs that God is got it doing a good thing, and he's doing a good work in you, how many of you know that he who began a good thing, a good work in you, is faithful to complete that good thing?

God is faithful to complete what he started.

And if it's God's design, he will stick with it to the end.

And Jesus said something revolutionary and transformatively.

He said in Matthew 16, 18, I will build my church.

Amen?

And the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

When God builds something his way, then the gates of hell will not prevail against what he is building, as long as you're building according to his design.

And our task has never been to invent something new for ourselves, but to build what we see God is building in his way, in the way he desires.

And we're his instruments in building his church.

How many of you know that this is his church?

Our name, like we may have a name, but it's his name who we acknowledge and we celebrate in this place.

We honor him.

And that's the same with our schools, the same with our leadership team.

We we live to make his name known and his name great.

When Jesus used the word ecclesia for his church, he was describing more than just a place of worship.

So this church on a Sunday morning is a part of the ecclesia, but it's not the ecclesia in its wholeness.

In wholeness, it is the extension of the kingdom of God to every area in society.

That's business and government and entertainment and the media, it's in family and it's in education.

When you see education, education is in God's heart.

So no, we're not here just to, in quote, run schools or run programs or run a church.

We're here to partner with God in his plan.

In his plan to raise up a generation of young people that you see today on the screen.

Sons and daughters of the king, sons and daughters that are here to live and extend their purpose into the world and make a difference.

And so each one of us carries that calling to make a difference in our generation.

And today we're just privileged to be able to hear from two of our teams.

So would you just stand with me as we uh acknowledge and just it's a joy for me to invite Sarah Krausier and Craig Kwiakowski today, sharing this morning?

Awesome.

Thanks, Brody.

Uh just one second here while we get this set up and on the screen.

Um, who who was the one who made the video?

Was that you, Jamin?

Who made that?

Oh man, that was a really well done video.

That was like top notch.

All right.

Let's get this.

All right.

So thanks, Brody, for that introduction.

Um today's gonna be a little different than a usual Sunday morning.

Uh, not necessarily a sermon.

Um, but our hopes that you leave here today uh with more of an understanding of what's happening in a big part of our organization on the educational side of things, but then also with a principle that we hope uh everyone can walk out of here uh with a new thought about embracing in their lives.

Uh, and then also to see a glimpse of where it is we're going as a school.

Um it was interesting, the last song of the worship set there, all about uh God's good plans.

Um it's really interesting because we're gonna be talking about some of his good plans uh that we believe he's at work uh in the schools.

And so uh for anyone who doesn't know me, uh my name is Craig Kuikowski.

I'm the uh the chief operating officer for Kelowna Christian Center Society, uh which includes uh the church, uh Heritage Christian Online School, and then our campus school, Flex Academy.

Uh I've been here for nearly eight working here for nearly 18 years.

I've been here since I was three years old in the church, the organization working.

I went to school at Heritage Christian School all the way uh through grade 12.

Um, so this place has been a big part of my life, and it's a real honor to be able to be part of helping steward it and uh overseeing sort of all the operational support structures that are part of this organization.

And with me is Hi, I'm Sarah Krauser.

I'm the head of schools for Heritage Christian Online School and Flex Academy.

I've been working here for 15 years.

I arrived as a young mum with three kids, three and under, and have been here ever since.

So I've been eight years in my current role as head of schools.

So, what we do know about KCCS is that Christian education has always been at the heart of this mission.

Um, we know it's been a core facet of what is done here.

And if you all recall back when Craig talks about going to school here, I believe it was a few kids with a team of volunteers doing a self-paced curriculum and doing the best they can.

But if you can think from those humble beginnings, uh, what God has done, the story of the schools and the story of KCCS is a story of God's faithfulness.

So I wanted to walk you through a few numbers.

And the numbers aren't the number the point of numbers isn't to glorify ourselves or growth or size.

It actually paints a picture of God's faithfulness, how he has put favor on this place, how he's called us to be faithful to his call for this society to be involved in Christian education, and how over the years people said yes, those original volunteers who built the the they talked about like down with paint cans, painting before the kids came in, and every mom was volunteering to supervise education, and no one was getting paid, they just felt a call in their life to do Christian education, and from that little seed of obedience, where a small group of our founders said, yes, we've seen God be faithful to this place.

So, of course, we started the Heritage Christian School that ran from 1986 to 2023.

In 2023, um, the school was closed and opened again under the online school leadership as Flex Academy.

And we just finished our second year.

And yes, woo! When you I remember like when we were advertising people to come to that school, it didn't exist.

It was like an imaginary school.

So we have the school, it's named Flex, it's a first of its kind in Canada, but we believe God's calling us to it come and be a part of it.

And now two years in, I'll tell you a little bit of the story.

And then we also have Heritage Christian Online School, um, which was birthed out of the home education community and out of this place as well.

So in the first year we started with 400 um students.

This year we were well over 4,000 in our full-time enrolled students.

Yes, amen.

And wow, what a ride it's been.

Uh, our online uh, or sorry, our cross-enrolled population, you see the big spike when that was the year that there was a teacher strike in BC, but we've more moderated around 2,300 students that come to us from schools all over the province.

This is an amazing ministry because when kids call from wherever public school they are in BC, uh, the girls in the office say, Hi, yes, we'd love for you to join our school.

Did you know we're a Christian school?

And so your teachers are gonna pray for you, and the content is Christian.

Are you okay with that?

And they say, Well, my school counselor told me to go here.

And so in they come, and we pray for them and we uh try to guide them, we try to plant seeds of faith in their life.

So, coming up this year, this is our projections for the 2025-2026 year, HCOS expects a total of 4,908 full-time students, 2,588 cross-enrolled students, which includes our international and adult students, and 705 home homeschool registered students for a total of 8,201 unique students.

God has built this place.

And this is a story of HCS, very faithful school.

You can see how it was trucking along quite well.

COVID really hit the school hard, and we had to reimagine it and reopen it as Flex, and now you can see us bouncing back.

It's been really exciting to welcome kids to our school for the 2025-2026 school year.

Flex Academy expects a total of 280 full-time students, a growth of 20% again.

We did that last year too.

As newly expanded facilities begin to fill up, you've all noticed in the parking lot we had two portables and now we have four.

Um we have space also for 24 junior kindergarten or preschool students.

We're working hard to build our preschool because can you imagine if we got kids through our doors at age three and kept them till age 18?

That's 15 years of speaking life and wholeness and God's design for their life over them and into them.

So spread the word about preschool.

We'd love to get our little flexors early and help teaching them about what it means to be a part of our community.

We love our community and we love the way that we get to build into families' lives and children's lives for that continuity of time.

With 74 new students already accepted this year and 12 new staff, it will be another year of learning and growth.

And you can pray over our leadership as we continue to grow.

Growth brings great things, it also brings challenges.

We have to keep going back and telling our story of our root and our foundation and what God has done so that when people come and join this place, they can participate fully in this story.

From those original founders, painting, volunteering, watching kids do a self-paced curriculum up to today where we have a giant group of people that work with us.

These are our staffing levels for 2025-2026.

We work with nearly 800 people across the province.

It's actually so much that we can't have them all to our conference next week.

Next week we host a conference called Renew Ed.

We come to be renewed.

We come to renew our vision, our vision, our mission, to join together as a community, to remember what we're doing and why we're doing it.

And then we send our people out all over the province.

What we can't do is bring them all.

So we have another group called our educational assistance.

This year we're over 300 educational assistants.

They all will launch separately on Zoom.

But you can be please praying for us next week.

When everyone comes together, it's the time in which they're looking for us to set vision, for us to have been communicating with the Holy Spirit and reporting back what we think God's calling to us to this year.

So we'll look to have around 800 people working with us throughout the province this year.

So just a couple of quick reminders of our mission.

I think it's really important that we never lose sight of what we're doing and why.

It's the metric through which we make our decisions, it's how we keep ourselves on course and how we ensure we're walking within the way that God has set before us.

So our mission is to develop innovative, Christ-centered educational opportunities for learners to explore and embrace God's unique purpose.

We're founded on the values of academic success, of integrity, of relationship, and flexibility.

These are really important in our school because we try to build programs for each child rooted in their identity and who God's calling them to be so that they can be successful and to grow into who they're intended to be.

At Flex, our mission is to make education as expansive and flexible as possible so that all students are valued and thrive as they grow into their future with Christ.

So we're taking that personalized model from our online school and implanting it into Flex, allowing kids to learn and grow and explore who they were made to be.

Here's what we look like now.

This was an amazing concept where we thought, how do we explain what HCOS is in an image?

So we've been for a year trying to go like, is it a graph?

Is it a chart?

And then Bree, our uh director at Flex Academy, said, you know what actually HCOS feels like?

It's like an amusement park where you go and enter the door and then you decide, am I gonna go down to the roller coaster alley or am I gonna go over here?

And at each place, you can pick and choose the parts that you want to be involved with.

So this is what this is what HCcoast is.

Each of these dots or banners represents a program that runs all around the province.

And we'd love you to have a look at it and get to know a little bit about us, and Craig will talk a little bit more about it.

But what you can see from this is that we can we were actually entrusted to build and grow a program that has only been able to grow in such unique ways because of our governing society, KCCS.

It allowed us to explore, create, and stay also intent and focused on what we're doing.

We've been on a journey towards refreshing our internal connections between the arms of the society as an organization to be strategically ready for what God is calling us to next.

We'll give a little shout out to our visual design team.

So we have a whole arm of the school, and it's somewhere on here, and I don't even know where, called Study Forge, which builds online curriculum that we use in our schools, but then we also sell it all across North America.

And to make curriculum of that level, you need a visual design team as part of it.

And they're the ones who took Brie's idea and then put uh visuals to it and came up with it.

So if you go to learningwithoutlimits.ca, um you'll hear that name again here, but uh you can see this interactive map, and it's it is interactive.

Every one of the dots that you see on here, you can click, and it takes you somewhere in one of our websites and explains more about that thing.

So if you're ever interested in checking it out, it's a great way to do it.

Um, this ecosystem is expansive, creative, complex, diverse, innovative.

Um, and there's a lot going on here.

Uh, and just as Sarah talked about our school-specific mission statements, it's also vital to ensure this entire organization, school and church together, is operating from the same root mission.

So, this is the Colonel Christian Center Society mission statement that's the overarching drive that helps every part of this organization stay focused and not get distracted.

KCCS exists so that all people can experience abundant life in Christ by reaching, raising up, and releasing people who reflect the kingdom of God through creating communities of belonging and learning.

We believe that a mission statement should not just be a phrase that sits on a website or in an employee handbook glanced at once and then forgotten.

For a mission statement to be effective and to authentically serve as a tool to guide decision making, it needs to be repeated over and over and over and over again.

So this is what we do over and over and over, ad nauseum.

Because once you've heard it so often that you're sick of it, then it actually starts to permeate your thinking, and it will naturally be front of mind when situations and decisions and opportunities come.

It also matters that we understand what we mean by the words.

As we know, in today's day and age, uh a lot of different words can mean a lot of different things, um, even compared to what they used to mean.

And so it's important for us.

So I'm just gonna unpack a couple of these.

Um we always start with why.

Why does KCCS exist?

KCCS exists so that all people can experience abundant life in Christ.

And a key concept here is abundant life in Christ.

What's not meant here is prosperity gospel.

It's not about having wealth, health, ease.

Of course, we all like those things, but that's not what the focus is.

A fulfilled life in Christ is a result of becoming who God uniquely designed each one of us to be.

When we live out who He made us to be, difficulties and pain and suffering may still be part of that journey, yet we have a peace that passes understanding and a deep inner joy in spite of the circumstances that come when we're walking in our purpose in relationship with God.

That's what abundant life looks like.

Um, the next question is how?

How do we get to that why?

There are lots of different ways to get there.

We need to know how we do it.

And that's reaching, raising up, and releasing people who reflect the kingdom of God.

Our church and schools help people find this by coming alongside them, walking with them as they learn who God is and who they are.

Teaching, encouraging, challenging, inspiring, and then cheerleading as those people then go do the same.

Reflect the kingdom of God.

Why this word reflect?

These are just some definitions from the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

To give back or exhibit something or someone as an image, likeness, or outline, to cause something such as honor or credit to be attributed or associated, to make something manifest or apparent, to cause something or someone to be thought of in a specified way, to have a bearing or influence.

When you think of all those definitions in light of who we are called to be as Christ followers, it forms a robust picture and really sets out a powerful goal of how we become the essence of the kingdom of God.

And the final question is what?

So what do we do to get that?

What's our mandate or our method?

The really simple answer is that we do church and schools.

That is what we do to accomplish the how and to get to that why.

But when the board was looking at this, no one really fell in love with that language.

Um, those words church and school, they're so broad, they've been, they're so common, they've been used forever, they can have a lot of variances.

There was a feeling that we wanted to be a little more specific.

So we worked on crafting a statement that we believed encompassed both church and school, and also created potential space for new expressions.

We tried to dig into what was at the core of our church and schools.

And we arrived at creating communities of belonging and learning.

As we pushed through layers of what it is that we do, we consistently found ourselves back at these foundational words: community, belonging, learning.

As we tested things we do against this, they held up.

Whether church services, small groups, missions work, education, and all the subsets within those, ultimately the thing we do is create communities of belonging and learning.

This church is a community, it says right on the wall in the foyer, where people belong and Jesus matters.

And it's a place of learning, of growing from one place to the next on the path God is taking each of you on, whether that's a Sunday morning or a small group or a class during the week.

Learning happening constantly.

And of course, the school does this as well.

The learning aspect is a really obvious part of a school, but we feel particularly called to also make our schools communities of belonging, where it's not just a transactional educational experience, it's a genuine relational, connective journey where every student and staff member is known and loved and cared for fully, not just academically.

The body of Christ is an incredible mosaic of callings and expressions, and we celebrate that and love that.

But we also need to be clear on who it is God's calling this community to be, and we believe this is it.

And so we endeavor to always ensure that our decisions, our ways of operating, the opportunities we choose to embrace, that all rest within the parameters of this mission.

We're good, we're good.

All right, so every year the schools they set a school-wide focus, and the purpose of this is to respond to what our community is asking and doing, and also to respond to what God's calling us to in the next year.

So last year, our school-wide focus was to celebrate God's faithfulness while moving forward into his design for our schools, united in clarity of purpose and engaged in thoughtful communication.

We celebrated 20 years last year as an online school.

That was a remarkable place to be.

But when you celebrate something like that, you also have to go, okay, what did we do?

And now where are we going?

So we really spent last year seeking God's will for this place and asking him what's next for the schools and for our society.

And it was a really collaborative process as we met with a board and chatted through those things, as we met with our schools and our directors, as we watched and waited and listened for God to direct our paths over the year.

We also tried really hard to clarify what we are doing and why, to recall our purposes and our foundations and to thoughtfully engage in communication with all the members of our schools and our society.

So that's what we did last year.

And over the year, a lot of things came to fruition.

God spoke to our leadership through inside people, through external people, and this is our school-wide focus for next year.

It's to respond to God's abundance with gratitude, cultivating courageous generosity as an expression of trust, serving with joy.

Over the year, we saw so many times that we needed to be so grateful for the abundance that God has gifted this place with.

In all my years of working here, I've constantly been amazed at God's favor upon this organization.

There's been times where I've thought, are we gonna make it?

Can we actually stretch and grow this?

Can we welcome new people in?

Can we add this program?

But God has continually bestowed favor, not only internally, but in the eyes of the government.

He has bestowed favor upon us in incredible ways.

We're actually sitting at our best place ever with the Ministry of Education, actually commending us, using us as an exemplar.

They're publishing a snippet of the online school as an example for what school good programming looks like in a Ministry of Education document.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

There's something to remembering where we came from, right?

And I remember when I took this job eight years ago, we didn't have a good reputation with the Ministry of Education.

We actually had a pretty contentious relationship.

They were constantly looking to see if we were dodging around things or trying to go our own path.

And then last week, the inspector of independent schools called me.

She said, Sarah, this thing has come up with one of your students, and we talked through it, and she said, Oh, I have so much faith and trust in your programs.

They're so excellent.

I'll go back and explain this to the main ministry of education.

And I was like, whoa.

Like when we first started that, those um inspectors of our school were like looking to find faults, and now they were looking to defend us for having excellent programming.

So, and that's not that's because every single person in the society we agreed that we would do our work with integrity, that we would do it with excellence, and we would be transparent.

Just open it up, open our books, see what we're doing, look at our finances, look at we just decided to be as transparent as possible.

And if anything was found, then we would fix it.

We don't need to get mad about it, we just need to fix it.

And then we can reorient, recalibrate, and do it better.

So we've slowly turned that ship, and now we do feel like I can open any student's SLP, I can open a report card, and I will find good work.

And that's been really exciting to see.

So that feels like God's abundance.

He's abundantly gifted this place, and so we need to be grateful.

And out of gratitude, what does it seed?

It seeds generosity.

It seeds, and we can be generous because we trust, and out of that all we can find joy.

So the first part of our school-wide focus, well, first of all, we base it on this verse, and um we always pick a passage, this is kind of a big one, but if you look at the middle verses, he so he who supplies seeds to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

You will be enriched in every way, to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.

For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.

So the generosity that we want to focus on this year is a generosity in our posture of our hearts, our willingness to assume the best of others, to give from the deep well of grace we ourselves have received, to show up for other people, especially those who may be overlooked, marginalized, or simply hurting.

Let's talk about what it means to be courageously generous.

In our context, this means entering each interaction with others with a spirit that assumes the best and that offers to believe that people can grow and offers grace even when it's costly.

Sorry, I think I have different notes here.

For those of us that work in this Christian organization or belong to it, which each and every one of you do, we all work with vulnerable people.

And it's not easy work.

The people that we interact with may be coming from trauma, from broken systems, from complex family situations.

They may have been navigating challenges or simply be feeling invisible.

And I think if you think of your world, those people are in your world because they're in all of our spheres of influence, whether that's in schools, whether that's in church, whether that's in our day-to-day life.

So the call for courageous generosity is a call to respond with generous assumptions in those moments.

When we might feel resistance, that we can meet it with patience.

When we might get silence, that we can respond with compassion.

When we find chaos, that we can be bringers of peace.

And that takes courage, that's not softness, it's actually Christ-like strength to receive all of that brokenness and pain and vulnerability with a generous spirit.

Courageous generosity also means being generous with one another, building a community where staff feel seen, where collaboration is the norm, and where mistakes are opportunities for grace and learning.

And I think if you think in your context, all of those things happen.

And it depends how we want to receive those.

Could we presume that people are doing the best that they can?

That's a really interesting thing to presume, because it takes a switch away from judgment.

If we were meeting an obstacle with judgment, we might think this person's lazy, they're thoughtless, they're ignorant.

That can be our reception, right?

When someone comes at us with something we don't like.

But if instead, if you try to think this person is doing the best that they can, it radically changes the posture of your heart.

Instead of meeting them with frustration, which actually breaks relationship and causes shutdown, instead we can ask ourselves, is there a skill that they need built, or is there a tool that they might be lacking?

And if we can step back and practice this generosity with people, so when we don't get the response we were hoping for, instead of being like casting a judgment, they're lazy, they're not trying, they don't get it.

Instead, if we thought, huh, are they missing a skill?

Can I help build into them?

Can I offer them a tool?

That's the way we want to be as a staff to one another this year, but I think it's a way that we want to be as Christians.

When we interact with people in our communities and our families, how are we receiving their brokenness and their pain?

We can also probably practice this generosity with ourselves.

I don't know how many of you are your hardest critics, but we often heap a lot of judgment on ourselves.

How could I be so stupid?

Why didn't I see that?

How come I paid so much?

What an idiot.

If you think of the amount of things you say to yourself that are judgment and that actually keep you down from achieving what you're what you are potential, maybe you could choose to reflect that same spirit of generosity on yourself.

Is there a skill that I need to grow?

Maybe I need to grow my research skills before I make purchases.

Or maybe I don't have a tool.

And so when I did that thing and I wasn't successful, maybe I need to figure out what tool I need so that next time I try, I can be successful.

Every time we step out of judgment towards others or ourselves, we step into grace and we are generous.

We can recognize that we're doing the best we can do as well.

Generosity is rooted in trust.

Trust in God's provision.

Trust that we don't walk into things alone.

That He's with us, He tells us, I'll go before you, I'll make the way, I'll be alongside you, and I'll come behind you.

This morning I invited someone to go to my church, and I'm not there.

And um, I actually invited her to come next week.

She said, I'm so desperate.

I think I need to come this week.

So I was like, what do I do?

So phoned the youth pastor.

My son is also out of town, but his best friend was gonna be there.

My husband showed up, they were all at the door waiting for her.

They went before, God went before her, went before me.

She didn't come.

It's okay.

He's laying a he's laying the groundwork, right?

So we have to step out and trust that God's with us in all of these things, that he lays the groundwork.

It's not up to us to grow the plant.

We just need to be there to help and encourage and guide.

We don't have to manufacture success.

We sow seeds faithfully and then we wait on the Spirit to do his part.

That's what Paul was getting at when he said, God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that you may abound in all good work.

And another part of trust is that in our world, it actually tells us to hoard, right?

To hoard our time, our emotional energy, our resources.

We as Christians need to choose a different way.

We trust that God's grace is not in short supply.

We give freely because we believe that we are being held by God, that he has us.

So there it's not too risky to give, to think generously of people, to assume the best.

We can do that because we know he is doing the same with us.

So when we feel overwhelmed or we feel under-resourced, we can take a deep breath and remember that God's abundance is not theoretical, it's real, and his grace is enough for all of us.

Finally, the last part of our school-wide focus is about choosing joy.

And that's not because things are always easy, but because God is always good.

Serving with joy doesn't mean pretending everything is fine, it means choosing delight anyway, because we know who holds the story.

Joy is a very countercultural thing, it's a countercultural emotion, actually.

And this world is actually full of burnout and cynicism.

And what we do and how we behave is compelling to everyone around us in our sphere.

I want to think of right now, if you ask someone, how are you doing?

What's the general kind of response you might get?

Fine, busy, tired, those are the kind of words that we usually receive.

I was, I've tried to pay attention to it over the last while, and that's what people say to me.

I'm busy, I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm fine, so so.

Have you when's the last time you heard someone respond with joy?

I'm great.

Last week I did this.

Like, that's so rare, and it's because it's more vulnerable.

It's actually easy to respond with cynicism.

Be like, I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm busy, I can't believe everything on my plate.

That's so easy.

It's understandable, it requires very little response from others, like, oh yeah, me too.

Like, can you believe it?

Schools are just around the corner and have all these things to do.

Like, that can be our posture, and there's authenticity that sometimes that is where we're at.

But when we show up with joy and peace and warmth, people around us can believe that joy is possible for them too.

So our community needs us to see that we can be vulnerable enough to display joy, not based on circumstances and not out of ease.

If we were only ever joyful when our life was easy, we would never be joyful.

Because I have yet to find a season in my life where I'm like, eh, this is easy.

It's just not.

Um, so our joy is not based on circumstances, but it's based on God's faithfulness.

Because even in those challenging times, when we pause and we're honest and we look around us, we'll see God's with us, carrying us, guiding us, going before us, by our side, and coming behind us.

So our communities that we go out into, that we minister to as we leave this place, they need to see Christians that behave as though the gospel is true.

Right?

That God is faithful and that he offers us hope, and we have a deeply grounded joy in him.

So, what does this mean for us?

I'm saying us, as all of us that participate in this community of belonging and learning.

It means this year that we can choose to sow bountifully, we can choose to give freely, teach boldly, serve joyfully, not from a place of obligation, but from a place of gratitude.

We will not always see the fruit of our work immediately.

We don't.

We don't know what that one sentence, that one invitation, what could it turn into in the future?

But we trust that the seeds that we plant in faith will yield a harvest in God's time.

We're going to rely on each other, lift each other up, and remind one another of the bigger story that we're part of.

Sometimes we get so zoomed in on what's in front of us, we forget to zoom out and see God's bigger story that's being written through our work through this place.

We can model courageous generosity, express joy and trust in God's provision, and serve with joy.

Thanks be to God, Paul writes, for his indescribable gift.

So we want to live this year as people who know just how good that gift is.

So we have this inexpressible gift that we've been given.

And Matthew 10, 8 says, freely you have received, freely give.

So what does this tangibly look like in our school?

We're moving into a new season in our school by doing three things.

The first thing is to continue to embrace our school's mission statement to develop innovative, Christ-centered educational opportunities for learners to explore and embrace God's unique purpose.

The traditional education model is struggling to meet the needs of today's learners.

I think it's not that's not a secret.

I think all of us know and are aware of the struggles of the educational system.

Families are asking for more flexibility, teachers are calling out for more support, students are navigating increased anxiety and disengagement.

The world has changed, but education has not kept pace.

Those looking closely at the picture on your right will think those clothes are definitely not from today, even though it says today on the picture.

No, they are not, which tells you we've been identifying this problem for a long time.

In the early 2000s, Sir Ken Robinson, an expert in creative and person-centered learning, produced three TED Talks that brought significant awareness to a core problem in the educational system all over the world, particularly the Western world.

The idea that our education system is based on an industrial revolution factory model, and it is based on the idea that the most important commonality between kids is their age.

His TED Talk, called Do Schools Kill Creativity, is the most watched TED Talk of all time.

He spoke all over the world.

Sarah and I saw him speak in Abbotsford, and educators all over agreed with what he was saying.

Yet, 20 years later, not a lot has changed in the vast majority of schools.

And that doesn't mean there aren't amazing educators out there all throughout the educational system trying their best to bring change, but they're stuck in a system that has changed very little in well over a hundred years, and one a system that's broadly resistant to change.

We also know there's a mental health crisis happening right now in the minds of our young people.

Thankfully, the world's waking up to the immense harm that social media is causing.

If you haven't read the book The Anxious Generation, I recommend it as an incredibly eye-opening and sobering assessment of where we are and why when it comes to the impact of social media and smartphones.

And we also know that the desperate need in hundreds of millions of young minds is a revelation of who God is and what Christ did, and how their creator has designed each one of them as a unique, invaluable person with a calling and a purpose.

The second thing we're doing is building off 38 years of educational experience, and in particular the past 21 years of exploring, developing, and implementing personalized learning tailored to each learner.

While the education system as a whole has changed very little, there are schools and educators that are pushing the boundaries and bringing innovative shifts in education.

And our school is a core part of that movement.

We started with home-based and online education through HCOS and then began creating weekly in-person opportunities for students to meet all around BC.

We've now got 26.

26 locations around BC where every week students from HCOS come in person, usually to a church facility, because they often sit empty during the week, and they come once a week from their home-based learning programs.

And then most recently, we shifted from a traditional brick and mortar school, like we talked about with HCS to Flex Academy to a hybrid learning model, taking the best of in-person and digital education in order to create an educational path that's personalized, that enhances relationship with caring adults and strengthens academic outcomes.

God has brought phenomenal, innovative, and courageous people to this organization.

Our schools have become leaders in these fields in BC and in North America, with dozens of schools and educational leaders already coming and looking to learn or to partner with us so they can begin making shifts in their schools.

And the third thing is, as Sarah talked about, to give courageously and generously from the abundance God has given us in order to journey with those other schools and leaders, to make an impact and a shift in the educational system in need of transformation.

We believe we're called to continue to do what we do with excellence and also to open up to give and serve, to be a part of transformation and education.

There's many benefits in being generous, and we know it's a principle God's weaved into the design of this world and this life the concept of give and it shall be given to you.

We also believe that God takes us on a path of maturity where we begin to give without needing to think.

Think about what we might receive from the giving.

Courageous generosity comes from a place of motivation without there needing to be anything in it for us, even if there is.

Just truly, purely giving out of love.

It's understandable that this can cause fear, that there may be this feeling we need to grip tightly to what we have, perhaps out of fear we may be under attack, that we might lose what we have if we're not guarded.

But that is not how we're called to live as followers of Christ.

We're not to live in fear, but in faith and hope and love.

In our humanity, we're very good at hearing concepts like generosity and quickly rationalizing solid logical reasons why we should be wise with our resources, steward what we've been given, not be foolish, don't get taken advantage of, and so on.

And there's certainly wisdom and truth in that, but I'd suggest that we are really good at talking ourselves out of being generous or reducing our generosity.

It is so often in our nature to become critical of opportunities for generosity.

Will the gift be valued properly?

Will it be used well?

Will I have enough left for what I need?

And on and on.

I think we've all been there.

I know I certainly have.

And to be clear, generosity is not just about finances.

As Sarah said, it's our time, our ideas, our grace, our skills, our solutions, our forgiveness, our encouragement, our appreciation, all of our resources.

And so that's the heart we want to ensure that we're cultivating as we move forward.

To do this, we're building the Nexus for Innovation in Education, a purpose-built facility that will serve as a flagship preschool to 12 hybrid school, which will house Flex Academy for 500 students, and also be a gathering point for thought leaders and innovation implementers in order to gain knowledge, inspiration, and support in the growing movement to transform personalized education locally, nationally, and globally.

The Nexus is both a physical and virtual ecosystem.

As you saw on that map that we showed a couple times on the screen, very little of what HCOS is is actually physical and in a building.

It's virtual, it's all over the place.

It is both.

It's not a building, but it needs a building, much like a church.

How many times have you heard, you know, what the church is not the building, the church is the people.

And it's the same idea.

Yet, you know, especially in the winter, it would not be a lot of fun without a building to meet as a church.

The nexus for innovation in education is the articulation of the vision of HCOS to be a place of relentless innovation, educational transformation, and intentional generosity.

The heart of our mission is serving all learners so their God-designed identity can shape their communities in the world.

We believe using the educational model of hybrid learning is the key.

And what you see on screen here is just a, I don't even think it's fully comprehensive, of the all the places we're already partnering and working with.

We're designing a facility to both do it well and to show it well.

The Nexus building will allow us to expand our impact, enabling us to share our knowledge as an offering to many other schools experiencing strain as they struggle to innovate.

As a front runner in educational innovation, we're eager to develop partnerships of support and co-creation so that we can see schools across Canada globally and globally serve students in a way that unlocks learning.

Our desire is not to try to be everything for everyone.

We know who we're called to be for the community we're called to serve, and then we also believe we're called to now open our doors and go, if there's something that we can give and offer, if you can learn something that you can go back and transform your school community, we want to be here to help with that.

So we could spend a lot of time talking through the aspects of hybrid learning, how the model sees an increase in genuine relational care from adults, passionate about each child's spiritual, emotional, and educational journeys.

We could talk about how it increases responsibility and ownership of learning, how it results in students being better prepared for post-secondary, how it meets kids who either love school or who struggle with school to build a personalized program in which each of them can thrive, and how that all can be done at a lower cost than a traditional school model.

But for today, our time is up.

And if you are interested in learning more about that and where we're going as a school, again, please visit learningwithoutlimits.ca.

Or feel free to ask us, or this place is also full of people who work for the school.

Um and so you can ask any one of them about the work that we do and what that looks like.

I hope that excites you.

Like, I think it's an amazing call.

It's super daunting.

Um we spend a lot of time going, like, really?

Is that really what you're asking us to do?

Us?

Um But we do believe that by doing this, we can set up the next generation of Christian education to be successful, to meet the needs of changing family needs and changing patterns of life and behavior.

So it's really exciting.

Um you guys have been doing a series called Everyday Saints, correct?

Uh, and I know that's a journey of the lives of seemingly ordinary people in the Bible who are used by God in powerful ways.

We're that's all of us.

That's all of us involved in this new initiative.

We're ordinary people that God is we're saying yes to.

That's really all we're doing is saying yes, use us.

And then God is using all those 800 people in extraordinary ways to draw kids towards Him and families towards Him.

So we're grateful.

We're grateful, we're challenged, we're excited, um, and we hope you'll join with us in praying over this, in helping us to see it come to a fruition.

It's an exciting and and uh nerve-wracking time, but we believe God is in it, and we believe if we can move forward in obedience and hope and trust and gratitude, that we can have joy in this journey as well.

So as we launch into a capital campaign, which can feel absolutely terrifying at moments, um, we're also full of faith, like Sarah said, knowing that what God started, he will bring to completion.

Um, and we're along for the ride, taking leaps into whatever it is he's asking of us.

So we do look forward, we'll we'll keep the church community updated as well along the way as this progresses.

We're in the very early stages.

Um, but our prayer is that you leave here today, hopefully excited to be part.

Maybe there's something you learned.

I know there's some new faces since the last time we talked here, and maybe you learned some things about this organization that maybe you didn't even realize we were doing, um, or maybe you did know and you learned something else.

So we hope it was informative that way.

We also hope that it was exciting in terms of seeing the vision of where it is we're going.

Um, but most importantly, we hope that you leave the with the thought of courageous generosity in your thoughts and hearts today.

That's something that is applicable to every single one of us in every one of our lives, no matter what it is we're doing, having that posture of courageous generosity and having our eyes open to see the opportunities of what it is, how God wants to be through us to other people.

Um, so those are our thoughts for this morning.

We'd love to close in prayer and then we'll invite uh Brody back up.

Father, we are so incredibly grateful for your goodness and your faithfulness.

Thank you for taking a group of people almost 40 years ago that said yes to what it was that you wanted to do through them, who had no idea where you would take this place to, and we have no idea where you will take it to, but we trust you and we look to you, and we're thrilled to be part of this journey of seeing what it is that you're doing and impacting lives so that people become reconciled to you, so that they find the abundant life in you, so that they find communities of belonging and learning and they grow on the path that you're taking them on.

Father, we pray this morning that as people leave, that there would be uh that you would take the thought of courageous generosity and plant it that seed into our hearts, that it's something that would grow over the coming days and weeks and months, that there would be a shift in our perspective, that you would be present in our thinking and in our hearts, to have our eyes open to see who it is you want us to be and how you want us to be to the world around us that is so broken and hurting.

We pray this in your name, Father, in Jesus' name.

Amen.