GUIDING PRINCIPLES

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All of Christian life (including education) flows from joy. Joy is the ethos of Christian living because it is founded on the good news of what Jesus has accomplished. The purpose of education, therefore, is not to earn God’s acceptance but to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity” (2 Peter 3:18). Education begins in wonder and ends in worship. 

Christians are called to work hard as unto the Lord knowing our labor is not in vain (Col. 3:23, 1 Cor. 15:58). The Bible repeatedly calls us to training and constant practice because “everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40; cf. Heb. 5:14, 1 Tim. 4:8; 2 Tim. 3:16). We desire our students to pursue excellence and subject mastery out of joy and love for Christ. 

A critical component of Christian education is community. Education is not simply individual, because Scripture says that to have knowledge without love, is to have nothing (1 Cor. 13:2). All Saints Academy exists as an institution to remind students they are joint heirs together in God’s kingdom, “fellow citizens with the saints” (Eph. 2:19).  In this context, students are called to “look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” and to “bear one another’s burdens and therefore fulfill the law of Christ.” (Rom. 8:17, Phil. 2:4-5, Gal. 6:2).

We seek to honor the past by receiving the best of what has been handed down from one generation to another. We believe the Holy Spirit has been at work throughout the history of the Church and we stand in a rich legacy with saints who have come before us (Ps. 145:4-6, Heb. 12:1, Jude 3). We intentionally look backward in order to move forward, particularly in areas of biblical understanding and pedagogy.  Excavating the past for wisdom helps to avoid what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” 

We believe all things were made through Jesus, and “and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:15-17). Because of this, we believe there is an intrinsic order and beauty to all things. Jesus has something to say about every subject because every subject is ultimately subject to him. Therefore, all subjects are integrated at some level in the unfolding of creation. In this sense, Classical Christian education cuts “with the grain” of the universe of how we were designed to learn. "In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3).

Virtue formation is the recognition that we are not educating just the minds, but the souls of students. Education is far more than information for the head; education includes the formation of one’s character. As ancient Greeks recognized, “Knowledge without virtue is dangerous.” Our aim is that the students would grow in their “knowledge and all discernment” and be able to approve of whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise (Phil. 1:9-11; cf. Phil. 4:8-9, Gal. 5:22-23). 

We believe every Christian parent has the responsibility to provide a distinctly Christian education for their children (Eph. 6:1-4, Deut. 6:4-9). We exist to partner with families by providing a robust, Christ-centered and classical education that is accessible to all Christian families. To do so, we strive for a tuition structure that is both fiscally responsible and sensitive to the financial circumstances of different families. We are committed to fundraise through the generosity of others in order to provide Financial Assistance on a case-by-case basis. 

We believe God created the world, loves the world, and is in the process of redeeming the world. We also believe there are powers and principalities that seek to destroy all that God has made. But we also believe one of the means by which God will overcome the world is through raising godly children. Psalm 127 says that “Children are a heritage from the Lord” and are “arrows in the hand of a warrior.” We believe children are not to be protected from the world, but prepared for the world. We believe education forms students to be “wise as serpents and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16). To that end, education is not primarily about job-readiness or college-placement (though graduates in Classical Christian schools tend to excel in both). Rather, at All Saints Academy, we believe education chiefly exists to advance the kingdom of God for the glory of God.