For thousands of American parents whose kids are going to hundreds of schools across America, this school year will be different for them and their kids. Instead of going to school to learn purely secular and usually woke lessons, their kids will have the opportunity to learn about Christ Jesus. That’s thanks to LifeWise Academy, which has fought to get Bible-based lesson plans included in over 300 schools across the country.
Such faith-based instruction in public schools can be, if structured properly, legal. So, LifeWise Academy, a Christian non-profit founded and run by CEO Joel Penton, fights to make sure that the legal lesson plans are included and kids can receive Biblical instruction in school.
Speaking to Fox News Digital about LifeWise Academy’s goal, Mr. Penton said, “Our message to the American people is that if you had lost hope in the ability to pass the word of God, the Bible, on to the next generation. If you thought that everything was just going in the direction of the Bible being out of the public school day, you don’t need to lose hope.”
The legal basis for the company’s program and lesson plans is a Supreme Court case, Zorach v. Clauston. That case validated a New York City schools program that allowed public schools to release students to attend religious classes during school hours so long as those lessons are off of school property, permitted by the child’s parents, and privately funded.
LifeWise Academy aims to get lesson plans that fit that legal mold down to a science so that they are replicable and can be promulgated across the United States, giving kids a chance to learn more about God during school hours.
Penton, describing the popularity of the program with parents and its ability to get over the numerous legal hurdles facing it, said, “It has been the Lord and his grace that has accomplished this. And it is people in communities that are stepping up. We had no idea this concept would be so intriguing or powerful.”
Explaining what the kids learn in the lesson plans, Penton added, “We teach through the entire Bible, and every lesson has a three-fold focus: head, heart and hands. With the head, we just ask and answer the question: ‘What is the information on the page of the Bible? What does the story say?’ Heart, we ask the question: How does this connect to the bigger picture of the Gospel message? How does it point to Jesus? And hands, if we rightly understand this Bible story in the Gospel, ‘How does that transform our character?’”
He also said that, though there is some pushback from those who don’t want children learning about Christ, the clear legality of the program thanks to Zorach helps rebut that criticism. In his words: “We have received some opposition to our program. But I’ll be honest, it has been less than we anticipated. I think that we’re finding that schools know there’s a great need in the lives of students. When you consider that it is so clearly legal, you know, the Supreme Court has ruled on this — and so there’s no ambiguity about whether or not this program is illegal now.”
And, most importantly, the success and growth of the program means that those who otherwise might not have had the light of the Lord in their lives now do. As Penton put it: “We get great responses from parents all the time. Parents have their kids in the program, I could tell you story after story of how parents themselves have been impacted by their students coming home and bringing these Bible stories. Parents who, for whatever reason, haven’t had their kids plugged into church, haven’t had their kids plugged into a community of faith, but then they get plugged into LifeWise and now, all of a sudden, their family, they’re becoming members of the church, they’re getting baptized there.“
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