We look to our church families for support; many times to fill in the areas of fellowship and wisdom that we may not receive from our natural families. It can be challenging, and even painful, to be apart of a church community that does not support homeschooling.
Today’s community question has come to me through several mommas who struggle with this same experience.
~Anonymous
“What do you do if your church does not support homeschooling? We go to a church that we otherwise love. We continuously feel that on the subject of education they are not homeschool friendly. In fact it seems they encourage other options over it. It hurts our hearts. Any tips, wisdom, or experiences?”
We were very blessed to be in a church for quite some time that heavily supported home education. The pastor’s eyes were opened while watching their grandchildren battle out spirit-quenching experiences in public school. Their son and daughter-in-law made huge life changes and sacrifices in order to homeschool. It didn’t take long for these pastors to see tremendous changes in the countenance of their grandchildren. They experienced the immense gift that homeschooling is for a family. Although these pastors were always clear to support their Christian public school teacher members, they also encouraged all parents to pray on home educating their children.
As a new homeschooling family, with our only child at the time being two, this was exactly the support we needed. Real people, with real struggles, holding onto Jesus and moving forward in faith. We are forever grateful for the church family support that we received in those early years.
My husband and I have been in other churches over the last 10 years as well. We’ve experienced churches with 50/50 members ( 1/2 homeschooled, 1/2 public or private school.) We’ve been to churches that have their own private school – so you know which method of education was encouraged there. And we’ve been to churches that say homeschooling is a wonderful choice, yet often preach public school is a Christian child’s ministry .
During our time in churches that did not support homeschooling I’ve learned a few things:
- Trust my husband’s leading. I had plenty of times when I wanted to run from that church because it was hard. But as long as my husband wanted us there I trusted him. He is the spiritual head of our home. There is a blessing if I submit to him and wait on God’s perfect timing.
- Trust the Lord and shine those lights! Ah, that. The Lord is faithful to bring forth fruit. We were able to answer families questions about homeschooling and fellowship with families who are feeling the desire to homeschool and needed encouragement.
- Pray. Pray for the Lord to give you the grace to be there, endure any misunderstanding or lack of support, and pray for the leaders. You could always buy those pastors a copy of the Indoctrination Movie if they’re interested in way many Christian families choose to homeschool.
My friend Sara from Side-tracked Sara has this answer to the question, “Pray that the Lord would open their hearts! We had a church who outwardly supported homeschooling (to our face), but behind our backs many were questioning us and talking badly about the homeschoolers. We prayed for things to change and tried to make sure none of us did anything that would cause them to question us. Next thing you know, they hired a new Children’s Minister who was a homeschooler. After that, when it was time to hire a new youth pastor, he was a homeschool dad as well. All of a sudden, they were VERY homeschool friendly. It was so neat to watch God at work, sending the right people at the right time.”
I posted this question on the Holy Spirit-led Homeschooling facebook wall last weekend. Here are a few of the wonderful readers responses. These are smart people. 😉
“No one else in my church homeschools. The negative message doesn’t come from the pulpit, but I have had other mothers in the church say comments to me that hurt. One mother suggested I homeschool because I want my daughter in a Christian bubble and that I should have her in public school because it’s a mission field. This is what I go back to: God told me to homeschool her. I have to remember that when I come up against people who don’t understand or agree. Not only did He tell us to homeschool, He has allowed us to see over and over how good it has been for our family and our daughter (academically, behaviorally, spiritually). We will stand before God one day, accountable for ourselves. No one else will be standing with us. I can’t say to Him, “Well, You told me to do this, but that woman made me feel pressured to do something else, so….” I say be sure of what you believe and what God has asked you to do. Ask Him to confirm that for you and assure you of His unfailing love and APPROVAL of you!“
“Sometimes the best way to educate is to SHOW them. It may take some time, but people will start seeing a much brighter side to homeschooling than what they have heard or think. Answer their questions about isolation with what your child is involved in. When they say things about a “Christian” bubble shortly & kindly explain what God laid on your family’s heart to do. We are blessed to have a pastor whom he & his wife homeschooled 5 boys in a time when it was much less accepted or heard of. They bravely & with great Christian love paved the way. There are those who are still outspokenly against it at our church, but I have found that if I don’t push the issue let them ask me the questions they start to understand. I hope this helps & if you are not involved w/ a homeschool support group or co-op I urge you to. They are a great source of help & comfort. God Bless!”
“My husband is a Pastor, and I would not necessarily encourage you to leave the church. If you cannot align with the Pastor, or you really feel you cannot worship there, then leaving may be best. But, if some other families not agreeing with you homeschooling is the only issue, then I would encourage you to stick it out, be open and honest about how you feel and be an example of positive homeschooling. So many people do not really know much about it, or believe the worldly stereotypes attached to it. Most importantly, pray about whether this is the church God wants you to be a part of. If God has placed homeschooling on your heart, and has also placed you in that church then He may be planning to use you to influence those other families!”
Now it’s your turn. What is your advice for when your church does not support homeschooling?
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If it is hard to be a homeschooler being an unschooler can be even harder in the church. My daughter and I made it work somehow and never felt persecuted but still as a single parent family that makes it doubly hard to connect.
Thankfully I had a nice local home educating community to fall back on during the week. At first when I began taking my daughter to church she wanted to attend the childrens ministry. Soon she was over it and complained it felt school like, girls vs boys and boring instruction etc.
She decided to sit through adult service with me and that was fine. She could be a distraction to me then but that was ok too in an AP type of a way. These are teachable moments when our unconventiona lives bump up against modern culture in and out of the church.
For us it provided a frame work for my daughter and I to discuss why we did what we were doing and what other family lives looked like utilizing a different educational system.
This has been quite interesting to read but timely nonetheless. We attend a church where our family is one of a handful of families that homeschool. When we made our decision, which was one clearly placed on our hearts by the Lord, I was quite surprised at the NEGATIVE response I received from others within our church. It wasn’t so much about our decision to homeschool and the unsupportive ness that hurt but rather the fact that the Lord called us to do something life changing and that took a big step of faith and our church family thought we were strange. All I kept thinking was, “This is the Lords will! Why would people not rejoice in our obedience and partner with us to encourage and pray for our family along the way?” Oddly enough, some people stopped talking to us. Through it all my husband and I feel the Lord has shown us so much about who we are and who others are as well. As a result, and for several other reasons, we have chosen to look for another church which is more homeschooling friendly for one, but has other qualities that our current church lacks.
Overall, I found it rather amazing and very sad with regards to the lack of encouragement from the body when we decided to do what the Lord wanted us to do.
We have been in churches that had private schools, and also a church that while the pastors were supportive, the majority of the congregation was a public school opinion one. It was almost as if they felt WE were judging them by their choices , even though that was not the case. I go out of my way to make sure I don’t offend by “pushing” homeschool on anyone. I know it works for us, but I also know that it might not work for everyone. I don’t make comments to others about their choices, but for some reason they “feel free” to make judgemental comments to me about my choices. I wonder sometimes if perhaps they feel convicted about their choices, and use hostility to cover it up?
oh where to start on this…. My husband and I have been homeschooling for about 3 years now and when we decided to follow God’s calling here people just looked at us like we were so strange, not only were we a large family of 7, homeschooling and leading childrens ministry and teaching creation that God literally created in 6 days not millions of years, well lets just say it was very hot in the firery furnece it still is!! Every sunday we are pushed on the outside circle of our sunday school class yes that is for ADULTS!! Our pastor and his wife who use to be public school teachers mock our family not only for homeschooling which I was informed by my pastors wife is not the only way to teach your children and homeschooling moms just want to sleep in, but because of our large size of family we are the joke of the church, which was made very clear when our family was to be the prayer focus for the week, on sunday they annouced very loudly by the youth pastor PLEASE PRAY FOR THE ERICKSON FAMILY THEY HAVE 7 CHILDREN, 7 CHILDREN HE KEPT ON REPEATING THOSER WORDS, and they are homeschooling those 7 children!! Then they appluded us for doing childrens church, but never any encouragement for homeschooling or our family. By the way we have taken a break from childrens church for the summer, but we were quickly replaced by another couple. There are a couple of families trying to homeschool, but it is like a part time job for them. If you are not working outside the home you are also a freak, I am the only stay at home mom in my church everyone works and that is concidered honorable and is oftern applauded by the women in the church and the men can’t seem to get rid of the kids fast enough, too much time, money and noise, I guess or so I have been told. We are praying for our church, for our leaders and for God’s will to be done in our family and in this chruch body, but it feels like everything we do satan is using against us, the public school kids and their parents all look like they are more behaved and learn more than those who are homeschooling, he is making homeschooling look like a curse and public school is the way to go. I know that is a lie, but we are hurting so much and don’t know what to do, tears are coming out as I write this, If God dosen’t come through, I don’t know what else to do.
Our previous pastor was very “anti-homeschool”. He followed the mindest of public schools being the childs mission field. His grown children had planned to homeschool the grandchildren, but it became an area of division and the children lost the battle. Surprisingly, this same pastor became offended at me when I pulled my then preschooler out of Sunday school class because of inappropriate behavior going on betwee a sibling group. (The father had an issue with pornography and apprently the children had been exposed to it, and were aciting out some of the things they had seen.) Rather than correct the wrong behavior, I was chastised for pulling my child from class. His comment to me was “What would happen if all of the good kids got pulled out of class?, just like you pull them out of public school?” Yeah, that went over well. But I CALMLY explained and stick to the fact that God gave me my children to raise, to teach and to protect. I will not leave them in any environment that is a danger to them physically, spiritually or in any other way. God doesn’t ask us to get a majority vote of approval when He tells us to do something. It’s hard to be the only homeschool family in a church, but most things worth having are hard and our children’s education (both spiritually and academically) is well worth it. Our current church is a mixture of homeschooled, private schooled and public schooled children. The church offers scholarships for the private school (non affiliated to the church), helps cover costs for needy families in public schools and offers the church building for homeschool activities through out the year. It’s a good mix, with no one method elevated above the others.
Basically we each have to answer for what we do with our children. I don’t have to answer for someone else’s children and they don’t have to answer for mine. This usually helps most people agree to disagree with me.