[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello friends I'm Elizabeth or a nowit's with foundation world view and I'm so thankful that you have joined me today for this session on cultivating a biblical worldview in the elementary grades now like most of you my background is in elementary education and as elementary educators we can have no greater joy than to know that our students are walking in the truth I assume that's why you've chosen to teach at a Christian school now I spent the first decade of my professional career teaching in an elementary classroom at a Christian school however several years into my teaching I noticed a problem the students in my classroom all came from wonderful Christian homes most of them were fairly involved in church and I was the one who was teaching them all day so I knew they were getting a biblically based education however I noticed that they were rapidly absorbing ideas from the culture without ever questioning them and this realization sent me on a journey of discovery of how I could actually cultivate a biblical worldview in my students while they were in my classroom now the term biblical worldview has become somewhat of a buzzword especially among the world of Christian education I assume that for most of us our schools on our promotional materials on our websites maybe even plastered on the walls in our classroom is this term biblical worldview and that's great that it is so engrained at all that we do however the danger in that is when something becomes a buzzword sometimes we lose sight of what it actually means and especially for us as elementary educators our lives are so busy we teach all of the subjects to our students which means sometimes we have twenty five-plus lessons to prep each week on top of all the other facets of teaching so sometimes we can just lose sight of am I actually instilling in my students a biblical worldview I saw this in myself as an elementary educator the school that I taught at is a wonderful Christian school just outside of Chicago and one of the require mints for the teachers is each week as we were planning our lessons we needed to go through our lesson plans and actually list the biblical principles covered in each lesson and now as an educator I was just so busy that frequently I would look through the list of principals pick out one that matched the lesson put it on my lesson plans but never actually think how am I going to address this in the lesson that I'm teaching however this all changed one summer when the school where I was teaching sent me to the Leadership Institute at focus on the family while I was there I had two whole months to just step outside of the classroom take a deep breath and study the concept of a biblical worldview and when I was there I realized how foundational a biblical worldview is to everything we do now I had that gift of time of stepping back from it all and intensely studying worldview and while we don't have two months to do that today we're going to take the next half hour just to step back and look at what does it mean to have a biblical worldview and how can we be intentional in our classrooms to make sure that we are developing a biblical worldview in our students now the first thing that we need to do is we need to actually look at the term what in the world is a worldview we need to think through that now I don't know about you but as an elementary educator anytime I'm trying to define a word I like to use language that's kid-friendly I just think it's easier to understand when I use language that I know my students would understand so when explaining the concept of worldview to elementary students I use this definition I say a worldview is like a mental map of what you believe is true about life and the world around you it affects the thoughts you think the words you say and the things you do you probably noticed I used a few actions there because that helps me and my students remember what it means to have a worldview that we all have this mental map these things that we believe are true about life in the world around us and these beliefs effects everything we think everything that we say and everything that we do and if we're talking about a biblical worldview then we want our mental map and our students mental map to come from the whole of scripture now when I first started seeking out how I could develop in my students a biblical worldview I started asking others how this is done and I started bumping up against a question when I was thinking through how I could teach this to my students people started asking me isn't a biblical worldview caught not taught and I thought through this and in some ways that's true that a biblical worldview is caught in that we are modeling for our students every day what it means to have a biblical worldview our worldview affects the way we interact with our students the way we speak with them the way we plan our lessons the way we manage our classroom the way we discipline and instruct our students all of that stems from our worldview so we should be modeling a biblical worldview for our students daily however think about this think about your reading instruction all of us want our students to become fluent readers who comprehend and critically think through what they read and in some ways positive reading is caught in that we need to model for our students a love of literature and a love of language and proper ways to read and interpret books however if we left our reading instruction just to being caught by our students we know that they would never become fluent readers because we had not directly taught them the skills that they needed to actually decode the words and then read fluently and comprehend what they're reading and the same is true with a biblical worldview yes we need to model for our students daily what it means to have a biblical worldview and we need to directly systematically and explicitly instruct them in the tenants of a biblical worldview now sometimes we as teachers think well I'm already teaching my students to have a biblical worldview I teach a Bible class every day that's our worldview instruction well maybe because it depends on what we're doing in our Bible instruction it depends on our Bible curriculum some Bible curriculum takes students through the whole Old Testament or the whole New Testament and this is vital our students need to be going through the meta-narrative of God's Word other Bible curriculum goes through Bible stories and highlights different narratives throughout scripture some curriculum highlights different Christian principles and morals and values these are all important things however they are different than biblical worldview instruction biblical worldview instruction involves exposing our students to the big questions in life that every worldview must answer questions such as what is truth what should I worship how did life begin what does it mean to be human how can I tell right from wrong so looking at these big questions and then having our students look at how the whole of Scripture answers this question so now the question becomes okay if biblical worldview instruction is somewhat different than what I might be doing in Bible class how do I do this how do I instruct my students in a biblical worldview well that's what we'll look at next we're going to cover three essential steps for cultivating a biblical worldview in our students the first thing that we need to do it might sound kind of obvious but we need to make sure that we understand what the biblical worldview teaches about different topics now you may be thinking of course I know what the biblical worldview teaches about these things I've been a Christian for 10 20 30 40 50 years and you may have a robust understanding of what the biblical worldview teaches however many of us were not trained we were not raised in a way where we were asked these world few questions and then asked to seek out what the answer is in Scripture so before we instruct our students we need to make sure that we have a solid understanding of different worldview topics the second thing we must do is then we must directly instruct our students in these worldview concepts we need to directly introduce them to these questions and then we need to have them dive into Scripture and discover what has God revealed about this topic so that first they understand what the important question is and then they have a robust understanding for themselves of what Scripture teaches then the third step is once our students have an understanding of what the biblical worldview teaches on this topic we then need to ask worldview questions in every subject that we teach so we're actually implementing what the students have learned and then have them critically think through how that applies to every different subject area now I just gave us a list of three things it was only three but still we know as elementary educators we are so busy so you may be thinking I have a heart for this but when in the world do I have time for this and that is a valid question however I think that there's a question that's even more important than when do I have time for this and that question is what's at stake if we don't make time for this I recently saw what is at stake in person in my community several months ago I went to a mosque in my community this mosque was having an open mosque day and I don't know many of the Muslims in my community so I wanted to go there and develop relationships so I went there and I was talking to various women who were there and then there was one woman who really intrigued me simply because most of the people who were there from the mosque were of Middle Eastern descent where this woman had fair skin blue eyes and red hair so I went over and chatted with her for a bit and then I said I have a question for you were you raised in a Muslim home and she kind of laughed and said no how could you tell and I said well I didn't want to assume anything and she said no I wasn't raised in him with some home I was actually raised in an evangelical Christian home and I said really I would love to hear about your journey towards Islam if you have time so she and I continued chatting and she told me her story and she said I was raised in an evangelical Christian home I went to Christian school I was part of my church youth group I went on a lot of missions trips I led worship on the worship tape and I'm thinking where in the world is this story going and she continued and she said and then I went off to a Christian college she said in my freshman year I was really struggling I was going through a difficult time and I kept praying and I didn't feel like God was answering my prayers I felt like my prayers were just bouncing off the ceiling and she said and I had a Muslim friend in the community who said I know why you don't have peace it's because you're praying to the wrong God so this woman said that she started praying to Allah and the feeling that she had was completely different she had much more joy and peace than she ever had praying to the Christian God so now she's converted to Islam she's married to a Muslim man and she's raising her children in a Muslim home and as she was sharing this story with me my heart was breaking for her and at the same time I was thinking oh my goodness is this going to be the story of any of the students who have walked through my classroom because what this woman is describing is what researchers Christian Smith and Melinda Lundqvist have described as moralistic therapeutic deism that many of the students that are raised in Christian homes and come through our schools they live good lives they're moralistic they believe in a God they're deistic and this God they believe helps them feel good he's therapeutic so when this woman who had been raised in a Christian home in a Christian school suddenly didn't have good feelings about God when her feelings changed she completely changed what she believed now this is not what we want for our students we don't want our students to be moralistic therapeutic deists we want them to see Christianity as a worldview that encompasses all of reality that answers the important the big the tough questions in life so what we're gonna do now is we're gonna go and we're gonna practice those three steps that we talked about earlier now there's many different worldview questions that we could cover during this time but we're going to zero in on one we're gonna focus on the question of morality or how can we tell right from wrong now the first step that I mentioned for us is we need to make sure that we understand what the biblical worldview teaches about different topics so think about that for a minute what does the biblical worldview teach about morality now most of the time when I ask others this question the response I get is a list of rules usually the Ten Commandments however when we look at Scripture as a whole when we look at the biblical worldview what we see is something so much deeper and more expansive than just a list of do's and don'ts for example when we look at Scripture we see that moral values are real they're not something that are just invented by humans or made up they're not some trick of our psyche they're actually real and these moral values are not arbitrary they are based on the character and nature of the God that we serve for example God didn't just sit off in heaven and say hmm you know what I like truth and I don't like lying or I like love and I don't like hate no God didn't arbitrarily choose these rules God has commanded that we tell the truth because he is truth and lies are an affront to his very nature also God has told us to love others because he himself is loved for all eternity God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have been in a perfect loving relationship with one another and we are to reflect God through our love for others scripture also tells us that morals apply to all peoples in all times and in all cultures God's moral law doesn't change scripture also says that breaking God's moral law is a direct offense against God and a payment justice must be made and that's where scripture tells us that Jesus willingly bore God's wrath on our behalf do you see how this is so much more comprehensive than a list of do's and don'ts this is why we need to make sure before we instruct our students in a biblical worldview that we have a comprehensive understanding of what the biblical worldview teaches on this topic now the second step we said is we must directly instruct our students in these worldview concepts so in this case we would introduce our students to the question a question about morality how can we tell right from wrong and then have them dive into God's Word obviously with some direction from us in specific passages of Scripture that they can look up to come up with a summary of what does God teach about right and wrong then after they have dove into God's Word we can ask them further questions about morality that they can then use their knowledge of Scripture to discuss and apply questions such as do humans discover morals or do we invent them who decides what's right and what's wrong do moral values change depending upon the time in history or alive and the culture that you live in these are great questions to get our students thinking and we can have them discuss them with a partner with our class and then come back together and have them summarize the biblical answer to these different questions finally the third step that we discussed is we then need to ask worldview questions in every subject that we teach for example once our students have solid understanding of what scripture teaches about right and wrong we can then ask questions about right and wrong and the biblical view in every subject when we're going through a novel study or a reading through a picture book we can ask our students where the decisions made by this character based on the biblical view of right and wrong how do you know or in social studies we could ask them which communities that we've studied this year have lived out the biblical view of right and wrong in other subjects we could ask questions like according to the biblical worldview is there a right and a wrong way to do math how about science what about our writing so these questions are really getting at the heart of morality and having our students think critically through how that applies to every subject that we teach now at first having our students think this way can be a stretch when I first started instructing my students in biblical worldview principles and applying them in other subjects some of my students were confused I'll never forget one social studies unit I was teaching we were learning about the settling the Pioneers settling on the Midwestern Plains and I wanted my students to see how God's design for the family had impacted the success of the Pioneers so we learned all about the Pioneers and then I posed this question I said did God's design for the family help or hurt the Pioneers when they were settling the Midwest plains and then I had the students dive into several passages of Scripture talking about God's design for the family and then had them discussed this question in small groups and as we came back together one sweet little girl I'll never forget to look at her face she was waving her hand really frantically and said I am really confused and I said okay let's talk about this what are you confused about she said well this is social studies and we're talking about the Bible and what God has said why are we doing this in social studies and so at first it was really a stretch for my students to see that a biblical worldview it's not just something that we do in Bible class but it actually applies to every single part of life however as we practice this the confusion that our students may experience will eventually dissipate and they will then be able to implement biblical worldview principles on their own I saw this several years after I began teaching biblical worldview principles to my students one of the 5th grade teachers came down to my classroom and shared this story from a former student who had gone through my worldview class and she said that she was talking with her students about the importance of memorizing their multiplication tables now any of you who teach 5th grade you know if students come into your classroom without their multiplication tables memorized it's so frustrating because you can't move on in math if they don't know their math facts well the teacher was giving her class a little mini lecture on the importance of memorizing multiplication tables and this student from my class raised her hand and she said you know we should memorize our multiplication tables because it's going to be valuable for all of life because we know that math is something that we discovered we didn't invent it God created math and he is unchanging so therefore the multiplication tables are unchanging so we should work hard to memorize them so it was so exciting for me to see that even two years beyond the student being in my classroom she was able to take what we have learned about a biblical worldview and implement it in different subjects on her own now before we end our time together today let's review all that we have covered first we looked at the claim that a biblical worldview is caught and not taught and we saw that it is both taught and caught that we need to model it for our students but also directly instruct them in what the biblical worldview teaches and then we saw that if we do not make time for biblical worldview instruction our students will not see Christianity as an all-encompassing worldview then we looked at three necessary steps for equipping our students with a biblical worldview first we need to make sure that we understand what the biblical worldview teaches about different topics then we need to directly instruct our students in these worldview concepts and finally we must then ask worldview questions in every subject that we teach now I know I just gave you a lot to think about and we've talked several times about how as elementary educators were very busy so if you're feeling somewhat overwhelmed or like you need further training in this I would highly recommend that you go to my website foundation worldview com when you're there you can check out a variety of blogs about biblical worldview cultivation and our students you can look at the curriculum that we have that directly instructs students in a biblical worldview and you can also check out further professional development opportunities that we have thank you so much for joining me on this session on cultivating a biblical worldview in the elementary grades it's my prayer that if you enter this new school year you will intentionally plan to equip the students God has placed in your care with a biblical worldview [Music] [Applause] [Music]