Why Do We Offer Tuition Assistance?
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Deuteronomy 6:5-7
How can parents and the Christian community obey these words of God? How do we impress the call and commands of the Lord on our children? For many families, it is with the daily assistance of Christian schools, grades kindergarten through twelve (K12).
One of the special characteristics of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) is its commitment to Christian elementary and secondary school education, and its acknowledgement of a congregation’s communal responsibility to financially support it. In our CRC Church Order, Article 71, we read:
The council shall diligently encourage the members of the congregation to establish and maintain good Christian schools in which the biblical, Reformed vision of Christ's lordship over all creation is clearly taught. The council shall also urge parents to have their children educated in harmony with this vision according to the demands of the covenant.
Christian schools play a key role in continuing the instruction in the faith that our children get from their church and homes. Because of the tremendous value of Christian school education, it is our privilege and responsibility as a church and as individual believers to support this ministry.
The monetary costs of Christian education are significant and require thoughtful planning, careful budgeting, and heartfelt commitment. Most families economize and sacrifice, but some still do not have enough income to meet the total costs of Christian school tuition. As a family of believers, Ivanrest CRC has always been committed to assisting its members who desire to enroll their children in Christian schools, but cannot afford the entire cost.
Each Ivanrest family requesting partial tuition assistance from our church is required to complete a financial application packet and then meet with the designated financial consultant to confidentially discuss their situation. After analyzing the data, the consultant makes a recommendation about each request to a subcommittee of the Christian Schools Focus Team. The entire application process occurs in February-May of each calendar year, to be applied to the coming school year starting in the fall.
