Rebuilding the Walls
I know you care about the state of education today and the importance of a Christ-centered worldview. I’m honored you asked to keep up-to-date on what the Lord is doing through CHI and we’re excited to share this journey with you.
The Christian Halls team started 2022 with a flurry of activity. The North Texas Summit was a catalytic moment for our team, as we gathered with leaders from across Dallas/Ft. Worth to discuss vision and to plan regional micro-campuses. We have significantly expanded our accredited program offerings (both Work-Study Program and the Honors College). Our regional partner sites continue to expand both in locations and in the students and tutors we are serving.
One of the main questions I am asked is “what does CHI do?”
Many people wonder if we are a college (we’re not), or a homeschool co-op (we’re not). In a nutshell: Christian Halls International, as a 501(c)3 non-profit, advocates and resources local communities to operate Christ-centered, no-debt higher education programs, using the Christian Hall designed “Oxford Tutorial Model” as a means for low-cost, high-impact accredited education.
The local Hall includes the local Fellows, Tutors, Students, and Patrons. Each of our programs involves a partnership with a top-tier Christian university, with whom we have negotiated unmatched tuition prices and revenue-based funding to support local Tutors and Fellows. Our passion and daily work is to help resource these communities and to retake the responsibility for forming the next generation.
Since opening our North American office in 2020, we have been meeting with hundreds of churches, partners, and regions across the country learning about the nation’s Higher Education needs, and praying about how we can create the greatest impact in our work. Our work in North America is radically different than Africa or Brazil, but the needs are just as great!
Engaging in extensive program design, we decided that the time was right to open our first public event. At the end of February we hosted RenewED: A North Texas CHI Summit, in which parents, students, educational leaders, churches, and patrons were invited to be part of a gathering to discuss the future of higher education in North Texas.
I was privileged to be able to offer an extended three-part keynote address, called Rebuilding the Walls. I issued a challenge to our families and our churches to re-take stewardship, governance, and the imagination of what higher education could be Below is the first keynote, as a brief 20 minute introduction to the discussion.
We learned many things through the RenewED Summit weekend. Do you know that there are three hundred thousand students in community college in Dallas/Ft. Worth? Many of these students are looking to avoid debt, and often start in High School using dual credit. Parents, students, and teachers are reporting that these community colleges are increasingly antagonistic against the people of God and the Church. We heard how many professors use Dual Credit to teach radically immoral content that would be illegal to teach in High School. And yet, we do not have a single Christian Community College program in the region competing in this space. This has to change.
We were also amazed to hear of the growing need for skilled tradesmen, and how the State of Texas lacks even a single Christian trade school. As a result, we committed to the launch of the North Texas Christian Community College and Trade School network in March 2022. If this grabs your heart, give us a call to talk about how you can participate in the design and deployment of this transformative program.
From this summit, we have had several dozen requests for Christian Hall sites in North Texas. We are now in partnership with numerous schools, churches, businesses, and co-operatives. The response has been so overwhelming, in fact, that I am in discussions with our board about the need to launch a regional office, purely to serve the enormous opportunity in North Texas. If you are in North Texas and would be interested in being part of this work (prayer, regional advocacy, or financial support), please contact us.
