Stonebridge Christian School

More recently, yet still in the distant past for you students, my husband built a home for our family near the site of the original old stone bridge.  As our children reached school age, in that home we began a school (doesn’t everyone?) and, of course, we called it StoneBridge.

We had come to learn, like many young Christian parents, that God stipulates in His Word the specific kind of education to prosper and “increase” our children—education that puts his Word in their hearts and teaches them His great and mighty deeds—their Christian history—essential to building the faith and vision of champions for Christ. 

It is this Biblical, Christ-honoring understanding of education that lies at the base of the StoneBridge School mission statement: 

StoneBridge is a classical Christian school established to restore the Christian character of the Republic. We serve Christian families, enabling each child to reach the fullest expression of his value in Christ through a Biblical Principle Approach^® education.

As we teach our children God’s love, His Word, and His history, they know a purposeful and providential Father who creates each of us with a unique individuality prescribing a purpose to be fulfilled.  What joy it is to see our children walk in truth.  And what loss, not only to us but to our nation, when they do not.

But long before the stone bridge, American education began to abandon the “original intent” of a Christian people.  Over two centuries, we allowed the education of our children to be savaged by false philosophies and deceptive political agendas, to teach us to make sin acceptable, to disdain absolute truth, and to relegate the Gospel with its ideals and virtues to the fringe.  Results? government that increasingly robs us of our property, marginalizes our families, and controls our personal welfare.  This is the product of secular education.  We have been educated to this; it is not an accident.

In the 1960’s, the Foundation for American Christian Education began to remind American Christians of the true Source of their liberty—Christ and His Story.  The Foundation published primary source educational volumes for Christian teachers and parents knowing that it takes a generation to turn the nation back and that it comes about, not by legislation, nor activism alone, but by nurturing Truth and its principles in the minds and hearts of children.

StoneBridge School was founded in 1980 to demonstrate the American Christian philosophy of education, the Principle Approach®, and to build a teaching and learning community upon the ideal of Christian liberty.  We began humbly to invest in our children the principles that are derived from the scripture for self-governing their hearts and lives and learning. 

Today, at StoneBridge, having drawn a line to stem a culture that increasingly forsakes its children, we celebrate our 30^th Anniversary, by lifting high our banner, “Your Child: an Eternal Excellence,” because Isaiah 60:15 says “Whereas thou has been forsaken and hated . . . I will make you an eternal excellence, a joy of many generations.” 

Standard equipment for a StoneBridge graduate is a Biblical worldview in a time when there is a “famine of the Word of God.”  Our graduates are prepared to walk upon the greater world stage at a time when Christian leadership is not only sorely needed but ardently sought.  They possess an understanding of life and learning that will not only prosper and “increase” them greatly, but that will lead their generation back to the principles and absolutes that will prosper and increase our nation.  Rosalie Slater said, in Teaching and Learning America’s Christian History: the Principle Approach, “A nation which is humble enough to begin with its children in the constructing of its foundations for liberty may once again have the opportunity to lead nations to Christ.  In Isaiah’s beautiful prophecy of the Savior to come he pictures Him as a “little child” who can dwell with the most ferocious and bestial elements of the world and concludes ‘a little child shall lead them.’” 

Today, in 2010, we look to the next decades in educating succeeding generations.  Our vision is clear.  We see the Lord’s hand as we grapple with the decisions and direction of the school going forward.  We see the need for satellite campuses in a time when traffic congestion and fuel prices limit mobility.  The selection and training of teachers is a continual challenge in a declining culture, and we cherish those who respond to the Principle Approach calling; we must compensate them appropriately.  (Let’s appreciate our teachers who are here tonight!  StoneBridge faculty and staff, please stand!)

In such a time as this the STONE BRIDGE is needed in every community in the nation.  Virginia has the distinction in history of being a school for statesmen having produced 8 presidents and state papers that astonished the world.  We can do this again.  The power of the Word of God is CERTAIN.  Proverbs 22:20, the scripture on our logo, says this: “Have I not written to you excellent things of counsels and knowledge, that I may make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you may answer words of truth to those who send to you?”

It is this certainty that empowered the patriarchs, the apostles, the reformers, the Pilgrims, the founders, and that gave us the liberty that we are accountable for today.  There is no more important duty than to educate our children rightly in obedience to God and His Word. 

And that is the hope and vision of the Stone Bridge that stands today in Chesapeake. 

May the Lord Jesus Christ be eternally glorified.