Dale Johnson: Just like last week, I have with me two dear guests and I’m looking forward to our time together today.
First, Dr. Ty Faulk. He served in Christian schools as a Bible teacher, counselor, and administrator for 15 years. He currently serves as the Dean of Spiritual Development and K-12 Bible department head at the King’s Academy in Woodstock, Georgia. He has an MA in Biblical Studies from RTS. He has a THM in Applied Theology from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctorate in Educational Ministries from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary as well, where his research focused on intentional discipleship in Christian schools.
I also have with us Kristi Brannen, and she served as the head of school and was one of the core founders for the King’s Academy in Woodstock, Georgia, which has a 25-year history and has grown to be one of the largest Christian schools in the North Metro Atlanta area. Kristi is a fully certified biblical counselor from ACBC and she counsels both at the King’s Academy and in partnership with her local church, Faith Community Church there in Woodstock as well.
Now guys, as we enter back into a conversation, this is sort of a continuation from some of the things that we talked about last week. What an interesting concept and what an interesting idea that it shouldn’t be that novel that we think about growing and learning in Christ. We should be learning how to apply the Dcriptures in life as we think about in biblical counseling.
You guys are actually implementing that there in your local Christian school. And listen, I’ve heard so many people who are so interested in their local Christian schools of implementing something similar. The parents are hungry for it. I think teachers are hungry for it. And we’re seeing a crisis at this age in our country. And what a better way to meet that demand than with the truths of Scripture and then equipping your people to be prepared to handle some of these issues at the local Christian school level.
But I want to take a step back for a second because as these things arise, we finished talking last week. Ty, you were mentioning very specifically how you engage and you’ve prepared some of your Bible teachers very well to engage when issues come up. Maybe you said two, three, four or five sessions that they may engage in. And then something passes on, maybe you go to a local counseling ministry there at a local church or even to that student’s local church. Think about specifically or help us understand a little bit. How do you partner with the church in biblical counseling as a Christian school?
Ty Faulk: Yeah. So I think the first step is for us to one, find all the biblical counseling that’s available around us, because we have students from various locations. We have people driving a long time to get here in a lot of cases. And so to be able to find the biblical counselors that are around us, that was really the first step, just creating kind of a resource list who we can partner with and who we should have a shared vision with and a shared view of biblical counseling.
Once we develop that relationship, then we like to see like if a student’s struggling, you know, what’s the closest point of contact that we have with a church or someone that’s close to them that we can partner them with. And so that’s the biggest thing is finding those people to partner with.
And then when the need arises, those organizations, the church is there and we’re able to have relationships that we’ve already built with pastors, that we’ve already built with people that are in the community, and that we’ve already built with biblical counselors.
And then it’s a natural call for us to be able to call and say, “hey, there’s a student we have struggling here. They need a little more intentional care. We’re going to send them your way.” If a student’s struggling with discipline, we can come in and say, “hey, we want you to check in and make sure the student’s coming to church, that they’re involved.” So, it’s just a natural extension of the discipleship process and particularly the partnership with the church that we believe is core to the Christian school.
We don’t replace the church. We partner with the church. And so that’s fundamental for us in the way that we process student care and counsel. Yeah, it’s been very encouraging because not only allows me to have relationships with these churches and these people, but it also allows us to connect students to them.
Dale Johnson: First of all, I love the way that you articulate that. And I’m so grateful for that posture toward the church. And, you know, Christian schools never intended to replace the ministry at the local church. And I love the fact that in your engagement, you’re doing some triage and then you’re pointing them specifically to the church. And those partnerships are invaluable.
And what you’ll find as a benefit to the Christian school is as the church helps to engage the child on whatever level is necessary, you have a different environment too in your school system, which is really great. So that’s quite encouraging to think about how you guys lean into the local church. I think that’s a primary implementation that’s really critical.
Kristi Brannen: And I will say we do emphasize a lot to our families that we expect them to be in church and again, Bible teaching church, and that we are not replacing the church. I mean, we speak to that over and over. When they’re coming to admissions to see if they want to be interested in our school, we speak to it. We speak to it in orientation. We speak to it throughout the year—that the church is vital and that we are not replacing the church as cooperating with it.
Dale Johnson: That’s really critical. And I definitely appreciate that perspective. It’s certainly not the perspective of everyone, but I think it’s a critical perspective. I want to go back to something that we were talking about the last time that we were together. You were talking about your Bible classes and some of the ways that you teach the Bible classes and naturally, you know, counseling topics come up.
We, you know, as the curriculum that we’ve put together at ACBC to try and encourage local high schools, Christian schools, even homeschool families to engage in the topic of biblical counseling and really address all kinds of very specific issues that teenagers are encountering.
I want you to talk a little bit about some of the counseling topics that come up in your Bible classes, and then how do you go about discussing that? How do you cover those topics in your Bible classes. Topics that are important to show young people that so many of the issues that they’re dealing with in daily life are spoken of in the Scripture and that wisdom is given in the Scripture for how they can conceive and think about the issues that they’re facing, that their culture is facing in life and how to respond appropriately in a way that’s God honoring and loving towards others. So, talk about some of those concepts a little bit.
Ty Faulk: Yeah. So secular education offers something called SEL or social emotional learning—where they’re covering these topics, but they’re covering them from a particularly secular standpoint and offer no hope in Christ. We go through accrediting agencies and we see what the world is doing. And it’s often kind of rooted in Eastern mysticism or mindfulness, or just kind of these simple strategies that don’t address the heart.
And so, we want to offer something that’s better. We want to offer something that addresses the heart that is biblical. And so we’ve been exploring that over the past few years. And so, what we’ve really done is we take about eight classes a year, which is really about one class a month in each Bible class to address specific social emotional topics from a biblical perspective.
And so early in high school, students will cover like more foundational topics like motives, emotions, biblical priorities, bullying, relational conflict, things like that. As we get later in high school, we start to address more complex topics like depression, anxiety, panic attacks, obsession, trauma, suicidal thoughts, sexuality, things like that.
And so, we equip our teachers with biblical counseling resources, whether that’s many books, journal articles, blogs, so that they’re able to kind of address these topics. And we’re starting to formalize it a little more. And really, another cool thing about it is, is when we address that topic in class, it opens the door for individual biblical counseling as well.
Because I’ve noticed, you know, when I teach one of these topics, I’ve got three students sitting after class to talk to me more about Scripture and what it says to that issue, because they’re facing the issue. And that’s just super cool, because then it opens the door for more counseling and more care and more discipleship.
And so not only does it address kind of the meta goal of these social emotional topics being addressed from a biblical perspective, but it also opens the door for more intentional individual discipleship.
Dale Johnson: First of all, I love that you’re engaging this head on. And that’s what I find with young people—they’re going to learn about these things conceptually from somewhere. In a public school, they’re going to learn that framework of the social emotional learning as you just described—which is infused with attachment theory. Which is infused with trauma informed language and trauma theory itself as being sort of a primary basis that explains all of the ebb and flow of the things that teenagers would face.
And you’re trying to address that from a biblical perspective, a Godward orientation, and your young people are eating that stuff up, because they want answers. And I think what many young people are starting to see is the hopelessness with the cultural narrative, that all it does is create victims to a large degree. It’s certainly not freeing. And a person becomes bound to that identity for the rest of their life if they conceive those ideas from that secular perspective.
And so, you’re seeing the beauty of the Scriptures truly free people as we’re unafraid to talk about the real hard issues in culture, but that the Scripture gives wisdom and answer and dare I say hope, legitimate hope that a child can cling to in the chaos that we see floundering in the world around us.
Now, as always, let me shift gears here to think a little bit about discipline. I mean, think about a Christian school. I went to public high school, which explains why sometimes maybe I don’t have the intellect that I ought to. But when you’re in Christian school, it’s not that you’re exempt from disciplinary issues, right?
Children are children. They are born into sin. Even if they’re believers, they struggle in many ways, just like you and I do. And so, you’re gonna face—you know, when you have lots of centers together, you’re gonna face issues of discipline. So, we can’t, you know, run from that. That’s a reality.
I want you to talk a little bit about how you guys engage issues of discipline at your school through some of the tools that you found in biblical counseling. Just explain a little bit how you’re going about doing that.
Kristi Brannen: Okay, I’m just going to say a couple of things about that. And then Ty has really fleshed this out really well. So I’ll let him finish here. But with 1,100 students and almost 200 staff members, we are often taken-off-guard by the unexpected events of the day, from unexpected safety issues, impulsivity, careless words, foolish behavior. These kids can be quite creative.
So, I tell the parents that we’re often disappointed, but we’re rarely surprised by the behaviors we see because many parents come to us and they’re shocked that Christian kids, or let’s say students from Christian homes actually misbehave.
And so, I let them know that we have the privilege of partnering with them as we mentor these students through what we hope are the most foolish years of their lives. And so, we set up an expectation that it’s okay if your student misbehaves. We have a system and we’re here to walk alongside of you with that. And then we begin to flesh that out. And I’ll let Ty kind of address that.
Ty Faulk: Yeah. And so the biggest thing is that we want to address the heart. I think the secular model is, you know, ‘just clean up the discipline and manage it and the school, make sure the school functions.’
But we care about the individual made in the image of God. We care about their heart and where they are. And so, things like the demerit system that we have and stuff like that, or just address the surface. But when we start to see patterns in students—like the demerit system reveals a pattern in students, then that’s when we step in and we assign them to a Bible teacher to counsel.
Usually, you know, in that first kind of intake meeting, we find out pretty early that there’s more stuff going on behind the discipline issue. And that comes up pretty quick, usually. We found out that, you know, foolishness usually is a symptom of fear and sorrow and something else going on in the heart. Usually there’s something else driving it.
If it’s a dress code or a missing assignment, you know, it can come down to motives, priorities, idols of the heart. There’s all these things that come out. Authority issues are big. And so, we see those and then we address those things with biblical care. So we just make sure that we have a holistic approach to discipline, that we’re addressing the soul, we’re addressing the student. We’re not just addressing their outward behavior and we’re addressing the heart.
Dale Johnson: Talk a little bit more practically, Ty, if you can, on how you provide specific care for students when needs arise. And that could be something that is initiated through discipline or other issues that you guys see. You know, how do you start to engage or provide care specifically for students when those needs arise?
Ty Faulk: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is and something that I’ve realized, I’ve taught classes like apologetics, I’ve taught theology, and we’re dealing with these intellectual questions of the faith. And I think they’re very important and a biblical worldview is very important.
But one thing that I realize is if a student has grown up in a Christian school and they’ve heard all the answers and they have all the answers, but they haven’t been cared for, their heart hasn’t been addressed, they haven’t felt like the Bible applies to their particular areas of struggle and the problems of their life, then the intellectual questions fade and they turn to something else when they graduate.
And I think that’s been some fuel to deconstruction movement and things like that, very unfortunately. And so, I feel like the heart of us caring for students is the fact that we continue to win students for Christ and allow them to realize that His Word is their hope and help and they can continue to turn to Him throughout their life.
And if they learn that in high school, that is absolutely amazing and so exciting to see. And so we do that by, we just do some practical things, we make sure that our students have an advocate with a Bible teacher. We’ve had terminal illness, we’ve had various things come up with students, grief issues.
Immediately when we see that, we write it down, it’s in a database, we assign a Bible teacher to them. That Bible teacher does things like ask them how they’re doing, meets with them, gives them Scripture, prays for them, but also is like creating meal trains for them, caring for them.
And so, when students graduate, you know, they can’t say, oh, you know, I learned all the biblical worldview, I learned all the right answers, but no one was there when I went through A, B, and C.
And so that’s the big thing is connecting that culture of biblical counseling and care to students’ lives so that they can holistically see that Christ is their hope and help in those issues.
Kristi Brannen: I would add to that that if your leadership and if your teachers and all of that, if there’s not a culture of this understanding in the school, then it’s impossible to really pull it off. We’ve had several schools reach out to us since we wrote the article and they say, how do we begin?
And I say, begin with your leadership because we cannot hold the students to a standard that we don’t hold ourselves to because they see that immediately. So they need to see the way we interact with one another, the way we interact with their parents, the way we interact with them if they’re missing schoolwork, all of that—we have to have a culture. So if you have to begin somewhere, I said, begin with your teachers and your leadership to develop a culture school-wide as we’re addressing these students day-to-day.
Dale Johnson: I love that because what you’re saying is that this is not just about an educational philosophy. This is not just simply dissemination of information. And that’s how we think kids are discipled. That is a part of what we do, right?
So, the philosophy of ministry, when we think about education, where Jesus says, “Come and learn of me,” it’s a very educative call. And that’s what discipleship really is. It is an impartation of information, but it then has to be an implementation of how they see this information impacting their life. That’s a genuine discipleship.
And that’s exactly what you’re describing is you’re taking the idea of education, not just simply to the dissemination of information, but now helping the student to see, ‘man, when life gets tough, this information is intended to be practical, helpful, and hopeful through anything that we walk through.’
And that is biblical discipleship and how it should be implemented in every area of life, not just simply in our professionalized sort of educational space, but in every area of life. Let me finish with maybe this question and just talk about some of the ways that biblical counseling has really helped your school operate or function in maybe a more biblical manner, biblical focus, as you think about your students and the function of what you’re doing in Christian education.
Kristi Brannen: Well, I would say that the greatest way I’ve seen it really help through the 25 years is the unity that we have in the school. Even with parents, staff, everyone, we have never really had a point of what I would consider disunity in the school.
Obviously, lots of conflict, lots of issues to walk through. I’m not saying that, but I’m saying the way it’s been dealt with, we have learned to apply these principles in biblical counseling to those situations, and I’ve seen it make a difference.
I have seen as much change in our staff and in our teachers, in our leadership, as I have the students. It’s become just a true culture of how we interact with one another, and it’s the ‘one another’s’ that Stuart Scott talks about that we have seen. That’s one of the big ways I’ve seen it impact us.
Ty Faulk: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think the culture and how it’s impacted the health, everybody. You just continually see people saying good things about what they’ve experienced here. This is me coming in from spending time at another Christian school and coming in here and just seeing the health of relationships and people that have stayed here for so long, staff and leadership and students and families.
Biblical counseling driving that relationship and driving when there’s conflict or whatever it may be, driving all that is really what’s created just a healthy culture of relationships and people, which is really hard to sustain without God’s Word and the work of the Spirit.
Dale Johnson: What I’ve appreciated about our two conversations here the last couple of weeks is you’re not sugarcoating the idea that you don’t have any problems and that even implementation of biblical counseling has removed all conflict or all student discipline issues or anything like that.
You’re acknowledging we’re real people struggling in real ways, but yet the truths of Scripture are intended to be helpful and you’re seeing that flesh out. You’re doing this in a couple of ways as you think about it in terms of preventative care, in the ways that you teach your Bible classes and then also in remedial care that when issues come up, you’re not afraid of those. The Bible has answers and you’re intentionally engaging. What a difference that makes.
You’re not operating out of fear, but out of humility, recognizing these are real problems that can arise in human relationships and human interaction, but yet we’re going to engage with the wisdom of Scripture. Now you’re picking the fruit of many, many years of influence.
As you said, I think that was really important. This isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight at an institution like a Christian school. This is something that takes years of influence, but it’s better to start now so that you can see that fruit that arises in five, ten years and the beauty of what it accomplishes, not just for your staff, your faculty, but also for the students and their families.
What an impact because those kids will go out in generations, and they’ll lead their families differently. They’ll engage with their work differently because now they have a biblical worldview and how to engage real problems in life because you’ve spent that time to help them.
I appreciate this conversation. You guys have been really helpful. Again, we’re going to put together in the show notes the article that they’ve mentioned a couple of times and some of you who are involved in Christian school may be interested as well and look forward to getting you guys connected to think about this. Thank you, guys, so much for joining me and helping to encourage us that biblical counseling is not just something that’s to be done in a counseling room, but this is something we can see that can be helpful everywhere, even in the Christian school. Thanks guys.
