The ECS enculturation trifecta for unfavorable conditions:
- Masculine Nerve – we have men with chests (like C.S. Lewis wrote about)
- Tactical Laughter – we fear the Lord so we don’t fear the future
- Radical Company – we get to the roots of fellowship and fruitfulness
Our school’s tangibles are similar to other schools. We have classrooms and teachers, we read books and write papers and take tests. We follow the Trivium for our teaching model, but there are other ACCS sister schools in Western WA training their students through Grammar and Logic and Rhetoric.
Our mission is to commend the works of the Lord to another generation so that they will carry and advance Christ-honoring culture. Lots of Christians could say that, but what does it mean? What ingredients go into that culture?
We don’t want the ingredients to be secret, though they can’t be seen tangibly. They are like the aroma of baking bread: you can’t touch it, but you know it’s where you want to be.
Let’s call these the ECS Enculturation Trifecta for Unfavorable Conditions. This trifecta makes up the intangible but invaluable ethos of our Christ-honoring culture. We already have this kind of culture, and we are trying to advance this culture, for families who see that we live in unfavorable conditions.
Masculine Nerve
Our school culture is built by men who have families to feed, men who have children to feed with truth, goodness, and beauty so that they can carry and advance Christ-honoring culture.
This does not frustrate the ladies, whether teachers or students or moms. It means our women don’t have to be first in battle, even as they beautify and help make things better.
We’ve got men with backbone leading the charge and women with backbone making it glorious. When conditions are unfavorable, you want men with chests, men with ordered loves and convictions and vision and enterprise. ECS has, and advances, masculine nerve.
Tactical Laughter
It’s easy to see problems, and a good education tends to make it worse because the educated know more of what it could be, should be, might have been.
Our motto is risus est bellum, “laughter is war.” We’re not laughing because nothing is wrong, we’re trying to deal with what’s wrong with a good attitude. Let men their laughs employ.
There’s a sense in which laughter is our goal, yes, but it’s also a tactic, it’s a tool we use to get to the goal. We don’t wait until the end of the day to laugh, like the wise and strong woman we learn to “laugh at the time to come” (Proverbs 31:25).
The current conditions make it seem that the self-confident are succeeding, but “the righteous shall see and fear and laugh” (Psalm 52:8). The three steps are not see and fear and freak out. There are really uncertain things, hard things, tough assignments, weeks full of events, challenges in the world. ECS has, and advances, tactical laughter.
Radical Company
A company is a group of companions, derived from the Latin words for “with” (com) and “bread” (panis). A company are bread-breakers, sharing a table, sharing a feast.
Pursuing this type of fellowship is radical, not just because it’s extreme, but because fellowship is rooted in the gospel, the evangel in ECS. Sin disrupts, and the gospel enables forgiveness and then fruitfulness.
ECS is absolutely committed to dealing with sin, for those inescapable times when “your brother sins against you,” just as Jesus taught in Matthew 18. Students learn how to ask for forgiveness and then learn what reconciliation and full restoration looks and feels like. We’re in this together. It’s accountability to keeping short accounts that enables way more fun and fruitfulness. ECS has, and advances, radical company.
There’s no other place like ECS. We’re seeking to nail the tangibles that build a school, and then to bake in the trifecta of intangibles that advance a Christ-honoring culture.