“Springs of Blessing”

Toward the end of the book Education, the work of Christian teachers and parents is described as “springs of blessing.”¹ These words evoke imagery of refreshing, nurturing environments that nourish and build up the hearts and minds of learners. We need more of these “springs of blessing”-type teachers. Why are there not enough of them? UNESCO recently reported that by 2030, the world would need an additional 44 million teachers in addition to those already serving to achieve the proposed global goals.² The world is looking for motivated, professionally trained teachers–and adequate working conditions for them to practice their profession.

How many Adventist teachers does the church need to teach in its schools? How many does it need to reach Adventist children who do not attend denominational schools? It’s difficult to determine the total number, but in every school and church, we can estimate how many teachers are needed locally to serve Adventist children and teenagers attending Adventist schools as well as those attending other schools. No Adventist child should be deprived of the opportunity to have an Adventist education.

Parents, pastors, and administrators at different levels of the church’s organization must start a crusade to grow the number of teachers necessary to sustain the profession. We recently learned a shocking statistic: only seven out of every 100 Adventist children in Mexico receive an Adventist education in church schools.³ The other 93 go to other schools. These schools have beliefs different from those presented in the Bible, because any school, public or private, is founded on a system of beliefs. Education is not neutral. Every educational institution has a worldview.

Seventh-day Adventist world church statistics presented by the General Conference Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research⁴ show that, despite the denomination’s robust worldwide educational system, only about one-third of church members have ever attended an Adventist school (35 percent is the world average, with variations by division).⁵ Two-thirds have never received any formal education in church schools. And sadly, about 50 percent of members leave the church.⁶

Children and adolescents go to school to learn. They are there from four to six hours a day, five days a week, using the most productive hours of the day, under the influence of teachers who are their interpreters of reality, who are guiding them regarding what to believe, what to decide, what to do in the future. If they are in an Adventist school, what they learn is in accordance with the Bible and with what they are taught at home and in church; however, if they go to other educational institutions, they learn other perspectives about knowledge and life, which are often not in harmony with the Bible.

Why Should We Care About This Reality?

As we reflected on this topic, we asked ourselves: Why doesn’t the church care more about this reality? As we imagined the sad situation of the millions of Adventist children who today are attending secular educational institutions, we remembered an incident that moved Jesus. He was traveling through all the cities and small villages of the region. Many came to listen to Him. He could observe the attentive eyes of the adults and the children. He saw how they nodded when He explained the precious truths in the sacred scrolls that had not reached the listeners’ ears. As He traveled through these villages and healed ailments and diseases, He paused and spoke to the disciples. Matthew, with his keen eye and attentive ear, recorded:

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields’” (Matthew 9:36-38, NLT).⁷

Today, we fulfill Christ’s mission by taking His message to the cities and villages, to the confused, helpless multitudes. Who are they? The usual modern application of this biblical story points to those who have never heard of Jesus, but there are others whom we rarely mention. They are the children and young people, children of church members, who are equally confused and helpless because although they have a pastor and a message that feeds them briefly on Saturdays, five days a week—Monday through Friday—they are exposed to other voices conveying contrasting messages for many hours each day. If these messages contradict biblical truths, the children will be confused.

Repeated research on the impact of Adventist school attendance on retention of children and youth later in life replicates the finding that those who attend an Adventist school are much more likely to remain in the church, be an active and faithful member, and marry an Adventist.⁸ It is evident that Adventist schools make a very important contribution to the worldview of children and adolescents. Why? What does the school have that the home and church generally do not provide?

The Adventist school offers every day in a distinctive way the following advantages:

1. A biblical worldview encompassing all areas of knowledge, so that as children study the various disciplines, they discover God’s love through His Word and His works, have an intimate relationship with Him as Creator, Sustainer, and Savior, and understand reality in the framework of the great conflict between good and evil. Dedicated teachers guide them in developing values that are internalized and practiced every day, shaping positive habits and virtuous character. The Adventist school protects them from the philosophical currents that permeate secular education: evolution, unbiblical gender perspectives, pantheism, witchcraft, secularism, and many other ideas that produce confusion and lead away from Christianity.

2. A group of peers and friends who share beliefs, activities, tastes, and a biblical worldview as a frame of reference. Schoolmates generally become friends who influence lifestyle, career, and life mission.⁹

3. Mentors who inspire students to be disciples of Jesus and fulfill the gospel mission. The most powerful teaching tool is the teacher’s life. The emotional bonds formed with students are key to learning and discipleship and influence their lives with indelible strokes. For example, readers will generally have no difficulty remembering a teacher who greatly impacted their lives. In addition to teachers, there are teacher aides, volunteers, pastors and school chaplains, and retirees who often participate in the life of the school. These carefully chosen individuals also form bonds with students and impact their lives by providing a listening ear, offering words of encouragement, and praying with them.

The Need for Adventist Teachers

A global teacher shortage requires an aggressive investment in teacher recruitment and training.¹⁰ Within Adventist education, a relevant question is Who will teach the millions of Adventist children who cannot or do not attend Adventist schools for a variety of reasons? The answer is Adventist teachers. What kinds of teachers do we need to help consolidate young people’s biblical worldview of knowledge, life, and destiny and enable them to acquire a solid foundation of character that will continue to develop throughout their lives as they fulfill Christ’s mission?

In his seminal work on the ministry of teaching, George Akers offered the Five P’s acronym to explain the type of Adventist teacher needed for this task. We need a professional teacher who leads with a biblical worldview, a parent partner who works closely with the family, a pastor partner who works alongside the minister in evangelistic work, a teacher as a prophet who helps students envision and realize what is possible for their futures, and a teacher as a priest, who actively and intentionally prays and intercedes with God for the students, as did the priests of old.¹¹

An Innovative Initiative

In early 2024, administrators of the five union conferences in Mexico initiated a new educational movement by developing and implementing the Adventist educational model to reach all of the children in the church.¹² The initiative was born out of awareness of the urgent need to (1) enroll more Adventist children in Adventist schools and (2) reach church members’ children who lack access to or are not able to attend a church school for a variety of reasons.

To understand the reality of Adventist education in Mexico, particularly regarding teachers and administrators, the education directors of the five unions and a group of researchers from Montemorelos University developed a survey and distributed it to all personnel working in the country’s Adventist schools. The survey was disseminated during February and March 2024. The results were analyzed by the teams developing the Adventist educational model for Mexico. Based on the results, strategies related to human resources are being developed, such as recruiting, training, and retaining Adventist teachers.

The total number of teachers in Adventist schools in Mexico is around 2,300. The church has 127 schools in the country. All schools participated in the study, and 2,000 teachers returned the surveys. The data shared in this article are just a few of the findings obtained from this work. A summary of the results was presented in several administrative reports.

At the time of writing this article, after studying the reality of Adventist schools in terms of teachers and other collaborators serving within these five union conferences, three pressing needs have been identified that will receive priority attention:

1. There is an urgent need for Adventist teachers trained in a biblical worldview as the foundation of knowledge and standard for life. Of those responding to the survey, it was found that while 97 percent of those working in Adventist schools are Adventists, only 37 percent received their teacher-education training in an Adventist institution. This means that most teachers have been professionally trained in an institution with a worldview different from a biblical one. However, even those who have received Adventist education need updated training in biblical interpretation in the face of pressure from new educational trends contrary to the Bible. Only 50 percent of teachers said that they have had refresher training in distinctive aspects of Adventist education, and the vast majority described that training as their most urgent need.¹³

2. There is a need to improve the retention of the best Adventist teachers and work on bringing back those who have left the system. Educational administrators in the Mexican unions see an turnover of 25 percent of teachers each year.¹⁴ Sixty percent of teachers surveyed said they plan to remain in the system for life, 33 percent said they plan to leave the system in the next five years, and 6 percent said they will leave as soon as possible. Labor and financial conditions are the main reasons given for the turnover and teachers’ intention to leave the Adventist system. Only 25 percent of teachers are employed on a denominational basis (e.g., with benefits such as insurance, housing allowance, tuition assistance, paid vacation and sick leave, etc.). The rest have various types of less-favorable employment contracts.

It is necessary to bring back the best Adventist teachers who have left the system for a variety of reasons, primarily because of finances. Many are excellent instructors and active church members. An essential part of the educational model being developed includes a sustainable labor and financial system for Adventist education that encourages teacher retention and development. Actions are already being taken by church leaders throughout Mexico to accomplish this goal as that model is being developed.

3. There is a need to promote teaching as a vocation because of the great need for new Adventist teachers. The number of students in teacher-training programs at Adventist institutions in Mexico has fallen dramatically in recent years. There is a national and international trend of low interest in teaching vocations.¹⁵ In the past 10 years, at Montemorelos University, the only Adventist institution in Mexico that prepares teachers for preschool and elementary education, enrollment dropped from 96 students to 30, and the number of graduates in those programs from 31 to 7.¹⁶ This drop does not correspond to enrollment in the remaining university majors, which has been increasing. Thus, the administrations of the unions of Mexico are planning a campaign specifically targeting young people who want to dedicate themselves to teaching as their vocation and mission. This is an enormous challenge.

4. There is a need to strengthenthe educational role of the local churches in coordination with the schools and homes. Using the educational structures of the local churches making use of educators within the churches, children and young people who do not attend Adventist schools can be identified so that their biblical worldview can be strengthened. This approach can also help bring together peer groups of students in Adventist schools and those attending other schools to enable them to engage in activities together. In additional to face-to-face meetings, with the technology available today, these connections can be facilitated via Zoom, GoogleMeet, Microsoft Teams, and many other online connection platforms. The children and young people will thus come into contact with teachers in the local school and church who can serve as mentors and models for discipleship. This already takes place through church programs such as Adventurers and Pathfinders; however, more can be done through supplemental after-school programs (see the article by Gustavo Gregorutti).

Conclusion

The task seems enormous. A starting point is the one Jesus gave at the end of His reflection on the sheep without a shepherd: “‘So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields’” (Matthew 9:38, NLT). We must pray and work so that together, we can be part of the answer to this prayer. As teachers, educational leaders, parents, and pastors, we are called to be “springs of blessings” and to fulfill the mission to bring Adventist education to ALL our children and youth.

This article has been peer reviewed.

Raquel Bouvet de Korniejczuk

Raquel Bouvet de Korniejczuk, PhD, is Special Projects Coordinator for Montemorelos University in Nuevo León, Mexico. Before this, she served as the Academic Vice President of Montemorelos University. She holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Her professional interests include biblical foundations of education, curriculum development, and the impact of both on student learning.

Ismael Castillo Osuna

Ismael Castillo Osuna, MA, is the President of Montemorelos University in Nuevo León, Mexico. He holds a Master of Arts in Religion from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, U.S.A. With more than 44 years of service in Adventist education, he has held leadership roles such as academy principal and vice president of student affairs. Castillo has also led conferences, seminars, and teachers’ congresses for education leaders on the relevance of Adventist education in the home, church, and school.