Donvale Christian College commenced in 1975, but the dream of starting a Christian school in this area is much older than that......Pioneering people have to be dreamers...

The very nature of their task, too, requires not only vision and idealism, but stubbornness, perseverance and the vital determination not to be incapacitated by criticism, ridicule or disappointment.

Our founding parents had those essential qualities and I sometimes wonder what grand dreams they had for the little school they were planning to start.

Mind you, just getting it started might have been vision enough. After all, each of them had been hoping for that day - saving money from very limited incomes, meeting, planning, encouraging, resisting the inevitable critics, enthusing, arguing, seeing their own children move beyond school age but continuing the struggle on behalf of the generations to come - for nearly 20 years! Just to see Donvale Christian School start in 1975 would have been fulfilment enough for many of them.

I wonder, though, whether they ever projected themselves 40 years ahead. Could they have conjured up the image of an organisation of more than 1000 students and 500 different families? I wonder, too, if they, mostly from the Reformed Church of Box Hill, of Dutch migrant stock, foresaw a school representing virtually all the mainstream Christian denominations. And I wonder whether in 1975 any of our founders could have had any sense of the rapid advance of technology. Could they have possibly imagined each Secondary student working on their own individual laptop, supported by access to a World Wide Web with almost infinite amounts of information? Probably not. That was hard to contemplate for any of us even 20 years ago.

And what of the next 30 years? Our current Prep children will be about 37 years old, perhaps with young children themselves. Our Year 12 graduates will be in their 40s, maybe with their own teenage children. What sort of world will they be living in?

The well-respected futurist, Ray Huzweil, in his recent book The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999), presents a timeline of 21st century change. Below is but a very small sample of the things he says will have developed within the next 20 to 30 years:

Computers will be largely invisible and embedded everywhere - in walls, tables, chairs, desks, clothing, jewellery, bodies.
High resolution 'virtual reality' will enable people to do virtually anything with anybody, regardless of physical proximity.
Paper books and documents will be rarely used.
Disabled people will have access to a range of devices to overcome most disabilities.
People will begin to have relationships with automated personalities and use them as companions, teachers, caretakers, and lovers.
Neural implants for the brain will be perfected, enhancing memory, reasoning, interpretation, sight and hearing.
Significant knowledge will be created by machines with little or no human intervention.
The majority of communication will not involve a human. And the majority of communication involving humans will be between a machine and a human.
You will be able to choose the personality of your automated computer assistant who will conduct business for you with other automated personalities.
Basic life needs will be available for the vast majority of the human race. There will be little human involvement in production, agriculture or transportation.
There will be growing discussion about the legal rights of computers and what constitutes being "human."
Machines will claim to be "conscious." These claims will be largely accepted.
By 2019 the average personal computer's computational ability will be approximately equal to the ability of the human brain. By 2029, the average personal computer will have the computing capacity of 1000 human brains.
Permanent or removable implant for the eyes, similar to contact lenses, will enable input and output between the human user and the world-wide computing network.

"A person must have a place to stand - from which to view the world. This place to stand provides perspective; it is a point of measurement, something that can impart sanity in a world of flux."

In the future, more than ever before, I think, our students are going to need that 'place to stand'. We need to remind ourselves regularly that we are not preparing our children for the past. We are preparing them to be ambassadors for God in an amazingly challenging and exciting future. We are preparing them to be people who, with spiritual discernment, intellectual honesty, and a passion for the gospel of Christ, will humbly attempt to interpret and apply Biblical themes and values to their own cultural setting and to the work to which God calls them.

A strong understanding that this is God's world, that God remains in ultimate control of it, that God has a significant place and purpose for them in it.
A personal commitment to being God's servants in the world and seeing this commitment as the entire focus of their lives.
A positive, confident and happy approach to challenges and difficulties, knowing that God is in control.
An attitude of compassion, humility, tolerance and flexibility towards the issues and questions that confront them, within their understandings of the broad teachings of Scripture.
Hearts and minds that are open to inspiration, insight, challenge and wonder.
The willingness to change and modify their opinions and attitudes as God leads them to deeper understandings of how Biblical teaching might apply in their own culture and time.
The courage to stand always for justice on behalf of those who are oppressed.
The strength to forgive, to leave behind personal hurts and slights, and to keep things always in God's perspective.

How, then, are Christian schools to support these essential qualities into the future? At the Christian Schools International Conference in England in 2000, which I had the privilege of attending, some of the most depressing and challenging reports came from countries where Christian Schools have been in operation for much more than 30 years. For many of them there has been a gradual ebbing away of their Christian foundations. Over time, they have succumbed to the subtle pressures of the day and are now merely good, well-disciplined schools with fine academic results and strong enrolments. I say merely for a very good reason. A pleasant, well ordered school with an excellent academic standard is something to which all educational institutions should aspire. But if that were all we sought to achieve at DCC, we would be guilty of betraying our founders' dream entirely. Above all, DCC was to be a Christian school. And our founders understood very well that a Christian school had to be committed to two non-negotiable principles:

All members of staff must be committed Christians and committed to the mission and vision of the school.
The organisation must be committed to encouraging a teaching and learning approach which seeks to understand God's mind and to apply that understanding to every aspect of life.

Those two principles must never be compromised. They are as essential now as they were 30 years ago and will be even more important 30 years from now, in whatever forms educational institutions take at that time. Those are the distinctives of a Christian school and the Board of Directors of DCC, representing the parent Association, has been very active and determined in seeking to maintain and support those principles, both in policy development and in practical application.

A third principle that distinguishes our type of Christian school from some others is the significance we place on the role of parents. In our College, we seek to give practical form to the Biblical principle that parents have the prime responsibility for the education of their children. Hence our organisational structure which gives oversight of direction and planning to a Board of Directors elected from the parent Association. Hence, too, our encouragement of parental involvement in the general life of the College. Into the future, the primacy of parental responsibility in education may be expressed in different ways and in varied structural forms, but as an organisation we believe that its essence and practical outworkings must be preserved if we are to observe the Biblical mandate.

To summarise what DCC's continuing vision is, I have chosen the words of a hymn written in the 19th century by a man with the rather grand sounding name of Thomas Hornblower Gill (1819-1906). It is worth coping with the antiquated language, because in his poetry Gill manages to bring together the past, present and future of our mission at DCC in a perceptive and inspiring way.

We come unto our fathers' God;
their Rock is our salvation.
The eternal arms, their dear abode,
we make our habitation.
We bring thee, Lord, the praise they brought,
we seek thee as thy saints have sought
in every generation.

Their joy unto the Lord we bring;
their song to us descendeth.
The Spirit who in them did sing
to us his music lendeth.
His song in them, in us, is one;
we raise it high, we send it on,
the song that never endeth.

Ye saints to come, take up the strain,
the same sweet theme endeavour.
Unbroken be the golden chain,
keep on the song forever.
Safe in the same dear dwelling-place,
rich with the same eternal grace,
bless the same boundless giver.

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Ross Grace