'Worldview Director' Prepares Christian Students for Culture War
by Jim Brown
March 14, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A Christian school in Texas is offering a special program that equips its high school students to engage the culture on moral and social issues facing the culture.A mid-February article in Baptist Press reported that Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano is "creating culture warriors" through biblical worldview training in its Student Leadership Institute. Headmaster Larry Taylor hired Dan Panetti, a former non-profit attorney dealing with sexual ethics, to become the school's "worldview director" -- a position where, says BP, students are "free to come into his office to discuss issues that run the gamut, from 'same-sex marriage' to personal dating concerns."
Panetti says Christian students usually know what is biblically right and wrong, but do not know how to verbalize it in a way that the culture would respect them and respond to them. He says his new position grew out of conceptual discussions.
Panetti says they began to ask the question: "Wouldn't it be neat if there were a full-time position of somebody whose job it was to help equip these kids to not only know the biblical worldview, but how [to] apply what you know so that as you're engaging the culture, you're there and you're being a persuasive force?"
Panetti became that resource for students at PCA. He explains that young people in the Student Leadership Institute are being taught to reason from a solid Christian foundation, while not necessarily using that language.
"That's the thing that we're trying to prepare them to do," he shares. "To not only know the Bible and the Bible verses they've been taught since they were three years old, but using those as a tool and a mechanism now to defend their Christian worldview on practical issues so they're prepared for those debates that they're having on a college campus and for the conversations they're having with their friends."
To achieve that objective, Panetti says students in the Student Leadership program are asked to make presentations on issues such as bioethics and same-sex marriage, which are then challenged by adult staff members. He also shares that the worldview program at PCA is an effort to prevent large numbers of children in Christian homes from leaving the church when they graduate from high school.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
