Back in 1979 the leaders of the original Verbo Church in Guatemala City voiced their concern about the fact that while we believed and taught the absolute necessity of following God’s plan for our lives as disciples, we were sending our children to secular schools where many of the moral, ethical and even scientific values being taught were contrary to our understanding of God’s Word.
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The Team Takes Action
We had had this discussion many times before but this time we decided to do something: Within a few months we started a school with about 70 grade school students and a former Undersecretary of the Guatemala Department of Education as principal.
We eventually settled on a curriculum based on the seven major Bible principles of sowing and reaping, form and power, Christian character, stewardship, unity and union, individuality, self-government. The response from parents from various churches was so strong that within three years the Verbo School was serving children from kindergarten through high school. Each year the congregation, parents of students, and donors committed to Christian education raised the money to pay the very high initial costs of starting such a broad outreach.
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Educational System Grows
That first school was the foundation for what is now an educational system that reaches thousands of students from pre-kinder through high school vocational training, plus a university with over 13 thousand students in over 70 facilities—and that’s just in Guatemala. There are Verbo schools in Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and soon in Brazil.
In November, high school science students from one of the Guatemalan Verbo schools achieved a fourth place victory in an international robotics competition in Orlando, Florida, that included student teams from First World countries like Germany, Japan and the United States. Verbo’s commitment is to prepare children to bring the Kingdom of God to every human discipline,—and to do it well.
{mosimage}The Reformers Knew It
Over time we realized (as did the Protestant Reformers long before us) that education is really power in the corridors of government, in the business world and among the professions so we worked for several years to finally launch a accredited university whose required core curriculum includes those seven major principles and also a set of Bible-based lifestyle values. Our goal is to transform individuals who will then transform nations.
I’d like to think that these core values teachings are what has drawn so many students to the Universidad Panamericana (Panamerican University) but the fact is that the genius of its rapid and solid growth is based on a vision to make a university education accessible to the rural and small town dwellers in developing countries where generally less than two or three percent of the population has a college degree.
Indians Need Access
Most universities in Latin America are situated in the largest cities and are the domain of the affluent minority. The rural poor—and especially the Indian majorities in nations like Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru—are economically excluded. Verbo’s Panamerican University doesn’t require students to come to a big campus in a major town. Instead the college goes to small towns anywhere there were sufficient students to start classes in a specific discipline. The school might offer only one major in a small town, with some classes taught in person by instructors and other classes taught over the internet on a personal basis.
{mosimage}Some Classes Are Virtual
For example, a professor in the capital who can’t visit a particular small town where there are students, sets up a virtual class. The pupils—with their coordinator—go to class as usual. They see and hear the professor on the screen. The professor sees and hears them and they are able to interact. This plan allows the Panamericana to provide high quality professors and education in areas where otherwise it would economically impossible to sustain faculty members.
Classes Foster Changes
Because of this and other innovations many Indian groups and campesinos now have direct access to a university education with tuition fees within their means. Over time, as these people prosper and enter the civic arena, they will change the entire structure of the country, starting with bringing prosperity to the rural areas instead of only concentrating wealth and opportunity in the urban centers.
{mosimage}Our hope is that they do so with Jesus in their hearts, and if not that, with solid Judeo-Christian moral and ethical values as a compass for guiding their decisions.
Our biggest need at the moment is not for land or buildings. The Lord has blessed richly us in that sense. What Verbo schools and the university need are people willing to be scholarship donors for promising children from rural and urban families who—without help—may not make it beyond third or fourth grade, which is unfortunately the norm for the disadvantaged.
Please help us help them as you help make real the words of Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go [and in keeping with his individual gift or bent], and when he is old he will not depart from it.”