Some great thing!

One of my favorite Bible stories is Naaman the leper. When the prophet tells him to dip in the Jordan River he balks expecting some spectacular event to herald his healing. His servant saves the day by asking “Father, if the prophet had asked you to do some great thing would you have not done it?” Christian Montessori Fellowship is being called on to do “some great thing” – the creation of an international group of Christian Montessori training centers. If you had asked me a year ago what great thing we were planning it would not have been this. At the beginning of the year we were looking at how to get our distance training program accredited. Then through all the circumstances that God orchestrates we discovered that to create our own structure through MACTE (Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education) we would need to have a location to anchor our distance training program and we would need five training centers to create our own consortium. Why don’t we go with AMI or AMS? Because their training does not center on Him who inspired Dr. Montessori. They do a wonderful job of training teachers for now but our goal is to train teachers to impact eternity. A “slightly” different goal. In looking for our five centers, interest was expressed by 6, then 7 and 8 and 9 and 10 schools. If we can do 10 we can do 20. There is a world to reach with the Gospel and Christian Montessori is a fantastic tool to share the Good News. In the last ten plus years the foundation for Christian Montessori training has been laid. Five years were spent in the studio putting everything on dvd. Albums were produced. The philosophy course was completed. The beta testing has been done.

Now with a group of Christian Montessorians sharing their decades of experience and eager to make this next step a reality we are beginning the foundational process to bring this about. Many of you might share this same vision and we would like to invite you to explore this with us. We have set aside Thursday January 11th (the day before the International Christian Montessori Conference) as a day to meet and create the model that we will be able to use all over the world – thanks to internet, dvds, skype etc. If you have an interest in joining this consortium please let us know so we can share with you the preliminary work that has already been accomplished. It is interesting that when we started this Christian Montessori journey 45 years ago we had no idea what God intended and where He would lead. Very frankly, it has always been one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. The next step has always seemed so natural (maybe a little bit uphill but natural and needed.) Maybe it is in looking back that the little steps seem to be giant steps. (A little like the first moon landing, “A small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” In sharing this training center vision with a friend the other day she said “This is a big thing you are doing.” It took me by surprise. Maybe it is a big thing or even a great thing – back to Naaman and the prophet. But on the other hand it is made up of many small things. It is the next step for Christian Montessori to be able to bless the children of the world. And we want to invite you to explore this with us. Email us or call us.