Start a PK to 14 Homeschool Academy

Welcome to the Rescue Mission!

It will take churches across the country working together to turn the trajectory of the next generation. CVCU is passionate about helping churches make an impact in their realm of influence, and over the last 20 years, we have found that church-based homeschool academies that partner with parents are a powerful impetus for turning the hearts of students back to their parents and raising up a generation of champions. If your church building is sitting open during the week, what are you waiting for? The harvest is ready! CVCU offers various levels of support that will equip your church to launch a culture-transforming educational center that helps return the local church to its rightful sphere of influence.

Dr. Dunne is committed to assisting your pastoral team in envisioning, creating, and launching a homeschool support academy that will help restore the hearts of the next generation to their parents and to the kingdom of God. Through our PK to 14 model, churches can reclaim education across the spectrum, from preschool to college, right in their own local church building. Learn more about The Academy, CVCU's training ground for church-based homeschool academies, here.

Program Overview

Plato once said that the two most important questions every culture must ask are as follows: who teaches the children, and what are they being taught?

Since the introduction of the Values Clarification Movement in the public education system in 1964, and the removal of the Bible in 1963, the United States has seen a steady decline of the moral output of its youngest citizens.

In his 1931 novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley predicts a future where children will be indoctrinated against traditional values through a cradle-to-grave school system. The work is chillingly prophetic. Additionally, former Focus on the Family President Dr. Dobson has said in no uncertain terms that the public schools are “indoctrinating students” in “a godless, anti-Christian agenda disguised in progressive curricula.” Christians, he says, must “flee” public schools. Lieutenant Colonel Ray Moore, founder of Exodus Mandate, adds, “If we don’t change the way we do education, we will lose our country.”

The collateral damage of secular education is tangible. Today, 51 million kids sit in public school environments across the country for 6-7 hours a day, 180 days a year, where they are overtly indoctrinated in gender fluidity, revisionist history, macro evolution, CRT, and overt promiscuity. Today’s K -12 curricula is more about serving a political agenda than meeting the true academic needs of the next generation.

GenZ emotional distinctives are sobering. They are anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, suicidal, self-injurious, STD-ridden, and more likely to cohabitate than any other previous generation. Tragically, they are the most atheist generation in the history of our nation. The two main areas of disbelief are as follows: First, they can’t believe a loving God would allow evil, and second, they believe science and the Bible contradict. This “knowledge base” is easily traced to its source: public school indoctrination, where on our watch, the Great Commission has literally been outlawed in every public sphere of American culture.

If we are to reclaim the next generation, radical education reform is required.

As Christians, we must consider our specific realm of impact and influence. We can improve family life and limit social media, of course, but until we change the trajectory of K-12 education, the next generation, and thus our nation, will continue to fall further and further away from truth of God’s word.

In Luke 1:17 the angel Gabriel tells Zechariah that his son John would come in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children. That’s a heart cry for this generation.

Modern culture says that kids are a curse, an accident, a drain on the pocketbook—couples complete “financial feasibility reports” to see if kids are worth the cost. The Bible presents a different worldview. Psalm 127:5 tells us that children are a blessing, a heritage from the Lord, a reward from him, arrows in the hand of a warrior.

The homeschool academy format creates a model of family discipleship that connects the hearts and minds of children and parents, dethroning the spirit of peer orientation and replacing it with the healthy model of parent orientation.

When we look at the tragic stats of GenerationZ, we see the fruit of millions of children who have been told their lives have no purpose, no destiny. They have been given no reason for hope or joy. Romans 1:20 tells us that God’s nature is evidenced in the created realm—that we can learn of God’s character and qualities through studying his world. Because they have not been taught science from a Christian perspective, they are severed from this perspective and from the true foundation of knowledge: As Proverbs 9:10 reminds us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

We delude ourselves if we think that sanitized, secular, soul-less education programs can teach true wisdom or godly character. And at the end of the day, what will it profit a man if he gains the world, yet loses his own soul? If our children become academic legends or sports superstars but they walk away from God, it doesn’t matter how many trophies grace their bookshelves--we didn’t complete our eternal mission, our job description, as parents. Josh McDowell once noted: “This is the first generation to be more influenced by things outside of the home than by things inside of the home.” It’s time to reverse that trend.

Though it may not be a panacea, homeschooling is a powerful and effective tool for rebuilding the faulty foundations that play such a significant role in most of our modern social ills.

Homeschool Academy Member Benefits

Home education is a system of family discipleship where parents take on the responsibility of educating their children at home through a variety of methodologies and systems. For most Christian families, this means providing a Bible-based education that centers on both spiritual and academic formation.

Homeschooling is a purposeful and powerful methodology for ensuring the transmission of the faith from one generation to the next, helping to reverse some of the grim statistics relating to modern American discipleship and biblical literacy:

Biblical Knowledge: 75% of adults who say they are “born again” can’t define the Great Commission (Wheeler, 2010).

Family Discipleship: Only 1 in 10 Christian families read the Bible together outside of church (Barna, 2009).

Community Evangelism: There are now 200 million unchurched people in America. “Only India, Indonesia and China have more lost people than the United States” (Early & Wheeler, 2010). The US is now one of the biggest mission fields in the world!

When it’s done well, homeschooling creates a love of learning and a curiosity that fuels research and inquiry. Research on learning suggests that two factors influence knowledge acquisition: efficacy and curiosity. Students must know that they are able to complete the task and they must be interested, intellectually engaged, in the subject matter. Homeschooling fuels these foundations through Socratic methodology.

Colleges and universities are now actively recruiting homeschoolers for their academic performance, their commitment to volunteerism, their social maturity, and their real-world experience. More important than the academic success, however, is the character growth that is modeled in a homeschool environment, where children are primarily mentored by their parents rather than by their peers.

Deuteronomy 6:6-9 instructs parents to impress God’s laws upon the hearts of their children, to talk about them as they travel on the highways and the byways. In the traditional system, most students go to class for 7 hours and then have another two to three hours of homework each night, which can significantly limit the opportunities for family discipleship. Homeschooling provides an opportunity for rich relationship, quality time, and deeper connections to academia and to the family itself.

Homeschooling is an opportunity to:

To connect the hearts of parents and children in a wounded world
To teach, train, and be transformed through a Christian worldview
To invest wholeheartedly in family discipleship

Local Church Benefits

For the local church, a homeschool academy offers a number of benefits. First, it restores the local church to the center of growth-oriented activities, drawing families back into the heart of church culture. It also provides job opportunities for members of the church who have a heart for impacting the next generation. Additionally, it offers summer outreach programs for children in the community from all spheres of education. Finally, it offers outreach opportunities through semester showcases where families can invite saved and unsaved relatives and community members to the church.

A church-based homeschool academy is an opportunity to reverse the trend of peer orientation and replace it with parent orientation, supporting the Luke 1:17 model of restoring the hearts of the parents to the children.
A church-based homeschool academy is an opportunity to increase intergenerational connectivity, providing a rich framework of relational discipleship and mentoring, giving young women hope and encouragement and offering young men the training they need to carry the mantle of manhood.
A church-based homeschool academy is an outreach to the local community, offering tremendous church growth and formation opportunities through its class days and semester showcase programs.
A church-based homeschool academy is an opportunity to restore the local church the center of spiritual formation and community, providing a holistic approach to family discipleship and the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

About Dr. Lisa Dunne

Dr. Lisa Dunne is a dynamic, award-winning author, speaker, educator, lifelong homeschooler, and president of Chula Vista Christian University (CVCU.us). She holds a Ph.D. in human development, a Master's degree in communication studies, a Master’s degree in human and organizational systems, and undergraduate degrees and minors in humanities, secondary education, and musical theater.

After spending two decades in the college classroom, Dr. Dunne was increasingly concerned with the burgeoning rates of anxiety, depression, and atheism in the next generation. She envisioned an academic model that would counter the common struggles in American higher education and equip two generations—parents and students—with biblical literacy, relational resilience, and academic success. Now, through CVCU and 21 homeschool academies across the US, thousands of students are learning and growing in biblically-based classes, and churches are reclaiming the secular government’s cradle-to-grave indoctrination, replacing it with a Kingdom-based, future-minded education. See a list of her academy partners on the CVCU.us homepage.

Dr. Dunne is passionate about the transformative power of Christian education, the primacy of the local church, and the stable family as the cornerstone of healthy culture. She is an expert in Gen Z educational methodology and psychosocial development as well as an advocate of education reform and family discipleship. She is the author of several books, including Outsourced: Why America's Kids Need an Education Revolution; The Multigenerational Marketplace, a guide to utilizing Christian communication competencies in the workplace; The Science of Social Influence, a primer on media’s insidious influence on identity; and Relating through the Lifespan, a Christian perspective on lifespan development and intergenerational mentoring. Her podcast The Communication Architect is available on iTunes and Spotify, and her weekly radio show, MindsetMatters, can be heard every Saturday at 11pm on KPraise Radio.

Despite a tumultuous, abusive childhood with parents who married and divorced seven different times, she is blessed to have been married to her British husband, Adrian, for 30 years, and they have two intelligent and compassionate homeschool graduates, Ethan and Cymone Azariah, who are their true résumé.

Dr. Dunne has founded 19 church-based homeschool academies, and as the president of CVCU, part of her vision is helping churches build their own successful programs to rescue the next generation from public school indoctrination.

Support Partnership Options

We offer several partnership levels depending on the existing structure and vision of the church. We are committed to your success, and we are also sensitive to your church budget. If none of the levels below are suitable for your needs, we can work with a combination of plans. The main goal is getting your academy up and running, so choose a pricing and support package that works best for the needs and budget of your organization. If you simply need a phone call to decide if an academy is the right fit for you, we are happy to provide one phone or Zoom call free of charge. If, however, you would like more in-depth support, whether that’s a document drop or six months of extended support and mentorship as you launch your program, we are here for you. Each Level is a one-time fee, but additional hours of support beyond the Level 3 area are available on a monthly retainer as explained below:

Level 1 Scaffolding Support (3 months of pre-launch support): This entry level support is recommended for churches where a lifelong homeschooler with proven executive leadership will be overseeing the church academy site. This data-sharing level includes includes electronic delivery of the necessary forms, processes, and procedures to launch a homeschool support academy on your own. These include sample schedules, teacher and family application forms, handbooks, and all of Dr. Lisa Dunne’s intellectual property relating to her homeschool academy development work and graduate studies over the last two decades. Level 1 includes one phone or Zoom call with the site director plus all forms, processes, and procedural overviews. Call for rates.

Level 2 Engaged Support (six months of pre/post launch support): This level of extended support includes all Level 1 documentation and a full month (20-30 hours) of mentorship and support prior to the launch of the academy, including personalized meeting with demographic analysis, one meeting with church campus leadership, one parent interest meeting, one teacher training session/forms, processes, procedures, and ongoing support for the site coordinator and campus pastor during the first month of setup. Call for rates.

Level 3: Full Mentorship Support (one year of coaching and support as you launch your new program): This level is appropriate for any church beginning a homeschool academy that would like the ability to troubleshoot not only prior to the launch but after the launch as well. Support includes all Level 1 and 2 data plus six months of support: includes bi-monthly check-in calls for leadership team, troubleshooting support for program challenges, assistance with teacher evaluation procedures, assistance with survey creation for measuring program success, and 1-2 additional teaching sessions for parents or teachers on classroom methodology, generational learning theories, homeschooling basics curriculum selection, or related topics. Call for rates.

If additional assistance is needed beyond the Level 3 support, churches can also purchase a $200/month retainer for continued support, mentorship, training, and programmatic troubleshooting. No contract timeline necessary; this retainer is agreed upon on a month-to-month basis as the church has need of support.

Churches that partner with CVCU will be connected by our umbrella training program, NHAN. This National Homeschool Academy Network provides ongoing support for homeschool pastors, leaders, and parents through our CVCU training classes and coaches.

Concluding Thoughts

Luke 6:40 says that when he is fully trained, the student will become like the teacher. As we re-assess Plato’s admonition, we have to ask ourselves what harvest we are seeing in the next generation in our own local churches. Bad company corrupts good character. It’s time to pull our students away from soul-less, secular education system of state indoctrination. Through the establishment of church-based homeschool academies, we can train up K to 12 students to love God, country, and one another, changing the world for the kingdom one student at a time.