THE DREAM

If you’re curious to know why we’re so fired up, look no further. We want to change the world. This is how we dream of doing it.

We envision a school built on the immovable rock of Jesus Christ, integrating the timeless Word of God into all aspects of the educational experience.

We envision a school that functions as a leadership-training center launching waves of resilient disciples on a downhill charge against the gates of hell.

We envision a school that rejects the low-bar of college-entrance exams as the sole educational target, and instead prepares all of the student (mind, body, soul) for all of life (husband, wife, father, mother, community leader, kingdom-builder, churchman) by equipping them to think biblically, discern wisely, and act courageously for Jesus sake.

We envision a school that gives the greatest educational gift a child can receive…a love for, and ability to be a lifelong learner… sparking the imagination for “what if” and cultivating a life-long unquenchable curiosity to explore and discover and enjoy the extraordinary world God made.

We envision a 50-acre world-class campus housing a culture- making center for leadership in the family, the church, and the larger community.

We envision a world-class sports-complex that hosts events, tournaments, and camps, all run by Grace City leaders, training coaches and players on our turf and our terms how to integrate faith & leadership into the “fields of friendly strife.”

We envision starting Farmer’s Sports League, a youth athletic program for young children and families that emphasizes character formation, leadership development, and noble sportsmanship…all in the service of life- preparation. We intend to reclaim the fields of friendly strife by wielding hard work, sweat, discipline, and a competitive environment run by our coaches that partners with parents to forge resilient children, all done with reasonable schedules that protects family time by not requiring long hours and expensive travel.

We envision hosting coaching clinics where coaches from all over the region come to be trained in the “Farmer Way,” a transformational and holistic coaching approach that shifts the focus from merely winning on the field to using the field as a means to prepare athletes to win in all of life.

We envision world-class athletic summer camps, where our Farmer’s coaching staff hosts athletes from all over the region to use the fun and grueling “fields of friendly strife” to instruct athletes in personal discipline, goal- setting, team-mentality, and culture-making sportsmanship where every athlete leaves our camps with life skills and a well-crafted life-vision statement for how they will make a difference. We will use the sport to help kids think about purpose and meaning beyond the sport; we will use the game to help them prepare for life, and after that, eternity.

We envision a Performing Arts Center that hosts theatrical plays, musical performances, and community events celebrating the beauty of God in the arts, building leaders from students, one creative character at a time.

We envision an Entrepreneurial Think-Tank where local community, political, business, and thought-leaders gather to learn, collaborate, and problem-solve community challenges with entrepreneurial solutions through capitalistic and private-enterprise endeavors, all driven by student engagement as our Farmer students get to rub shoulders with the best leaders in our valley.

We envision a Business-Center that partners with local leaders to integrate business & trades with internships & residencies, training students in entrepreneurial principles and giving our Farmer students broad-exposure to multiple industries. The Business-Center will help students start and run their own business undergirded by principals of generosity and stewardship, and help plug students into local businesses as willing and able workers ready to show up and work hard. Businesses around our valley will be hungry to hire a Farmer graduate.

We envision building a one-of-a-kind self-sustaining funding model that invites participation on every level…parent, child, teachers, grandparents, church, business, and community. We believe through leveraging the power of passionate community, sacrificial giving, and leaning into a compelling vision, we can break the choke-hold bonds of the government school monopoly and set children and families free by giving our region more educational options.

We envision building a school free from political lobbyists, teachers unions, and state bureaucracy that undermines parents authority and ties the hands of good teachers and administrators trying to do their job. A school that isn’t told by the state how and what to teach our children.

We envision a school where we are free to recruit the very best and brightest teachers, leaders, and coaches from all walks of life and current professional endeavors, to bring their life experience to bear on shaping the next generation with their real-life skills acquired through real life experience. A school that exists for the sole purpose of allying with parents to forge adults out of children, not a school that simply exists to protect the adults in the system.

We envision a training ground for boys to become Stronger Men and girls to become Noble Women as God’s design for gender is taught, encouraged, modeled, and celebrated.

We envision and academic environment free of woke indoctrination that tells kids what to think, and instead provide a robust liberal arts environment that teaches kids how to think. We envision a school where kids read less textbooks written with an overt agenda, and instead more read actual source material. For example, we won’t have curriculum with marxist ideas woven throughout. Instead, we’ll read Karl Marx’s actual manifesto and challenge students to assess his ideas honestly, using the tools of logic, reasoning, history, and the biblical lens of truth.

We envision a school that rejects the dangerous lie that education is neutral, precisely because education must deal in the realm of truth. And truth must land on a worldview. And for us, that worldview starts and ends with, “In the beginning, God…” Which is why we believes you can’t understand a single subject without taking into account the God who made all the subjects…that math, science, history, calculus, literature and language are inherently religious subjects because none of them matter or work unless Jesus is in the heavens holding all things together by the word of his power…which is why the biblical worldview will be fully integrated and woven into every subject so that graduates of Garden City Academy don’t leave with the false idea that you can study those subjects apart from God and think you’ve actually learned them.

We envision a school where every board member, administrator, advisor, counselor, teacher, and coach embraces the goodness and beauty of the Christian life and is seen as a model of Christian character and virtue. The truth and vitality of Christianity will not simply be heard, but seen; not only taught, but embodied.

We envision a school culture where children are consciously and unconsciously absorbing a Christian worldview at every turn, so that it creates a sort of God-centered gravity that their soul is tethered to and orbits around the rest of their life.

We envision an educational ecosystem that supports the nuclear family rather than works against it. This conviction will be embodied at every level, all the way down to an educational philosophy that believes parents are primarily responsible for their children’s education, that parents are the final authority in children’s lives, and that evenings and weekends are largely for families, not homework.

We envision a school that works with the individual student to provide personalized learning experience, allowing students to advance at an accelerated pace should their ambitions and abilities so desire, not lowering the bar for everyone to the lowest common denominator.

We envision a school where all of the leadership is pulling in the same direction to challenge students to do more than they think they can, because we all just happen to think they can.

We envision a school that supports parents, not acts as a surrogate for parents.

We envision a school where secondary students are given opportunities to gain college credit while working on-site. This will put Farmer graduates ahead of the game with massive financial savings, eliminating debt, and accelerating their path into adulthood.

We envision a school free of petty busy work that insults children’s intelligence, clutters home life, and generates a disdain for learning.

We envision a school for parents weary of government intrusion, tired of woke ideology woven into curriculum and HR policies, fed up with government incompetence, repulsed by attempts to normalize the absurd, who refuse to turn a blind eye to the encouragement of delusion cloaked in “self-expression”, who refuse to participate in the current social experiments forced on our children that robs them of innocence and warps their perception of reality. In other words, we are a school for parents who refuse to co-parent with the state.

We envision a school that doesn’t force parents to co- parent with the state.

We envision an education environment that integrates multiple learning and teaching styles for the most comprehensive learning environment possible.

We envision building such a compelling model of beauty, education, learning, and life, that many from all over will travel here to learn from our leaders how to do the same in their own town. We want to inspire a revolutionary sea-change in how the people of our state view educating the next generation. We want to spark the imagination for what could be when it comes to doing education a different way, a better way, a distinctly-Christian way.

We envision, at the center of all the above, a first-class school that is…

…catalyzed by compelling vision

…lead by healthy leaders

…protected by strong governance

…fueled by radical generosity

…run by sound business practices

…and sustained by a life-giving gospel culture

And Lord willing, this school will become 1.0 ground zero for 100 more. May the Lord grant it.

Sola Dei Gloria.