HAVE A SCHOOL! DO 2432 5/88
--The Time Has Come for Family Schools!

1. LET'S SAY YOU HAD EVEN TWO HOMES WITH OVER 30 CHILDREN BETWEEN THEM, you could turn one into a School and the other Home could perform the dual services of witnessing & provisioning. Some of the personnel of both Homes could participate in provisioning, & the other Home, the Open Home, in witnessing etc. The one would be a School Home, & the other could perhaps primarily do both witnessing & provisioning.

SCHOOL REPORTS!

2. THE SCHOOLS OUGHT TO MAKE REPORTS JUST LIKE HOMES, A MONTHLY SCHOOL REPORT, including their numbers, number of children in each age category, number of staff, & the staff divided into categories such as how many teachers, how many maintenance men, how many promotional people, how many are engaged in fulltime witnessing, guides & greeters & all that sort of thing.
3. WE NEED TO SEE A SCHOOL POPULATION REPORT EACH MONTH, a personnel report showing who's staff & the different kinds of staff & students, what age groups & how many in each age group. They should also do financial reports, as well as report on their witnessing stats, number of visitors, number saved etc. Just like we have a stats report on the whole Family every month, they should be able to make a similar report for their Schools.
4. AND EACH MONTH WE NEED TO HAVE THE CUMULATIVE STATS OVER ALL THESE MONTHS TO DATE. What is the TOTAL number of visitors who have visited since their School started, & how many got saved?--How many pieces of literature were distributed & all those things. I want to see those reports!

HOW TO QUALIFY AS A SCHOOL!

5. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT AN ACTUAL SCHOOL THAT HAS A STAFF & STUDENT BODY THAT CAN BE A WITNESS & that can be seen in ONE PLACE at one time, & can give programs & shows & be inspected & give tours as a witness! So I would say that would qualify as a SCHOOL, the combined children, students of several Homes, & the combined staff, even if they're taken from several Homes.
6. IF THERE'S NOT ENOUGH ROOM AT THE SCHOOL FOR ALL of the staff or even perhaps for all of the students to SLEEP at NIGHT, yet they can meet all together in one place in one building or on one property to have a School in the DAYTIME, such as other public & private schools do, then it still qualifies.

DAY SCHOOLS: HOW TO!

7. NOT ALL SCHOOLS ARE BOARDING SCHOOLS. In some cases they may have to live in their nearby Homes, both staff & students. But they need to have ONE SCHOOL BUILDING or property where they gather together in the DAYTIME for school, just like a normal public school. They do not have to be boarding schools. They do not have to all SLEEP on the same property or necessarily even EAT on the same property.
8. THEY CAN HAVE STUDENTS THAT ATTEND THE SCHOOL ONLY DURING THE DAYTIME, who eat breakfast at home, come to School, eat only their own lunch at School, & go home for supper & to sleep, & that's perfectly all right, as long as they get TOGETHER in ONE BUILDING or on one campus in a united School operation where they can be a united witness & testimony & can be SEEN & HEARD in one place during the DAYTIME, all staff & all students.
9. IN OTHER WORDS, THEY DO NOT HAVE TO BE BOARDING SCHOOLS. But I would certainly recommend that they at least all eat LUNCH together. You might even solve the lunch problem, just like many public schools do, & not have to have a big kitchen & a huge food operation, by having the children bring their OWN lunches to school.
10. RIGHT NOW MOST SITUATIONS DO NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT FACILITIES FOR A BOARDING SCHOOL, where they have to SLEEP all of them in and they have to FEED them all three meals a day. The quickest, easiest situation which they could start with right now would be for both the staff & students to continue living in their separate Homes where they are now, providing either one of the Homes has sufficient facilities for CLASSROOMS for the various age groups and sufficient ASSEMBLY ROOM for all the staff and students together. If one Home is big enough for that, with one big room that's large enough for general assembly, and enough classrooms for the various age groups in the daytime, although only part of them actually LIVE there at night and eat their breakfast and supper there, the rest could come in from the other Homes in the DAYTIME.

GENERAL ASSEMBLIES: WHERE TO!

11. ONE OF THE HOMES WOULD HAVE TO BE LARGE ENOUGH FOR SUCH SCHOOL FACILITIES, preferably with a meeting room large enough to hold the full staff & student body plus a few guests which you will probably have very frequently. It should also have enough classrooms to separate the various student groups, and of course if possible, either a yard big enough for a playground, if the neighbours will tolerate it, or a nearby public playground or school ground that might not be in use, or a playing field or vacant lot or SOMETHING where the kids have got room to run & play & get some exercise & play games & things like that. They will be more or less unofficial Schools as far as the System is concerned, but permitted.-Such as the Japan School, unapproved by the System but permitted.
12. AND IT MUST BE A SUFFICIENT GROUP TO QUALIFY AS A SCHOOL, I'd say at least 25 students, in a building where they can be permitted, viewed, seen, heard, witnessed, & serve as a witness & as a testimony. These are all necessary qualifications for a School.--Even though all the staff & student body may not all SLEEP there & EAT there all the time, may not LIVE there. In some cases it would probably be preferable that they DON'T so they don't have to have a huge dormitory operation & a huge kitchen & dining hall operation.

SUGGESTED SCHOOL PROPERTIES!

13. AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE THE PROPERTY SHOULD BE WELL-SEPARATED FROM THE NEIGHBOURS by either high walls, fences or space. It should be, if at all possible, fairly well spaced from neighbours that could be annoyed & complain, because the first complaint to the authorities could be the end of such a School if it's not zoned for it & it's not permitted etc. Even though it's not, as some are not, even some of our Homes, they get by with it by being quiet & not letting the neighbours see too many people coming & going in the daytime etc.
14. IF YOU COULD GET AN OLD CHURCH BUILDING OF SOME KIND it would make an ideal DAY SCHOOL & could even sleep at least PART of the staff & the students right there in the building if they have to come from afar. They may not be able to let the authorities know that people are sleeping there, but a church building is already zoned for meetings & to actually have classes, at least on Sunday & a lot of times DVBS, Daily Vacation Bible School, during the summer weeks daily. So there should be no objections from the neighbours at all about meetings or classes etc. They also usually have sufficient restroom facilities for so many people.
15. IN ORDER TO HAVE A SMALL SCHOOL such as some of these Homes could have if they'd get together, I would say it might even be a better situation where they DON'T have to sleep so many people at night & they DON'T have to feed three huge meals a day to a huge staff & student body!
16. THERE ARE ALSO SCHOOL BUILDINGS THAT HAVE GONE INTO DISUSE as they have combined a number of school districts together in a union school.

TRANSPORTATION SUGGESTIONS

17. IN SOME CASES IN LARGE CITIES where we have sufficient students in all the Homes, & if public transportation is exorbitant & too high, such as it is in countries like Japan, it might be practical even to have a small SCHOOL BUS of your own going around to pick up the students.
18. (MARIA: IN MOST CITIES OUR HOMES ARE FAIRLY FAR APART.) Yes, but if they don't live TOO far away, it could work. Besides, bus fares in some countries are not that exorbitant. You take some of the poorer countries, you can travel miles for very little, extremely low fares.
19. IN OTHER WORDS, IF TRANSPORTATION IS NOT TOO SEVERE A PROBLEM, THEY CAN USE LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. If it is, they might consider a school bus with a fairly simple school bus route & have the kids out there waiting on the corner. (YOU COULD ALSO USE CAR POOLS!)

MORE ADVICE ON HOW TO HAVE A SCHOOL!

20. I'D SAY THIS IS PRETTY MUCH OF A MILESTONE TALK because it's setting the minimum requirements & qualifications & ideas about having a local School! We're getting big enough with enough children that I think MOST of our cities which have 3 Homes or more will be able to do it! And by the time you've got three Homes & each Home with 20-25 kids, you've got a SCHOOL!
21. EVEN IF EACH OF THE THREE HOMES ONLY HAS TEN KIDS, YOU'VE GOT A SCHOOL, 30 CHILDREN. So almost any city should be able to put this into practice almost IMMEDIATELY. Of course, they have to be in an area that will TOLERATE it, that's important, because you can't have an aboveground School in any country where we have to be UNDERGROUND, or forget it!
22. AS FAR AS RENTING A HUGE PROPERTY & HOUSING EVERYBODY & HAVING A BIG KITCHEN & FEEDING OPERATION & SLEEPING EVERYBODY, when you think how much it will save for people to come to School in the daytime & go home at night, the transportation won't look so expensive!-Especially since each Home has to bear the expense of their own students getting there, & they can either use public transport or put them all in their car & ferry them to the School themselves, which I don't think would be that big a problem in most cities.
23. SO I CAN SEE THE AVERAGE SMALL CITY WITH 2 OR 3 HOMES OR MORE, OR EVEN THE AVERAGE BIG CITY HAVING ITS OWN SCHOOL.--And BIG cities, if the Homes are too scattered & too far apart & it's too far & too big a trial to have to drive the kids to School every morning & come pick them up every night, they could seriously consider having SEVERAL Schools, a different School in each area where the Homes are closer together. That's what the System does, they have public schools scattered all over town so that you go to whatever school is closest to you.
24. (MARIA: WELL, ALL OUR HOMES, LET'S FACE IT, ARE REALLY SCHOOLS. Every Home in Japan, for example, has about 15 children, so they do already have their School.) Yes, of course, they've got their Home Schools already. So it shouldn't be too big a task to COMBINE some of those Schools, some of those Homes' children & staff, to meet either in one of the Homes just in the DAYTIME for School, or to find a sufficient property that could house them for meetings & classes in the daytime only, as in some ways it's actually better NOT to have them all together at night.
25. FOR ONE THING, THE RULES ABOUT HOUSING IN MOST CITIES HAVE TO DO WITH HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE THERE, how many people SLEEP there, how many people EAT there. Then you run into all kinds of space rules, housing rules, how much toilet facilities you have, feeding facilities, health laws, all kinds of things.
26. ACTUALLY THE FEWER PEOPLE YOU HAVE THE BETTER!--Especially if it's a HOME School, if it's right in one of the Homes.--Or you get a building which is already zoned or classified as a place of meeting or school, such as an OLD SCHOOL or an OLD CHURCH or OLD COMMUNITY HALL. All kinds of things could be used for that purpose, even an OLD HOTEL or something, where they're already permitted to have a lot of people in them & to even house them sometimes.

MAKING YOUR SCHOOL A WITNESS!

27. OF COURSE, IF YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE YOUR SCHOOL not just a better & easier way of educating & taking care of your CHILDREN, but you're also going to make it a testimony & a WITNESS, you've pretty well GOT to be OPEN & PUBLIC, as they are in Japan. And they've found that having an open public School where they are permitted to do all this makes it an ideal witnessing situation.
28. SO IF YOU CAN HAVE A PUBLIC SCHOOL, a School that's public, in other words, & known to be a School where you can invite friends & visitors & witness to them & let them see the kids & have programs & all sorts of things, it's a great advantage in many ways. It makes the whole School not only a blessing to the families to have their children concentrated in one place where they can have a real School & real teachers who spend their fulltime at that, but it can also be a blessing to the community as a shining light & witness & testimony to THEM, friends, visitors etc., which I'd say is one of the main reasons for having a School.
29. ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS TO HAVE A SCHOOL IS, OF COURSE, FOR TEACHING & TRAINING & CARING FOR OUR CHILDREN FULLTIME by FULLTIME STAFF who don't have to do anything else. They don't have to go out & witness, they don't have to go out & litness, they don't have to go provisioning or anything else, they are qualified teachers who can spend their full time teaching a quality education to ALL of our children. I think the time has come we've GOT to do it! The time has come that we're going to have to have SCHOOLS, it's overdue!

WHAT ABOUT "CLOSED COUNTRIES"?!

30. IN WHAT WE MIGHT CALL CLOSED COUNTRIES, THEY'RE GOING TO BE MORE DIFFICULT TO SUPPORT, & it's going to be more difficult to get away with it, having to operate secretly, underground, privately, but it's still possible! With a little extra help from their friends, relatives & contacts, it's possible.
31. EACH SITUATION & CASE WILL HAVE TO BE TREATED ON ITS OWN MERITS. They need to get together & discuss whether they think it's possible or not. If they already are working in a closed country in underground Homes & not doing any public witnessing, then it's going to be difficult-difficult to support & almost virtually impossible to make it a testimony or a witness. So it may not even be possible or advisable or feasible in some closed countries.
32. BUT EVEN IN SOME CLOSED COUNTRIES IT MIGHT STILL BE FEASIBLE TO HAVE A SCHOOL, an underground School just for the purpose of taking good care of the kids. It might still be possible, providing your School building or campus is sufficiently private & inaudible & unseen to get away with it. But with that many people coming & going, it's a little unlikely.

BIG BOARDING SCHOOLS VS. SMALLER DAY SCHOOLS!

33. (MARIA: BUT IF THEY HAVE A BIG PLACE, THE BOARDING SCHOOL IDEA IN JAPAN HAS BEEN A TREMENDOUS WITNESS with so many people living & working happily together full time.) That's fine if they've GOT such facilities, but they shouldn't let that inhibit them just because they don't have a big school building where everybody can live in, sleep at night & have 3 meals a day. That also presents big problems, tremendous problems in services & equipment & meals & cooking & feeding & dining facilities & health & housing laws & all that sort of thing.
34. THEY COULD START HAVING A SCHOOL IMMEDIATELY if they have even one of the Homes big enough to house the School staff & students in the DAYTIME ONLY, providing they're not going to be some kind of a nuisance to the neighbours. Otherwise, they should look around for a building which could house their School cheap enough-even old small hotels, old abandoned school buildings, abandoned churches, all kinds of various buildings that could be used, even an old boarding house. I'm mentioning several kinds of buildings that we have used in the past & are even now using in the present in different places.
35. SO I THINK MOST AREAS WILL FIND IT'S EASIER THAN THEY THOUGHT, really, to get together and plan and organise and have a Family School!

WHY SCHOOLS?--PARALLEL OF EARLY AMERICAN SETTLERS!

36. LET'S FACE IT, THIS IS THE CONCLUSION THE SYSTEM CAME TO! Not everybody could spend all their time at home teaching their kids, right? Most of them had other work to do, had to work OUT & earn a living! So the System finally saw that they had to provide someplace for the children to go & get an education & be supervised in the daytime while Dad worked, and now it's Dad AND Mom working! And this would be a great blessing to our children.
37. IN THE EARLY DAYS OF AMERICA, THE EARLIEST SCHOOLS IN THE U.S. WERE USUALLY OF ABOUT A DOZEN CHILDREN MEETING IN THE VILLAGE CHURCH building taught by the preacher with all ages represented. Eventually they built separate school buildings, the famous little one-room schools where they had perhaps a couple dozen children & one teacher, with the older children as assistant teachers that helped take care of the little kids just like we do. That's how those schools got started.
38. JUST LIKE IT IS WITH US, IT'S A PRESSING NEED, IT'S A DESPERATE NEED, where we're getting so many children we can't take care of them all ourselves, each family can't take care of them, each Home can't take care of all of them, it's impossible! They don't have enough staff to both educate, teach & supervise the children fulltime while some people have to go OUT fulltime! So the time has come for Family Schools!

PRAYER TO DO OUR BEST!

39. LORD, IN JESUS' NAME, HELP THE HOMES TO DO WHAT'S BEST FOR THEM & THEIR CHILDREN & their country & their city, depending on the conditions in each case. Help them to get together & discuss it & decide what's best for especially our own children who need it, & whether it's possible in their situation.
40. WE'VE JUST BEEN TRYING, LORD, TO SHOW THEM HOW EASY IT COULD ACTUALLY BE & how that even a couple of Homes could get together & put their children together & give them fulltime daylong supervision until their parents, who are out provisioning or witnessing or working, whatever they're doing, can come home & take over.
41. IN SOME CASES WHERE IT'S POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO HAVE A PUBLIC MINISTRY & AN OPEN WITNESS & a large School, help them to be willing to undertake the tremendous task of doing so, because we've found that it's a tremendous witness & has literally won scores, if not hundreds, of souls already in a large School!
42. SO WE ASK THEE TO GIVE US WISDOM HOW TO DO IT. In Jesus' name, help us all & bless us all & make us a blessing that we can be a greater blessing to the whole World & especially to our own children! He that neglects his own, fails his own, fails to care for his OWN, Lord, You said is worse than an infidel!--1Tim.5:8.
43. SO IF WE'RE NOT TAKING PROPER CARE & EDUCATION OF OUR CHILDREN, WE'RE NOT A VERY GOOD SAMPLE or example to others, & could be even considered WORSE than an infidel, someone unfaithful to YOU, if we're unfaithful to our CHILDREN!
44. LORD, YOU SAID THAT WE SHOULD "BRING UP A CHILD IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO, & when he's old he'll not depart therefrom."--Prov.22:6. If we take good care of our children, You'll take good care of us. So help us to do so, Lord, to make them real WITNESSES for Thee, & to give them the BEST kind of Christian education in these small School situations with great individual attention & complete care & supervision & education all day long, in Jesus' name we ask for Thy glory. Amen. TYL!

SUGGESTED DAYS FOR DAY SCHOOLS!

45. WELL, IT JUST CAME TO ME AS I WAS PRAYING that perhaps in SOME situations, if they couldn't even have school EVERY day for five or six days a week, they might be able to have it TWO OR THREE DAYS A WEEK. If the transportation's too expensive, if the situation won't stand so many people there every day, perhaps they can have a TWO-day-a-week School, or better yet, a THREE-day-a-week School, maybe in some cases FOUR days a week.
46. (MARIA: MAYBE THEY COULD STAY OVERNIGHT LIKE A WEEKEND SCHOOL or something.) Yes, or like a weekend School where if the distances are great & transportation is prohibitive, perhaps they could come to School for HALF A WEEK, three days a week, so we'd only have ONE WAY going & ONE WAY coming transportation to pay, where perhaps the local School could actually sleep them if they even have to just sleep on mattresses on the floor.
47. SO THEY'D ONLY HAVE TO SPEND TWO NIGHTS THERE. I would say a fulltime School would be five or six days a week. But if because of prohibitive transportation or other reasons you can't have a fulltime School, you might try a 3-DAY-A-WEEK SCHOOL, perhaps even a WEEKEND SCHOOL. (Maria: The parents in some places might go for that because they use their children in their witnessing a lot during the week, so they might like that better.)
48. YOU CAN EVEN HAVE A WEEKDAY SCHOOL like Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday, or Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, or a weekend School, Friday, Saturday & Sunday, a THREE-DAY-A-WEEK SCHOOL. They could certainly spare the children THAT much, & THEN at least have them under full supervision & good training. (Maria: Then those days the adults in the other Homes would be able to go all-out without worrying at all about their children at night or any time, just do their ministry that they want to get done WITHOUT their children.) Right!
49. SO YOU COULD HAVE EITHER A FULLTIME BOARDING SCHOOL WITH SEVEN DAYS A WEEK OF LIVE-IN STAFF & STUDENTS, or you could have PART-TIME DAY SCHOOLS FOUR OR FIVE DAYS A WEEK, leaving weekends free for the families & kids & all to go witnessing, or you can have HALF-A-WEEK SCHOOLS such as only 2 or 3 days a week--just day Schools, live-out Schools, except for those who live IN the School.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WAY!

50. SO, PRAISE THE LORD, IT'S POSSIBLE! Where there's a will there's a way & where there's faith, it can move mountains!--Mat.17:20. But we're all convinced that the time has come for Family Schools, good Family Schools, at least part time, fulltime, part live-in or fulltime live-in, whatever way you & your local situation & families can manage to work out. Just ask the LORD to help you & I'm sure He'll show the way! So may the Lord bless & keep you & make you a blessing & help you to start a Family School in your area, in Jesus' name, amen!
51. (MARIA: WHEN WE FIRST HAD THE VISION FOR SCHOOLS WE THOUGHT WE HAD TO HAVE A BIG SCHOOL, it had to be big numbers to be a good testimony, but now we realise that ALL our Homes can be Schools no matter how small they are! It has to do with our vision changing from not being out in the public eye & being so overly security-conscious, to coming out more in the public & realising that our SAMPLE is what wins people more than anything else, particularly the sample of our children & their training.--And that we can't be so afraid of everything that we just completely hide our sample & our children & our training. If we come out in the open with them as much as we can in places where we CAN be open, then it's a much better sample than trying to hide & be so overly security-conscious.) Amen! God bless you & help you have a SCHOOL!--It's WONDERFUL! TYJ!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family