September 2021
The fall semester is well underway at DCS! It’s good to have the hallways full of students and noise again after the summer months. DCS has been blessed with more students this year, as enrollment in the K-12 is up to 98 students. Preschool has expanded a little bit as well, with nine total kids coming on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
As you well know, DCS has several new staff members as well. I hope you’ve gotten the chance to speak with them and encourage them as they get their feet under them in their new positions. All things considered, we’ve had a great start to the year with new faces, yet looking always to the same guiding hand of our heavenly Father.
The Harvest Sale this past week was a major success again. I’m continually humbled by your generous gifts to the school at all of our events. The community’s support is incredible and makes working in such a community a true joy.
Our theme this year is Beauty from Ashes, taken from Isaiah 61. All chapels, secondary and elementary as well as all-school chapels, have dealt with this theme in some way. Our ashes, our brokenness, our sin is taken by Christ and replaced by beauty, by kinship, and by an incredible inheritance through Him. I think it can be easy for all of us to forget that each person we encounter has some kind of “ash,” whether they’re aware of it or not. We forget that as we interact with different people, they are carrying something that they’d rather not carry. Our theme tells our students that this isn’t theirs to bear alone. Christ will take those ashes and give a crown instead – something beautiful and worth treasuring forever.
Finally, I’d like to ask all of you to continue to pray for DCS as a school, as well as all the students here. Pray that they might grow in their faith every day, that they might be challenged to go deeper, and that they might put their whole worth in Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Jeremy Boer, CEO
March 2021
It always amazes me how much the aura around students and staff changes when we first start to glimpse nice weather again. Obviously, we had some beautiful days early in March, which caused an uptick in the mood and outlook that our students had. This can also lead to some restlessness, since everyone wants to be outside, but I think I’ll take that over the crabby moods dreary winter can bring.
I think there is another factor in these moods, though. As spring enters, and winter fades, our focus is renewed; our target becomes clearer. We can all see the end of the school year, and with it, the promise of new things: being a grade older, summer activities, an opportunity to reflect, and more. In the doldrums of winter, it can be incredibly difficult to see those things that signal something new. We get bogged down in the present and immediate future; we can’t see past the week.
In many ways, our faith walk can become captured by that same doldrum effect. We’re in the middle of life; we can’t see past the next few days or weeks. We can’t see past our immediate problems to the goal of Christ at the end. This is something I always notice when speaking with folks of older generations. They have such clarity about their purpose; such unwavering vision about the goal. The Church History class is reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis right now. As we read together, I find myself thinking back to this theme: how do I always get caught up in what is immediately going on, instead of focusing on the big picture, like the Spirits in the book? Because, honestly, life is so much clearer when I see, or try to see, the big picture.
Our theme this year, fix your eyes on Jesus, has brought us back to this point repeatedly. When our eyes stay on that goal, when we see the big picture through Christ’s eyes, life becomes clearer. But when we allow ourselves to be distracted by what is going on around us, like our culture teaches us, life gets muddled.
So, I’d like to invite you to join DC as we continue to remember to keep our eyes on Christ through this 4th quarter, despite what our society tells us, despite what our own minds tell us. It will be hard work, no doubt, but it will be well worth it in the end.
Jeremy Boer, CEO
