When each of us joined Capstone, we affirmed our commitment to work as partners under the Capstone Community Covenant. The covenant is informed and directed by our shared faith. To be sure, within our “business” of doing school, we utilize contracts. You signed a financial contract when you enrolled your children. Those legally binding documents explain the legal obligations of the school and the parent. Should one of us not fulfill our part in the contract, the other can stop delivering services or making payments. Contracts are not built upon trust but rather exist because trust is fragile when new business relationships are first begun. Contracts are a necessary good in a sinful world.
So why aren’t contracts enough for us at Capstone? Covenants are a better way to build relationships both in business and in life. In a covenant, one party is not released from their obligations simply because the other fails to live up to theirs. While contracts are enforceable by the courts, covenants depend upon our virtues to uphold, revive, and restore when one of us lets the other down. In a sense, covenants are spiritual commitments to live a certain way in relation to each other. Our covenants rightly assume that each of us will fail to perfectly do our part and that reconciliation and renewed commitments will simply be par for the course. They also help us to persevere to make something good, true, and beautiful, even when we experience setbacks and disappointments in our relationships with each other.
The Capstone Community Covenant establishes two important first things for us. First, the covenant is a sacred trust between all members of the school community, and second, the covenant is rooted in a right understanding of the God-given role of the parents as the primary educators of their children. This truth is embedded into the created order by God himself, and in His expression of covenant with His people in Deuteronomy 6:4-9, He calls parents to the kind of education provided at Capstone, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
When you bring your children to Capstone, you do not give up your responsibility to integrate a God-given understanding of the world into the daily routines of your family’s life. Rather, you embrace God’s command by expanding your team to fulfill the mission God has given you in your home. You ask Capstone’s teachers, staff, and administration to join you in your ministry to your children. When we offer admission to your children, we commit to our role in the Capstone Community Covenant as you commit to yours. We enter into a partnership in which you are the initiating party, and we work in submission to God’s calling in your family’s life.
There are a lot of words in our handbooks. Every one of them is written with great intentionality. We include the Capstone Community Covenant because we want to help you choose the right partners for your sacred role as parents. We want to know with confidence how to best serve you, so that when you sign the covenant, you are confirming that our approach to education aligns with yours. This mutual vision for fulfilling Deuteronomy 6 in our homes empowers us to enter into covenant, where our commitment to an increasingly effective partnership for your children for God’s glory is fueled by our mutual commitment to something bigger than us—something that can withstand each of our shortcomings and can point us to reconciliation and better service as we honor our commitments to one another not because of legal contracts but because of shared virtues and a mutual commitment to the God who cultivates them within us as we seek wisdom from Him.