CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND SCSBC’S RESPONSE: Find the lastest updates here for students, faculty and staff.
CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND SCSBC’S RESPONSE: Find the lastest updates here for students, faculty and staff.
As SCSBC marks its 50th year, it is fitting to pause and reflect on God’s goodness throughout our history. Our story begins well before 1975. In the 1950s, the Southwest British Columbia League of Christian Schools—a loosely organized coalition affiliated with Christian Schools International — brought together teachers committed to developing a distinctly Christian curriculum and rooted in a Reformed theological perspective. Their documents reflected a profound conviction: the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. Learning, therefore, was not merely academic but a sacramental act.
SCSBC’s first employee, Dr. Harro Van Brummelen
In 1975, SCSBC was officially incorporated, and soon after, hired its first staff member, Dr. Harro Van Brummelen, as curriculum coordinator. Harro’s legacy endures in his call for schools to align their curriculum and pedagogy with biblical norms, ensuring that teaching is anchored in God’s story and that students are continually invited into their place within it.
Growth soon followed. By 1982, SCSBC represented 21 schools and 3,400 students. Five years later, 33 schools and more than 5,000 students were part of the organization. By 1992, that number had grown to 39 schools and over 8,200 students. Today, SCSBC supports 40 schools and serves more than 16,000 students.
This growth was made possible by the vision and commitment of our founding schools—and those who joined along the way—who believed that we are stronger together. For fifty years, schools have shared resources, ideas, and expertise. Teachers and administrators have brought fresh insights as they moved between communities. These countless acts of collaboration have strengthened Christian education across British Columbia.
Equally important has been the work of SCSBC staff members, past and present—curriculum leaders, executive directors, bookkeepers, inclusive education directors, graphic designers, finance leaders, advancement directors, and more. Too many to name, they each contributed faithfully to the flourishing of Christian schools in BC. Today, we gratefully carry on their work, standing on the shoulders of giants.
As we celebrate the past, we also look to the future. The question before us is how to remain faithful to our founding vision while engaging today’s realities. 2025 is not 1975. Our schools continue to root student learning in the grand story of God’s world, but now in a context shaped by social media, artificial intelligence, increasing cultural and denominational diversity, greater material resources, and a society marked by political and religious fragmentation. The task is to discern together what faithfulness looks like in this moment.
To that end, the SCSBC board and leadership team entered a discernment process this past spring. Guided by your feedback through surveys—naming what is working well, what needs improvement, and what should be set aside—we spent two days clarifying our focus and the direction of our resources for the next three to five years. We are deeply grateful for the thoughtful input you provided, which has shaped this process. As a result of this process, two key outcomes occurred. First, we reaffirmed our mission statement, which rests on our four key pillars: strengthening Christian schools through service, community, advocacy, and vision. And second, we discerned four core areas of focus for the next three to five years. They are:
Christian Distinctiveness – strengthening the Biblical roots and Gospel identity of each member school.
Leadership Development – Establishing leadership pathways to nurture Christ-centred leaders.
Nurturing Thriving in a Complex Environment – Equipping schools to be proactive regarding emerging opportunities and mitigating threats, ensuring long-term flourishing.
Refining our Identity as a Christian Service Organization – Clarifying who we are, who we serve, and our role in advancing Christian education.
These four key areas of focus come together to create a vision for the next few years, rooted in Christ, responsive to change, and resolute in equipping Christian schools to flourish.
We are eager to delve more deeply into our four areas of focus—setting goals, establishing timelines, and realigning both human and financial resources to achieve them. This work is not ours alone; it is shared across our community of Christian schools. Each school is unique in its location, mission, history, and community. Yet we are united in a common calling: to help students discover their place in God’s story.
As SCSBC steps into its next fifty years, our prayer is that we remain faithful to our founding vision while staying attentive and relevant to today’s context. We invite you to pray with us—that we, like the men of Issachar, would “understand the times and know what to do,” and that, together, we would equip our schools to do the same for the sake of God’s Kingdom.
Dave Loewen
SCSBC Executive Director
