It seems fitting this week to be talking about snowflakes, doesn’t it? It is cold and snowy in many parts of the country where it shouldn’t be, which is why this concept came to my mind. If you don’t know me well, I am a scientist by training, and I love knowing the way the world works. To some, the detail I want to know is excessive, I suppose. But for me, snowflakes are one of these remarkably interesting things that when we come to understand them in detail, awe for the Creator follows.

Snowflakes are made of single or combined ice crystals that fall from clouds filled with water vapor. Water vapor sticks to very cold, microscopic particles of dirt, ash, or salt in a cloud. These particles attract more vapor and form droplets. The droplets freeze into ice crystals with six sides due to - get this - the uniquely strong INTERMOLECULAR FORCES… that is the way that water molecules interact with other water molecules.  In God’s perfect design, water is a unicorn among other molecules, one that literally makes life possible. I could teach an entire course on the beauty of water. Actually, I did once… and maybe I will again.

As we reflect on the past 15 months of schooling in a pandemic, it’s easy to recognize that our decision-making has had a markedly different cadence than in years past.  In some ways, we have been able to use the crisis to accelerate necessary change.  As one Head of School told me, “it would have taken 18 months, $150,000 in consulting fees, and I would have lost half of my faculty if I would have made these changes without the pressure of the pandemic”.  Christian schools have fared incredibly well in this regard. The laser focus on our missions, the high degree of trust that exists in our institutions, and the tenacity on the part of our administrators and faculty have allowed many of our schools to provide an exemplary education during these times, especially when compared to many of our competitors.

However, the intensity of the pandemic has also forced us to ask much, much more from our teachers and our staff; these godly men and women have delivered, working harder than they ever have, and doing so without the expectation of any increased compensation.  At the same time, we have asked our parents and students to be content with less.  Parents are unable to be in classrooms volunteering; the bleachers of our gymnasia and stadiums cannot be full of families supporting our student-athletes, and our arts performances have often been scaled down and the audiences streaming rather than standing room only.  It is that combination of asking more of our employees and delivering less to our families that is dangerous in the long term.

Over the course of the past year, we have all learned a great deal about the value of collaboration. Christian schools have led the way in learning from one another to ensure our schools open safely and provide the best possible education to our students. What we have accomplished by the seemingly endless Zoom calls and webinars, by the corporate prayer with peers across the country, and the dedication to the families we serve was possible because we did it together. It was synergy. That synergy is what we have experienced, too, as we—along with many other Christian education leaders from across the world—have come together regularly over the past two years to envision an event that brings Christian schools worldwide together for a few days at Converge 2022.

We are both science aficionados, so a good technical definition is admittedly more exciting for us than for most; at the risk of boring you so early in this post, we wanted to bring you the definition of synergy: “The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.”  There are some important aspects of for us to digest here.

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