Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2014 | Page 32

Visionaries in Christian Education Find out what’s worked for them. Bradford Christian Academy, Haverhill, Mass. Vicki Colquitt Kennedy ’83 first noticed Loren Hilgenhurst Stevens ’83 because Loren was transporting her goldfish, Moe, home to Boston for winter break in a Ziploc bag. The chance conversation between these two Wheaton freshmen led to a lifelong friendship. Not only did Vicki and Loren become roommates, they both married Wheaton grads—Bob Kennedy ’82 and Mike Stevens ’82— who also were roommates. They then moved to the same town in New England, and had their children around the same time. One day shortly after their oldest children reached school age, Vicki and Loren were out exercising and discussing the need for a Christian school in their area. They started a prayer group, which grew and grew. They eventually hosted guest speakers who had founded a Christian school and encouraged the group to do likewise. “We thought that was a crazy idea,” says Loren. But upon reflection, the group was “stunned that we had everything we needed,” she says. Ten years ago, Bradford Christian Academy (BCA) opened its doors. “We started with 43 brave families willing to sign on based on a PowerPoint,” says Loren. Today the school serves 170 students from 30 communities in northeastern Massachusetts and southern New 30 SPRING 141833_14-32.indd 30 2014 Jim Wilkes ’79 (back row, left) and Bill Seitz ’78 gather with Cornerstone students in downtown Chicago. P H OTO G R A P H : K E N D R A W R I G H T By Jeremy Weber ’05 Hampshire. It hosts a competitive theater program, and recently won league championships in soccer and basketball. “New England is a challenging place to hold forth for the kingdom of Christ,” says Vicki. “It’s its own mindset: very agnostic and super intellectual. That’s partly why we are here and doing what we’re doing. We want to make sure there are faithful followers of Jesus here.” BCA’s education model is suspiciously similar to Wheaton College— by design. “When I first had my kids, I knew I couldn’t wait 18 years for them to have the same transformative experience that I had at Wheaton: to have the life of faith and the life of the mind interact on a daily basis,” says Vicki, whose oldest child, MacKenzie Kennedy ’17, is now a Wheaton freshman. “But by God’s grace, that’s what we’ve achieved here.” Loren adds, “I credit Wheaton with informing, growing, and inspiring my view of education. The current trend is to push students toward STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), but we stand firm on a liberal arts education.” They adapted Wheaton’s curriculum for the level of the high W H EATON .EDU / A L U M N I 3/19/14 8:02 PM