Thanking my parents 40 years later...

This week, almost exactly 40 years after the beginning of my own boarding school experience at RVA, I was asked to speak to the Residence Life staff at BFA. As they prepared for the arrival of their dorm kids and the start of the 2025-26 school year, my assignment was to explain why I had come to believe so deeply in BFA's mission as an MK boarding school. This is what I shared.

My family in 1988 - during my senior year at RVA

I began with my gratitude to my parents for allowing me to attend RVA at a time when many were coming to see boarding schools as either bastions of elite privilege or dour places filled with homesickness and mistreatment. While it is true that a few boarding schools like RVA and BFA had developed reputations as trusted and life-giving places for MKs, my parents still agonized over the decision. In the end, my parents allowed me to go to RVA, not because it was what they wanted, but because I wanted to go, and because they were convinced it was where I was most likely to grow and flourish. Sometimes the most loving thing is also the most painful.

That decision completely (and positively) changed the trajectory of my life.

The Two Callings of Missionary Parents

Like almost all missionary parents, my parents were guided by two primary callings - to share the Gospel in places where it was not well known, and to be the best parents they could be. God had called them to Kenya, but He has also called them to be my parents. Both were sacred responsibilities.

What Missionary Parents Want

In most ways, missionary parents are no different than any loving parents. They want to see their children grow and flourish, and this includes ensuring that they receive a positive education. For missionary parents, living and working in pioneering locations overseas, this typically includes hopes for a school that ideally:

• Supports their Christian beliefs and values,

• Provides a healthy spiritual and moral environment for their children,

• Will prepare their child to thrive academically and culturally in their passport country,

• Offers a range of co-curriculars that develop the unique gifts and passions of their child,

• Understands and values their child’s unique TCK (Third Culture Kid) background,

• Will provide their child with quality, lifelong, and faith-affirming friendships, and

• Is affordable for them - allowing them to stay on the field.

  
  

Some of my RVA "Band of Brothers" - visiting RVA in 1989, one year after our graduation in 1988.

The Options for Missionary Families

Depending on where a family is located, they could have a number of options, but each comes with potential challenges. For families serving in major cities, secular intenational schools or international Christian schools can be a good option, but most pioneering mission locations lack these. Even if these options are available, secular International schools are usually both prohibitively expensive ($30K to $50K per year), and antagonistic to the beliefs and values of the missionary parents. During the last generation, quality online and/or homeschooling options have grown considerably, but they typically lack important opportunities for socialization and holistic growth that many children crave. In other cases, national schools can be an option, but they are almost always antagonistic to Christian faith and practice and are not aimed at preparing the MK culturally or academically for a return to their passport country. And of course, a final option is leaving the mission field.

The Boarding School Option

Over the years, I have become convinced that, while boarding school is not for everyone*, it is a positive option for most MKs, and the best option for some. Why? If you glance back up at the seven items most missionary families want in a school, BFA, RVA, and schools like them, check every box. This shouldn't be surprising. BFA's entire purpose, from its founding in 1956, has been to support missionary families by providing an education that is tailor made for their children. Of course, no school (whether it is BFA or anywhere else) is without flaws or areas in which it needs to grow, but seventy years of learning and growth have produced a healthy environment within which students flourish. The table below highlights just a few of the differences between the old model and the current model at BFA - one that is the product of years of experience.

Old Boarding Model: BFA Model:

Start early (as young as six) Start when developmentally appropriate (14+)

Families not given a choice by missions Families given multiple educational options

20:1 student:adult ratio in dorms 5:1 student:adult ratio in dorms

Institutional/barracks/cafeteria model Family model

Few intentional co-curriculars A wide range of co-curriculars

Closed to parent engagement Parent engagement encouraged

Little oversight and accountability Well-developed child-safey practices

Emphasis on rules Emphasis on growth and grace

Stiff-upper lip mentality Culture of care (counselling/mentoring)

Imagine a school...

Research has confirmed the common sense reality that healthy child development includes a period during which teenagers begin to develop independence; and they do this by increasingly relying on those outside of their parents as sources of influence and authority. In particular, non-parent adult mentors and peers play a significantly increased role in a person’s life between the ages of 14 and 20.

My senior small group guys after graduation - along with my co-leader Bill Helmus

Ideally, teenagers should be surrounded by a diverse range of healthy non-parent adult mentors and peers who complement the beliefs and values of the child’s parents. Now imagine a school in which the majority of the children's peers come from deeply committed Christian families, and in which increasingly influential teachers, coaches, and mentors are not just aligned with the parents' beliefs and values but have spent years praying about and raising support in order invest in the lives of MKs. BFA exists to provide exactly that sort of environment.

While it may be obvious that no school is perfect, some environments provide greater opportunities for healthy development than others and BFA has a long and positive track record of doing just that. In 2023, BFA conducted a comprehensive survey of its alumni. There were almost 400 respondents. Regarding "Overall Experience", less than 4% of BFA alumni reported a negative overall experience, with the strong majority "strongly agreeing" that BFA had had a "lasting and postive" impact on their lives.

The full results of the 2023 alumni survey (available here) supported the response to this "bell weather" question and affirmed a previous alumni survey conducted in 2013, which produced similar results.

My Experience

I wrapped up my talk to the BFA dorm staff with a little more detail about my own story. For context, the Phil that arrived at RVA in the fall of 1985 was not a malicious rebel. I had a nominal faith, loved my family and (I believe) was generally seen to be a nice guy. But at my previous school I had chosen friends (all nice guys from the popular crowd) who were regularly flirting with some pretty harmful life choices. That trajectory followed me to RVA where I was welcomed with a few demerits for minor infractions and suspicious looks from a well-intentioned, but often quick to judge, faculty. Unlike BFA, RVA's model at the time was more old school. Our dorm parents were busy with other responsibilities, and while we knew the staff cared about us, few had time to invest in us in significant ways.

Kandern 2025 - Forty years after graduation, we remain close. Of my closest ten or so boarding school friends, roughly half are involved in full-time missions and the other half are living missionally in the contexts where God has planted them.

Nevertheless, I was surrounded by peers, 24 hours a day, who not only shared my TCK background - coming from interesting experiences all over Africa - but whose faith was of a different quality. Day-in and day-out, I saw them live out an authentic and thoughtful faith that challenged me to think through my own. Without recognizing it, what RVA had given me was a deeply faith-affirming community within which I could safely wrestle with some pretty profound questions and doubts.

Something else important was happening at the same time. Being away from my parents did not weaken my relationship with them, it strengthened it. Seperated from everyday life with them, I recognized just how smart, wise, and loving they were. Instead of resenting their advice or taking them for granted, I actively sought it out and soaked up the times we had together during the summer and on school holidays. The fact that the beliefs and values that they had taught me growing up were consistently affirmed and lived out by the RVA staff that I had also grown to admire was also significant.

By the time I was a senior, the trajectory of my life had altered completely. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew what I believed and was committed to living that out wherever God would lead. And I knew that wherever that took me, I would be surrounded by a group of brothers who I had literally grown up with - physically, spiritually, and intellectually. I have been blessed with a host of incredible friends from different eras of my life, but there is something deeper about my boarding school friends. We share a uniquely lasting bond forged from thousands of meals eaten together in the cafeteria, innumerable dorm pranks and early morning hill climbs, and even the experience of consoling each other through teenage life's many disappointments. The trajectory of my life and faith were profoundly shaped by the MK boarding school experience, and I am not alone in that.

Our prayer is that we, along with all the staff at BFA, can be a part of similar life-altering school experiences for this generation of missionary kids.

*I mentioned early in this post that "Boarding is not right option for everyone" and this is true. To help families make a decision that is going to be best for their child, the BFA application explicitly and implicitly asks students and their parents to consider a number of factors, including:

• Age: BFA does not even consider students for boarding unless they are at least 14.

• Individual Student Needs: Students with a wide range of individual needs can flourish in Boarding schools. However, children with special learning challenges or developmental challenges need to make sure that BFA is well-equipped to support them.

• Personality: A wide range of personality types can flourish in Boarding schools, but some personalities and prior life experiences can increase the challenge of adapting to school away from home.

• Family Health: students from families that are struggling with significant dysfunction are generally not set up well for success. Conversely, kids from healthy and loving families typically thrive and see their family relationships strengthened.

• Student Motivation: Students who do not want to go to boarding school are unlikely to flourish. BFA does not accept students who do not demonstrate a desire to be at BFA.