Dear Parents and Friends of CCS,
Our re-enrollment season is in full swing! Our staff is (literally) working overtime to help ensure that the new two-step enrollment process works as smoothly as possible in its first year. I want to thank you all for your patience as we work to eliminate the bugs in the system.
Our staff is also processing the (literal) flood of new applications. There are many in the Tallahassee metro region who would love to be a part of the CCS family. Unfortunately, many of these great families face capped classes, a situation brought on primarily by our space limitations.
In light of this ongoing reality, those of us in senior leadership at CCS are continuing this month to firmly focus on discerning the Lord’s will for the future of our school and seeking His provision.
As you might imagine there are a plethora of contextual factors surrounding important questions, such as:
“How big should CCS be?”
”How can we stay true to our mission, even as we grow?”
“Should all divisions of the school stay on the Kerry Forest campus?”
”How could we ever afford the escalating costs of securing new property and building or renovating buildings, when CCS does not have a strong recent history of leadership level giving?”
NOTE: Regarding this last question, it is often said that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50), which is a euphemistic way of saying he actually owns everything. God is never lacking for resources, even though the costs of doing business/ministry in the 21st century are skyrocketing. He is absolutely perfect at funding His vision for His work in His time.
These questions and many more have been at the heart of our prayer and discussions for many months and even years, yet we sense that God is moving right now in a special way, and that there are decisions that must be made as soon as God reveals His will.
As you may know, our Board Master Planning Retreat had to be rescheduled because of the snowstorm — the plan is to meet on Friday, February 21. In the meantime, please join us as we pray hard and increasingly align ourselves with God’s beautiful will.
In closing, I am reminded of Lamentations 3:24 (CSB):
“‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul; ‘therefore I will hope in Him.’”
In brief, the writer is saying that real hope for provision and deliverance is centered on God, and not our own acumen. This unusual (to us) fact needs to be rehearsed by my soul, using the common Biblical practice of “preaching to myself”.
He is our “portion” i.e. He is and will be everything that we need to do what He is calling us to be and to do. His super-adequacy for the task/need at hand is what triggers the hope — not the relative ease of the task or our level of resources, energy or talent. Of course, godly wisdom dictates that we must accurately “count the cost” and apply our experience and knowledge to the process. This we have and will continue to do.
But there is something much more fundamental going on here — the gospel of the Kingdom requires that God receive all of the glory for the completion of the task or the filling of the need. And therefore the more difficult and seemingly impossible the situation, the greater our need for God to move in power, and the greater the glory He receives. In the meantime, He requires us to be faithful to the task at hand.
This is the story of CCS, from 1977 until today. Praise God! And even now as we grapple with our next steps, we are confident that just as He has sustained this ministry for nearly 50 years He will continue to do so, as long as there is Kingdom work for us to do.
We look forward to sharing with our school community this spring about how God is leading us, and also to seeing how He will glorify Himself through the process. God is far from done with us, so let’s keep pressing into Him with faith, trust and hope!
For CCS and the Kingdom,
Tom