Be Inspired: You Are Part of the Homeschool Movement
Welcome to a new conversation about home education—one that unfolds slowly, thoughtfully, and with purpose. Over the next few months, we’ll explore homeschooling by asking good questions and leaning into meaningful answers. This is a five-part series about the why behind home education as much as the how, the heart, the habits, the hope—and yes, the hard parts too.
Homeschooling isn’t just an academic choice; it’s a family decision that shapes your days, your relationships, and your future. In this series, we’ll talk about the who, what, when, where, why, and how of educating at home—an honest conversation with practical advice and counsel. Our goal is to affirm and encourage you in the decision to homeschool, challenge and inspire you to take it to new heights, and celebrate everything that you get to experience along the way in this adventure of a lifetime—one month at a time.
Whether you’re brand new to homeschooling or years into the journey, this series is an invitation to pause, reflect, catch your breath, take it all in, and celebrate the journey. Because home education isn’t just something you do or experience—it’s a lifestyle.
Customization
I want to inspire you to dream big dreams and to see big visions. One of the great blessings of family education is that you are not locked into a system that was designed for efficiency, conformity, or crowd control. With homeschooling, you can customize everything. And I mean everything.
You can customize the annual calendar. You decide when school starts and ends. You decide when to take breaks, when to travel, when to slow down, and when to push forward. You are not bound by arbitrary dates on a district-issued schedule. You can customize the weekly schedule. You can decide which days are heavy academic days and which are lighter. You can schedule field trips, service projects, music practice, or extended reading time without asking permission from anyone.
You can customize the daily routine. Some families thrive in the early morning hours. Others hit their stride mid-morning or even later in the day. Homeschooling allows you to work with your family’s God-given rhythms instead of fighting against them.
You can even customize your family liturgies—the repeated practices, habits, and rhythms that quietly form your children over time. Things like: morning prayers, scripture reading after breakfast, family read-alouds on the couch, dinner table conversations, evening walks, and bedtime blessings. These are not small things. You are creating a family culture that will shape your children’s hearts and imaginations.
You can also customize the curriculum to fit each child’s interests, aptitudes, and abilities. One child may love numbers and logic. Another may be drawn to words, stories, and ideas. A third may thrive with hands-on projects and physical movement. Homeschooling allows you to educate the child God actually gave you, not the child a standardized system assumes you have.
10,000 Hours of Mastery
Imagine if your children didn’t just dabble in their areas of interest but actually became masters in their field of study.
Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers,” explored why certain people stand out or succeed disproportionately compared to others. One of the most talked-about ideas from the book is the “10,000-hour rule”—the observation that mastery in a complex skill often comes after approximately 10,000 hours of focused practice, typically accumulated over a 4–6 year period.
Whether the number is exact or not, the principle remains sound: excellence requires time, focus, and sustained effort. Here’s the exciting part. This is possible with family education. A homeschooled child who spends several hours a day, year after year, intentionally developing a skill or area of interest has an enormous advantage. There is a margin. There is flexibility. There is time.
Imagine a world where your children grow up to be master engineers, doctors, business leaders, government officials, philosophers, pastors, artists, musicians, ballerinas, Olympians, astronauts, mothers, and fathers—men and women who are both highly skilled and deeply grounded.
Be inspired by the possibilities.
The Revival Right in Front of You
“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”
-Joel 2:28
In February 2023, a revival—or what some preferred to call a spiritual awakening—broke out unexpectedly at Asbury College in a small town in Kentucky. Something good was happening, and it captured national attention. Interestingly, when media personalities wanted to come and broadcast the event, the college asked them not to. They believed that what was happening should not be interrupted by cameras and commentary. That alone tells you something meaningful was taking place.
So what is revival? Revival leads to reformation, which literally means a return to form—a return to the way things ought to be. It often includes personal conviction, renewed spiritual hunger, increased devotion, and lasting changes in how people live.
When you think of revival, you may think of the Great Awakenings of the 1700s or 1800s, or movements from the early 1900s. Those events feel distant. But many of us have seen modern examples.
I personally remember attending several of the Promise Keepers events in the 1990s. Stadiums filled with tens of thousands of men singing, praying, and committing to return home as faithful husbands and fathers. There was energy, hope, and a sense that something significant was happening. Did the revival end, or did those men go home and quietly live out what they had been convicted to do?
Here’s what I want you to consider: there has been a revival of epic proportions happening right in front of us, across the United States and around the world. I’m talking about the modern homeschool movement.
Most historians trace its beginnings to around 1979, when Dr. Raymond Moore appeared on Focus on the Family with Dr. James Dobson to discuss his books, “Better Late Than Early” and “School Can Wait.” Since then, homeschooling has grown into what I believe is the most significant cultural, social, spiritual, and educational movement of the last 50 years.
Revival results in people making radical decisions—choices that look strange to the surrounding culture. It produces lives that are set apart, countercultural, and faith-driven.
Countercultural Living
If you:
- Attend church faithfully every week, you are already living differently from many.
- Have three, four, or five children, you are making a quiet pro-life statement.
- Don’t allow your teenagers unrestricted access to social media; you are parenting against the grain.
- Limit or eliminate screen time and streaming services; you might just be caught up in a revival.
- Gave up a career to gain one to two thousand additional hours each year with your children, that kind of decision doesn’t happen without a deep internal shift
- Homeschool to protect your children from ideological indoctrination or the social chaos of modern school hallways, you are making a statement—even if you didn’t set out to do so.
Homeschooling is a walk of faith. It is a return to the way things ought to be. It’s inspiring and convicting, even (or especially) to families who haven’t joined the movement yet. When you compare public school, private school, and homeschooling, the ideal is clear: education within the context of a loving family. No one loves your children more than you do. And no one is more invested in their future. Homeschooling wins, hands down.
Reading about events like the Asbury revival fills me with hope, but the homeschool movement gives me even more. Mothers and fathers teaching their children to love God, explore His creation, and understand the deep meaning of home and family—this is revival lived out day by day. Homeschooling is the revival right in front of us.
The Castle You Are Building
I also think of castles. Yes, castles. Early in our homeschool journey, we met a family from Wales during their vacation to the United States. They gave us a book about the castles of Wales—some of the finest medieval structures still standing in Europe today. Castles were built for protection and permanence with moats, turrets, gatehouses, thick walls, etc. Many of these structures are 700 to 1,000 years old, and most took multiple generations to complete. The original builders knew they would probably not live to see the finished product.
Now let me ask you: have you ever seen a homeschool castle? Maybe not yet—but you are building one right now. What you are constructing may take generations to fully reveal its beauty and strength. Your grandchildren—or great-grandchildren—may finish what you are starting. Will it be sturdy enough to last? Will it still be beautiful centuries from now? The Lord promises His steadfast love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments (Exodus 20:6).
Nothing worth doing can be fully understood in the present. Therefore, we must live by faith.
Nothing worth doing can be completed in our lifetime. Therefore, we must live by hope.
Nothing worth doing can be done alone. Therefore, we must live by love.
(The Irony of American History”)
Conclusion
Are you inspired? I hope so.
Now go back to your home, open the books, gather your children, pray together, laugh together, teach faithfully, and keep building your homeschool family castle. One day, your great-grandchildren will stand back, look at what God has done through your obedience, and say, “This is beautiful.”
