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Education
November 19, 2025
When the Board of Trustees invited me to join their illustrious group, I was honored. New Saint Andrews College (NSA) was always a breath of fresh air, even though it was 2,500 miles away. Several of my parishioners had attended NSA, but my knowledge of the College was limited to videos and testimonies. Since joining the board, the last two years have allowed me to visit Moscow over 10 times, attend a host of board meetings, participate in training, interviews, and interactions with students, speak at one of their commencement ceremonies, and engage the institution from without and within.
What I discovered is that New Saint Andrews dares to form souls in an age that prefers to manufacture consumers. In a world that trades Solomonic wisdom for trivial pursuits and education as a credential factory, NSA insists on shaping fully human beings—image-bearers called to take dominion with joy. Their project is not merely academic; it is liturgical. The rhythms of reading, singing, debating, and worshiping train young men and women to love what is lovely and to cling to what is good. The faculty is fully committed to the happy indoctrination of Christendom. There is something deeply right about an institution that believes education should echo the cadence of the Kingdom.
"What I have seen at NSA is a vibrant, embodied, and countercultural community."
I love NSA because it refuses to apologize for the classical Christian tradition. While the broader academy chases novelty like a restless lover, this college plants its feet on the sturdy soil of Augustine, Calvin, Dante, Shakespeare, Kuyper, and the Psalter. There, students inhale the great ideas, chew on weighty books, and learn to sing the truth before they ever attempt to speak it. NSA refuses to serve an anemic curriculum; they know that true learning requires a full table and a generous feast. So they give their students thick stories, thick doctrine, thick music, and the students grow accordingly.
I recall a rainy afternoon as I walked to the Sword and Shovel for afternoon coffee. As I approached Main Street, a group of students gathered to sing psalms and hymns. I was delighted to join their efforts. That was another example of the rich culture developed. Not even the obnoxious Pacific Northwest drizzle could detain these students from singing God's praises.
But what I have also seen at NSA is a vibrant, embodied, and countercultural community. It is rare to see a campus where students debate late into the night, where faculty open their homes, and where Christians actually love being Christians together. It is rarer still to find a place where young men become sturdy and young women become wise in a modern culture that wishes both to remain perpetually adolescent. NSA cultivates responsibility, courage, and grit, not as extracurricular ideals but as daily expectations. They lean into life; they refuse the vapor of the age.
Finally, I love New Saint Andrews because it stands as a witness to what Christian education can be when Christ is treasured above all, and when his bride is honored. It is a college unafraid of the future because it is anchored in the past and governed by Scripture. It trains students not merely for careers but for callings, not merely for employment but for faithfulness, not merely for survival but for dominion.
In a broken academic landscape, New Saint Andrews College is a lighthouse—steady, burning, joyful. And I love it because it gives the Church what she desperately needs: sons and daughters who can think, sing, build, and believe with all their might.
