OCA's Road Noise

This episode is 34:17. Do you have time to focus that long? You may have heard the human attention span is now "shorter than a goldfish" at less than 9 seconds. That's likely a myth... at least the fish part is, since many believe goldfish have a longer attention span than that!

Why does our attention feel fractured? What happens to our brains when we "multi-task"? What about our culture makes us believe faster and frenetic is always better? Jay and Will talk about all of this and more, if you have time to listen (on 1.5x speed, of course).

God called Israel to seven celebratory festivals. David danced before the Ark. The Father called for a feast when his lost son returned home. Jesus' first miracle was at a party. There are more than 500 mentions of joy, rejoicing and celebration throughout scripture (and this count grows to the thousands with related mentions of praise and worship).

In this episode, Jay and Will discuss the last of OCA's four core values: CELEBRATE. Why do kids so often celebrate better than adults? And why is it important that we maintain and cultivate a spirit of holy celebration as we grow? How is this value transformative to our thinking about learning and to our culture as a school?

God is good. Enjoy the road!

Is failure something to avoid at all costs? In this episode, Jay and Will argue "no," discussing why healthy, God-honoring RISK is part of the Eagles' DNA. Following Jesus during his lifetime meant adventure, danger, and loss (Matthew 16:24-25). That story has never changed since. We want students to recognize that failure is often more good than bad, as mistakes are frequently symptoms of effort and momentum—symptoms we can learn from and celebrate.

Enjoy the road!

In today's episode, Jay and Will dive into OCA's core values, beginning with the second of our four daily actions: explore. Curiosity is an essential element of education. Absent the motivation to go somewhere new, make a worthwhile discovery, or even change our minds in God-honoring ways, we tend to stay static. We may hear information, but we're not necessarily learning. By contrast, when we're humble and righteously hungry in exploring Creation, we often catch richer glimpses of the Creator. And those richer glimpses are exactly what we want for our students. Eagles are explorers. We stay faithful and we stay curious. Learning is what we do.

Enjoy the road!

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls Kingdom people to be a "City on a Hill." In this episode, Jay and Will unpack what that radical calling means for a school like Oklahoma Christian Academy. How can we pursue brightness ahead of power? Invitation ahead of exclusivity? We can't just be light-keepers. We must be light-bringers. But how do we share our blessings beyond the edges of our campus?

All these questions and more in just 30 minutes. Enjoy the road!

In this episode, Jay and Will talk about deeper love. In our popular culture, "love" can feel like a weak word, a romantic word, a cheesy word. But at the core of our mission at Oklahoma Christian Academy is modeling and cultivating agape love (the love God shows and the love God is) as anything but weak. It is a powerful, important word. It's our ultimate calling. Agape is the lens that focuses all that we learn and all we aspire to embody. Enjoy the road!

In this episode, Jay and Will continue their discussion on OCA's mission, vision, and values, focusing particularly on the concept of "unique gifts and stories." We believe there's no one better to walk in your shoes than you. How do we build educational communities that see and celebrate that giftedness and individuality, even as we stay humble and interdependent with one another? That's a big question, that we try to tackle in 30-minutes or less. Enjoy the road!

After nearly two years, Will and Jay are back in the booth! This season begins with a seven episode series on Oklahoma Christian Academy's (OCA) mission, vision, and values--which are centered in Christ's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and The Greatest Commands (Matthew 22). These are eternal lessons that have immediate meaning for our students today, and this series aims to unpack some of the "why" behind these core markers in the Eagles' DNA.

In episode one, Will and Jay banter about "Kingdom Prep" and how we've come to see our school's purpose as bigger than any one post-secondary pathway. Enjoy the road!

Jay and Will continue their study on the Sermon on the Mount, asking what does Jesus mean when he says he came to "fulfill" the Law and the Prophets? And how exactly does one surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees--a group that specialized in being right? Humbling answers to both questions set the stage for everything Jesus says next. Enjoy the road!

Our 6th-12th grades are memorizing the Sermon on the Mount... why? In this bite-sized episode, Jay and Will talk about Christ's example of committing scripture to memory and why it's important that God's Word is more than a reference book we pull off the shelf ad hoc. Enjoy the road!