Since 1972, NorthPointe Christian (NPC) has served the greater Grand Rapids community as a Christ-centered, student-focused academic institution. NPC is known throughout our state (and beyond) as a place that prioritizes faith-learning integration, celebrates intentional community where all students are known, and prizes student learning and achievement. NPC is a place where we seek to honor the Lord by giving Him our everything.
Our school was founded on the mission to ‘equip students to impact the world for Jesus Christ’, and we unashamedly aspire to continue that mission.
NPC has been richly blessed since the establishment of our institution in 1972. Specifically, looking back over the previous five years, it’s amazing to simply observe God’s provision - we made it through a global pandemic, we have record enrollment, we have six new rooms at the elementary and we are full already! As we write this, the addition to the high school / middle school is almost complete and we have a new sports stadium that recently broke ground. We have seen a significant uptick in students, all while staying true to who God has called us to be. We are reminded of this verse from the book of Samuel: “Thus far, the Lord has helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12).
At the same time, it’s important to look forward. We can’t predict what God has in store. However, we do feel it’s prudent to be thoughtful about the future. Not just next week. Not just next year. We have invited many into an ambitious effort that involved prayerful discernment and strategic dreaming of how the Lord might use NPC over the next seven years. The subsequent parts of this document reflect our collective vision for NorthPointe for the year 2030.
We endeavored to complete this work by interviewing parents, staff, board members, alumni and then engaging in a 6-month exercise to thoughtfully and prayerfully build out the vision that we present in the subsequent pages of this document. Based upon prayerful discernment, careful analysis, and hopeful expectation for all that God has done, is doing, and will do in and through NPC in the future, the vision presented here represents the fruit of those labors and, we believe, the very best thinking of our stakeholders. It reflects the godly ambition of an entire community devoted to the work of equipping students to impact their world for Jesus Christ. We look expectantly to the Lord to multiply our modest loaves and fishes into an outcome that glorifies Him.
Todd Tolsma, Head of Schools Andy Kok, Board President
Preamble
NorthPointe Christian sits at one of the highest points in the city of Grand Rapids. We are using the analogy of a beacon to illustrate our vision. When a beacon is put at the top of a hill, the light from it can shine far and wide.
In the case of NPC, our beacon shines brightly for our mission, which remains unchanging:
“Equipping
students to impact their world for Jesus Christ”
How to look at this vision:
This document houses our collective aspiration. The next step revolves around making these aspirations explicit and measurable. Our intent is to see this document as emergent. While the essentials will not change, the level of fidelity surrounding the strategic imperatives and support mechanisms will. As we develop the focus and goals for each section, we will update this vision.
This document is purposefully ambitious and it is important to view it with that lens. We intentionally framed this manuscript to contain elements that are not necessarily achievable this side of heaven. However, we look forward to what we can accomplish.
part 1.
What emerged from our engagement was five fundamental “essentials” that are foundational to who we are and are non-negotiable.
The essentials
As we talked with our constituents - teachers, administrators, students, parents, and alumni, a very clear pattern emerged of what makes NorthPointe Christian, NorthPointe Christian. What emerged from these conversations was five fundamental “ essentials” that are foundational to who we are and are non-negotiable. These cornerstones to NPC are ingrained into every part of the school - from our board documents to teacher reviews and beyond.
While we understand that we are all sinners who will not always get it right, we value these five integral “essentials” and leverage them as we cast our vision of the future.
Essential #1: Know + Be Known
We know that God knows us. He knows the number of hairs on our head the Bible says (Matthew 10:26–31). As we are connected to Him through the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and the people of God, He knows our struggles, our triumphs, our story. We want NPC to be a safe place where people and their story are fully known.
Our vision is for our students, staff, and community to know each other - know each other by name,
know people’s heart, know what drives them. Something as simple as knowing every student by name is foundational to this notion of ‘know and be known.’
Our heart’s desire and expectation is that NPC employees would model ‘know and be known’ in every interaction.
Essential #2: Biblical Immersion
At NorthPointe Christian, we are purposeful in ensuring that Christian principles are woven throughout our entire culture and curriculum. In many Christian traditions, baptism is an act of being plunged or dunked - which is immersion. We want our curriculum and culture to be quite literally immersed (dunked) in biblical teaching. As we challenge ourselves to immerse not only the curriculum but our culture in Biblical truth, our vision includes:
• Empowering teachers who seek to engage at the intersection of the ‘stuff of life’ (the tough parts, the messy parts) and the life of faith, and to transmit a Biblical worldview into those situations.
• All activities (Co- and Extra- curricular activities) are distinctively Christian.
• NPC has three mandates we teach at every level - love mandate, image mandate, mission mandate. We aim to ensure these three mandates are understood, seen, and tested for in every subject at every level.
Essential #3: Mission Minded
At NPC, being mission-minded means we aspire to see outputs of our faith in action, not simply provide constant inputs. Our hearts are tuned toward encouraging and enabling our students and staff toward this end. Our vision is to enable outputs such as:
• Students are equipped to understand what a relationship with God looks like and how to share the Gospel.
• Students, staff, alumni and others are serving together in our community and beyond.
• Increasingly seek missional opportunities for staff and students for the fulfillment of NPC’s mission.
Essential #4: Spiritual Formation
Although NorthPointe is not the church, we feel passionate about helping students with spiritual formation so students own their faith. At NPC, Spiritual Formation means:
• Robust Bible curriculum for every student, every day, every year, shaping the head and heart.
• Spiritual and faith integration into all subject areas and extra curricular activities
• Small groups and discipleship groups help students connect on a personal level.
• Vibrant chapel program at each level for community worship, preaching, and fellowship.
Essential #5: Truth + Love
We want to boldly proclaim God’s Word. Yes, boldly proclaim God’s Word of Truth while also constantly, intentionally showing grace, kindness and love to one another. We constantly show grace to others as we so desperately need grace from God. At NPC, we call this having a “messy grace mindset” because we know it won’t be perfect. We won’t get it right. But we move forward in truth and love.
So those are the essentials of the NPC vision. That is the bulb of the beacon at the top of the tower.
part 2.
We must be intentional....our four strategic imperatives represent our focus for the next seven years and beyond.
STRATEGIC IMPERATIVES
The second part of our vision is what we call our strategic imperatives.
When you cast a vision, you still have to be firmly rooted in reality. We must be intentional, especially with a school our size. As we have gone through this visioning exercise, we landed on four strategic imperatives, which represent our focus for the next seven years and beyond.
The four beams of light that shine out of our “essentials” beacon represent our strategic imperatives.
STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE #1 REPRESENT THE BODY
Welcome all image bearers of all abilities, cultures, backgrounds, denominations, ethnicities and socio-economic statuses who reflect the love of Jesus and collectively work together to further impact the Kingdom in and out of NPC.
Does our school look like the Kingdom of God? Are we creating a community that looks like the Kingdom of God? We link those questions to Ephesians 4:16: “From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
This means inclusion of all the members of the NPC community in such a way that their opinions are heard and pondered, their gifts are accepted and put into good use, and their needs are met accordingly. Across the differences, we continue to build an NPC community dedicated to serve God and serve the neighbor.
NPC has done a commendable job of representing the body with respect to different denominations. The NPC inclusion program is second to none and has a real impact across our student body, our staff and our entire community. However, we believe that there is more work to do. What does this mean for NPC? How might we demonstrate a real response to representing the body versus merely a verbal assertion?
1. We want to be intentional about diversifying who is attending and teaching at NPC in future years. We want to minister to and reflect the greater Grand Rapids area. Specifically, NPC will allocate resources to:
• attract and retain teachers who truly reflect the Grand Rapids community
• attract and retain students who truly reflect the Grand Rapids community
• staff education and training on how to provide a welcome and inclusive environment
2. Highlight and celebrate the wonderful heterogeneity that already exists today at NPC so that we all have an appreciation and understanding of the innate value of all that God has created and are part of the body of Christ. How?
• We view a new and rebooted diversity committee as the essential first step to move towards better understanding and representation of the body of Christ. We see this committee as ongoing and continual with several different sub committees. This committee would be the heart of all initiatives that include education, celebrations, programming, and resource development for NPC.
While we are not changing who NorthPointe Christian is, that means we will need to build partnerships and relationships with those outside of our current circles to better demonstrate the love of Christ to our community. It also means continuing to create and improve programs serving various and unique student populations.
STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE #2
an individualized experience
Provide opportunities for all learners to experience a distinctive educational journey at NPC - for their head; for their heart; for their hands. Our vision is to offer choice and opportunity to excel for each image bearer we are entrusted with at NPC.
We want each student’s experience at NPC to be designed based on how God created them. NPC does inclusion quite well with an academic plan for each student. How do we build upon that excellence and have a similar level of intentionality for all students, including academically talented students?
For every student, think about this as a choice and opportunity while the student is at NPC, but also choice and opportunity when they graduate. So that Susie has choice and opportunity: she can be President, attend Harvard or be a stay-at-home mom. And Billy has choice and opportunity: he can be a teacher, a coffee shop manager, or a rocket scientist.
Further, we recognize that we are not large enough to develop every program on our own. How do we begin to be more purposeful with our partnerships to allow students of all abilities and backgrounds to thrive. Our approach is a mix of internal and partnering with community and parents, but leveraging onsite opportunities whenever possible. This holistic approach looks like:
1. Provide educational opportunities and experiences for all learners to build head knowledge (acquisition of information through academic experiences)
2. Provide opportunities and experiences which instill passion and purpose for learning. We picture that each student has a legacy binder or spiritual journal that follows them throughout their NPC experience. Affirming and developing the individual as a unique image bearer in practical ways.
3. Provide authentic, mission based experiences for students to apply their knowledge and passion. This could mean everything from internships to hitting the mission field.
STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE #3
impact driven
Our stakeholders have spoken about a desire to encourage mission and service to become more integral to the NPC experience. A big part of this desire was to get outside of the walls of our school and outside our immediate community to impact the world for Jesus Christ.
As we engaged various stakeholders at NPC, there was a strong desire for NPC to become more mission-minded while at NPC and beyond. There was even a desire to create partnerships to allow students international opportunities to serve. While this may appear difficult to define, think about this - rather than service for an hour and going back to our lives, how might we draw our community (including teachers) into a model where service and mission is more integral to their life. At NPC, we see three objectives:
1. Internal aspect of missions - Teach and Equip Students K-12 for Missions. First we need to bring focus and attention to help develop the curriculum for K-12 discipleship and missions, in a very similar way we do with biblical truth woven into every classroom.
2. External aspect of missions - Look for External Opportunities like Missions Teams, Service Projects, and Partnerships. Our intent is to build partnerships with outside organizations to serve locally and globally. Locally, we are thinking of utilizing the Athletic Department to train high school athletes to lead mission-focused summer sports camps. But we think the low hanging fruit is to establish partnerships with local churches for opportunities to mission work
3. Create an intentional space for the further development of the missional mindset of students with a desire to encourage discipleship training and a longing to impact their world for Jesus Christ. A chapel? Maybe. But we need to think outside the box for what this may look like.
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STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE #4
purposeful growth
NPC has been richly blessed throughout its history and especially over the last few years. We want to be intentional….we want to dream…and we want to be open to where God might lead us to equip even more students to impact their world for Jesus Christ.
There was a broad consensus in our community to not simply grow NPC solely for growth’s sake. There was, however, belief that we should take a creative approach to purposeful growth. We looked at Calvary Church as an example. They recently had a large restructure for their future, but their goal was never to merely grow attendance. Rather, the goal was growing community - so they added to their children’s area, classrooms, and large group areas, to name a few.
Ideas discussed for NPC include Microschools, partnerships with universities and purposeful building for the community.
Here is our vision:
1. Accommodate growth in current elementary to ensure a solid feeder to the Leonard campus. We haven’t finished building yet and we are out of room in elementary! Praise God. While we look to the future we want to immediately and strategically re-visit space allocation plans at the Leonard campus to make space for a larger middle school. This means raising funds for the second story of our Leonard Campus.
2. Secure Additional Campus. This is a step for creating opportunity for growth and options beyond 2030! We want to be open to God opening and shutting doors, so we will foster conversations and opportunities with donors and community connections as they arrive and actively lean into potential opportunities. We will think broadly when we think about additional campus - microschools, partnerships with others. Clearly, there is a lot of work to do here to get specific but we want to start to really think proactively about what growth looks like 5 or 7 or 10 years down the line. And we are blessed to have the means to even start thinking in those terms!
3. Create a lab school in collaboration with a local University. Location would be the college campus but fully an NPC school. This fits with our mission and exponentially impacts more students across the nation and world due to the nature of working with future teachers. The focus would be on specialized STEAM areas. This would also minimize need for another new building.
Now we have our essentials as the beacon. And, we have our 4 beams, our strategic imperatives shining out from that beacon.
part 3. ...to make this vision a reality.
support for the vision
If NPC and our vision is to be the beacon on the hill, there has to be a support structure to hold that beacon up. The final part of our vision is the support structure - internal support, external support, and foundational support - to make this vision a reality.
At the end of the day, this entire vision falls apart if we don’t have the support structure.
Internal Support
Internal support for our vision refers to the people, processes and technology within the walls of NPC to bring our vision to life. The internal support has three crucial elements.
1. NPC as an Employer of Choice
2. Professionalize NPC Operations
3. Financial Security
A preeminent theme during our journey to create a vision was the amazing teachers and staff at NPC. They are bought into the mission. They live it on a daily basis. They are open to change. They are agile. Their care of the students and each other is second to none! They are truly the heartbeat of NPC. So in our diagram you see that we need a foundation to hold this vision up. This starts with the teachers and staff at NPC.
As the teachers and staff are so integral to who NPC is, our vision is to ensure we are intentional in how we affirm and support those men and women who have done so much to help fulfill our mission at NPC.
1. We will partner to provide resources and support services for students with needs. As a school that is passionate about inclusion, we want to support teachers with additional resources, training, and personnel support to meet the needs of each individual student (this also ties to our strategic imperative around individualized experience).
2. We acknowledge our need to attract and retain really good Christian school teachers. Although money isn’t everything, we need to ensure teachers will feel affirmed and valued in how they are compensated…not only salary, but other means as well. With respect to salary, our intent is to ensure our median salaries are in step with those of Christian Schools International - Great Lakes region within three years.
3. We also want to affirm teachers by looking at a forum to help each other; akin to a community of problem solvers where teachers have a voice and can problem solve together. Partnering with administrators, to collaborate and develop the goals of this group, a process for communication, availability, etc.
2. Professionalize NPC Operations
As we listened to our internal stakeholders, we heard a desire to improve the way we run the school while holding onto things people love the most about NPC - the relationships, the community, the family feel. So we want to ensure the employee experience is reflective of our mission, culture, and NPC’s aim that all would “be known.” We aim to empower and value the whole employee while they are at NPC.
1. NPC as an Employer of Choice
1. Start with onboarding. We want to be intentional about the onboarding experience - to acclimate employees to their work environment, integrate them into NPC culture, and provide them with tools to become the most effective contributors possible in order to set that employee up for success. Ultimately, this will increase efficiency, help establish expectations, limit confusion, enhance employee satisfaction, and improve retention greater than it already is.
2. Helpful professional development for everyone. We aim to create and implement professional development opportunities for all employees at NPC with the goal of increasing job satisfaction, enhancing employee performance and productivity, meeting compliance requirements, and bolstering confidence. At NPC, we want to equip teachers and staff, as they are equipping others.
3. Finally, we want to get everyone aligned around this vision. To do that, we want to help ensure administration, teachers and staff feel equipped, prepared, and responsible for their roles. To work in harmony toward the vision, we want employees to be able to answer questions like do I have role clarity, do I know who I report to, do I know how I’m performing to my goals.
While we don’t want to lose the relationships and community feel at NPC, we are certain we can create tools and systems to ensure every employee at NPC feels equipped to perform to their best.
3. Financial Security
NPC has been richly blessed financially over the last few years. This presents a wonderful opportunity to plan our future to align how we spend our money with the vision laid out today. To achieve that, we will develop a financial system that engages key stakeholders, increases transparency, and builds toward long-term vision for the school in a responsible manner.
1. Basics
» NPC will not incur debt for any reason
» Capital projects will not begin until we have 100% of funds committed and 75% of funds in hand
» Our Development Team and Financial Office Team will work hand in hand on present and future projects, initiatives and budgets
2. Future
» Adopt a multi-year budgeting process to ensure we are thinking ahead for things like capital improvement projects.
» Clear dashboard so constituents, board, and all stakeholders know the financial health of school
external support
External support for our vision refers to how the school engages beyond its four walls on a regular basis. The external support for our NPC vision has two elements:
1. Communicate with Excellence
2. Community + Culture
1. Communicate with Excellence
Imagine that in the year 2030, we have every parent, grandparent, student, teacher…everyone engaged with NPC saying: “at NPC, we never miss a beat” We want NorthPointe Christian to be recognized for our top-notch communication among area schools by utilizing and maximizing excellent communication resources. What does this look like:
1. Our goal is to communicate the right messages, to the right people, at the right time. So we want to build a communication strategy with 3 goals:
» Convey NPC’s “story” of excellence accurately being told with one voice guided by our mission (our “Elevator Story”).
» Provide timely and accurate information delivered to internal and external audiences.
» Develop clear avenues of two-way communication to build trust and foster relationships with all stakeholders.
2. We will begin bridging the existing communications gap by restructuring and creating a communications role to carry out an effective communications plan. Someone whose job it is to wake up every day thinking about communications. Someone whose role it is to ensure NPC’s “story” is accurately being told with one voice guided by our mission to all audiences.
» Internally, this person or department will also ensure staff and and the appropriate departments are notified of ALL school functions, events, and happenings.
» Externally, this person will serve as a one-stop shop for all things communications - emails, newsletters, events, happenings, etc.
2. Community + Culture
We like to think of NPC as a home. We invite people into our home to know and love God.
When you ask what people love most about NPC, the two words that appear most are community and culture. To many, it feels like family. It’s so important, that it’s a key element of every interview process. This foundational piece is in the vision to ensure that we are intentional about ensuring that everyone in our community feels that sense of family.
As odd as it may sound, our goal is essentially to maintain this key part of who NPC is.
Foundational support
Finally, we have what we call foundational support. Essentially, NorthPointe has been able to get to where it is today through being agile and through partnership with donors. The simple fact is that NPC does not get tax money. And, while tuition funds much of the operations, we rely heavily on donors. At the same time, we can’t achieve our mission without facilities. Historically, NPC has a tendency to approach donors reactively in a piecemeal fashion. We need a tennis court? Reach out to donors. We need a science lab? Reach out to donors.
While the amazing facilities growth we have seen has been because of our donors, we have also heard them loud and clear. “Cast a bigger vision. Show us the dream.”
The foundational part of our vision has two elements:
1. Fundraising to Support the Vision
2. Facilities to Support the Vision
1. Fundraising to Support the Vision
Specifically, we want to partner better with our fundraising partners to create:
• Development plan - Develop a comprehensive development plan to work through this mission
• Strategically organize all fundraising activities including a donor retention plan
• Increase donor base - Develop a systematic cultivation plan to increase donor base
• In line with our strategic imperative, we want to build momentum in helping our teachers be compensated for the amazing job they do. As the teachers and staff are so integral to who NPC is, our vision is to ensure we are intentional in how we affirm and support those men and women who have done so much to help fulfill our mission at NPC.
2. Facilities to Support the Vision
While we have seen more building activity in 2022-23 than in the previous 20 years, we see short-term and long-term needs:
• Short-term - as the culmination of the middle / high school addition edges closer, we will begin to fundraise for the additional $2.5M needed to build out the second story.
• Medium-term - accommodating the demand we see in all areas, but especially the elementary in order to provide a sustainable feeder for the middle and high school.
• Long-term - tied to the purposeful growth imperatives, we want to pursue open doors to grow the school without sacrificing who we are. Investigating microschools, new campuses, and strong college partnerships would be tied to this.
This document represents the first time in the history of NorthPointe we have painted a longterm vision for the future. While we are excited, we also hold this vision loosely. So if God leads us in a different direction, we will clearly heed that calling. We solicit your prayers as we work through the details in how to put this vision into practice.
