Cross Currents Christian School turns 25

In the waning years of the 1970s, Donna Maddux was a bit uneasy about educational offerings in the Flathead Valley.

Her response to that restlessness led to a legacy that has provided academically sound, biblically based instruction for a quarter century at Cross Currents Christian School.

Last Friday, Principal Lynda Nelson led a 25th anniversary celebration during weekly chapel service for the Whitefish school, where students, staff and trustees opened a time capsule and started a new one for the next generation.

The new time capsule is an example of the forward thinking first modeled by Cross Currents founders 25 years ago.

"I had a level of discomfort that there weren't more choices," said Maddux, a public school teacher who is now the Flathead County Superintendent of Schools.

"I felt people needed to have options on the way they chose to carry out educating their children." Maddux's professional life has been spent in public education, but is guided by her personal faith in God.

"I'm not a big believer in trying to talk about our values," she said, "but I am a believer in trying to live them."

So it was that, when she was uneasy about what parents had to choose from in 1979, she felt compelled to do something about it.

Maddux knew she could lay out a curriculum. But it was the school building she lacked.

She spotted and checked into the former Whitefish clinic - now the home of Whitefish Independent High School - when the building went up for sale. It was too expensive for her.

"On my way home I was saying a little prayer: 'Well, God, I can't do this. If you want it to happen, you've got to send help,'" she said.

She no sooner stepped into her house than the phone rang. It was Linda McMaster. The two had never met, but news of Maddux's quest to start a Christian school had reached McMaster.

When she learned that money had just become a seemingly insurmountable barrier, McMaster told Maddux, "We've got to talk."

R.E. McMaster, adviser to stock market investors and Linda McMaster's husband, provided the financial backing for start-up while his wife and Maddux provided the elbow grease and vision.

Maddux recruited Nelson as the school's first teacher. They worked on curriculum through the summer of 1979 and together hired their second teacher, Claire Strickler.

On Jan. 22, 1980, 21 children started preschool through fourth-grade classes in the school named for its mission.

Maddux, in a letter commemorating the school's 25th birthday, explained the name.

"It was chosen to mean two things," she wrote. "First and foremost, it represents the movement of the Holy Spirit in the school and community. Secondly, it also notes that being of the Spirit may not always be comfortable when doing the right thing is not the popular thing. Believers could be at 'Cross' purposes with the World."

That didn't stop the early work of the school.

"God wanted it to survive, and some marvelous people stepped in," said Strickler, the school's first preschool teacher for more than six years, then principal for another five. "The biggest miracle that happened with this is that it stayed open."

It not only stayed open, but flourished.

School leaders know that people made the difference.

Lucy Bee started in 1981 as a parent volunteer and now teaches first grade.

Sandra Schreiber began as a board member and substitute teacher in 1983 and teaches junior high math and science today.

Nelson began in kindergarten in 1980 and taught every primary grade until retiring in 2002. She stayed on the board and serves this year as interim principal.

When Strickler was hired for that opening year, she was the only certified preschool teacher in town. Her retirement has not severed her close ties to the school.

John and Claire Hughes moved to the valley in 1982 and within a year John, a former college professor, began his two decades as board chairman.

More quality teachers and board members joined along the way, forming a tight-knit group with broad-ranging skills that meshed for a high-quality and seamless education. They agree it was by human and divine design.

"If you have only two criteria (for teachers and board members) - to love Christ and to love Christian education," Hughes said, "you have a high degree of harmony.

"You see what God is doing here and you see lives being changed, and you want to be a part of what God is part of."

But it may have been the dedicated core of hard-working parents committed to building the school who provided the life blood of Cross Currents.

From the day the school discovered it could move into what was First Baptist Church - holding class on a cold, rug-covered concrete floor with just enough desks for the children but not much else - through a move to the former Whitefish clinic, taking up quarters in Christ Lutheran Church and eventually raising the money to build the current school on Ashar Avenue, that committed contingent grew.

"We started small," Nelson recalled. "We didn't have all the fluff, but we still managed to teach children."

As each move came along, they renovated quarters to fit their needs. They still owe a huge debt to Christ Lutheran, Hughes said, for the permission to reconfigure their education wing and for providing the school space.

"We were always tearing down walls because all the rooms were too small," he said, ticking off the clinic's old X-ray room and their sometimes-chancy deconstruction forays at the church.

"I miss those days. We sort of homesteaded, with the parents working so much. There was a lot of laughter."

When push came to shove, and Christ Lutheran needed to move into its education wing while it built its own new sanctuary, Cross Currents watched as land was donated and money given to build and move into its own 10,000-square-foot school debt-free within a matter of four months in 1989. It's been expanded, and more land to the west has been given for a future expansion.

"The Lord has always provided," Hughes said. "There's story after story of how God provided. It's faith-building to the N'th degree … But the real story is how God over and over provides for us and directs us."

"And it's not one person with a big check," Strickler added. "It's continual."

The school's curriculum has a strong foundation, as well. They choose various curricular packages that provide a solid academic foundation, but reference everything back to what they feel is the beginning of instruction - God's word in the Bible.

"You can feel God's presence," Bee said. "He's in the classrooms. You kind of get sucked into it. You see a need and He puts it on your heart and you just want to give."

They are adopting a more classical Christian model of education now, including logic, Latin and other elements that take students back to a time-tested foundation.

They're also sowing seeds of faith that grow in families.

"Many families came to know Christ because of the witness of their kids who were students here," Hughes said.

The school enjoys wide acceptance and respect in the community, with its non-denominational stance drawing support from nearly every congregation in Whitefish.

Today, 116 students attend Cross Currents up through eighth grade. When they advance to public high school, administrators and teachers there have remarked on their excellent preparation and smooth transition.

And it all began with a commitment from people willing to act on their faith.

"It was just really fun to be a part of," Maddux said. "I have been just delighted by the way it has grown in quality and additional staff and students. The quality is still just excellent. That was always our goal - to provide a real quality education, not just a Christian education.

"I don't think anyone can claim credit. You can just see God's hand in this whole thing. There were some people who were used a lot," she said, "but nobody can stand back and say, 'I did this.'"

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com