Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2014 | Page 32
Visionaries in Christian Education
Find out what’s worked
for them.
Bradford Christian Academy, Haverhill, Mass.
Vicki Colquitt Kennedy ’83 first noticed Loren Hilgenhurst Stevens
’83 because Loren was transporting her goldfish, Moe, home to Boston
for winter break in a Ziploc bag. The chance conversation between
these two Wheaton freshmen led to a lifelong friendship.
Not only did Vicki and Loren become roommates, they both
married Wheaton grads—Bob Kennedy ’82 and Mike Stevens ’82—
who also were roommates. They then moved to the same town in
New England, and had their children around the same time.
One day shortly after their oldest children reached school age, Vicki
and Loren were out exercising and discussing the need for a Christian
school in their area. They started a prayer group, which grew and
grew. They eventually hosted guest speakers who had founded a
Christian school and encouraged the group to do likewise.
“We thought that was a crazy idea,” says Loren. But upon reflection,
the group was “stunned that we had everything we needed,” she says.
Ten years ago, Bradford Christian Academy (BCA) opened its doors.
“We started with 43 brave families willing to sign on based on a
PowerPoint,” says Loren. Today the school serves 170 students from
30 communities in northeastern Massachusetts and southern New
30
SPRING
141833_14-32.indd 30
2014
Jim Wilkes ’79 (back row,
left) and Bill Seitz ’78 gather
with Cornerstone students
in downtown Chicago.
P H OTO G R A P H : K E N D R A W R I G H T
By Jeremy Weber ’05
Hampshire. It hosts a competitive theater program, and recently won
league championships in soccer and basketball.
“New England is a challenging place to hold forth for the
kingdom of Christ,” says Vicki. “It’s its own mindset: very agnostic
and super intellectual. That’s partly why we are here and doing
what we’re doing. We want to make sure there are faithful followers
of Jesus here.”
BCA’s education model is suspiciously similar to Wheaton College—
by design.
“When I first had my kids, I knew I couldn’t wait 18 years for
them to have the same transformative experience that I had at
Wheaton: to have the life of faith and the life of the mind interact on
a daily basis,” says Vicki, whose oldest child, MacKenzie Kennedy ’17,
is now a Wheaton freshman. “But by God’s grace, that’s what we’ve
achieved here.”
Loren adds, “I credit Wheaton with informing, growing, and
inspiring my view of education. The current trend is to push students
toward STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics),
but we stand firm on a liberal arts education.”
They adapted Wheaton’s curriculum for the level of the high
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