God’s Faithfulness: The Story of Foundation Worldview

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Hello, friends. This episode of the Foundation Worldview Podcast is going to be a little bit different than normal. Normally, I am answering questions that you, the listeners, have submitted. However, today we're going to be talking about God's faithfulness.

Just a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of spending a few days with my childhood pastor and his wife in upstate New York. My favorite part of my visit was getting to hear stories I had never heard before about how God has been faithful in drawing them to himself, calling and equipping them over the years and decades. As I listened to those stories of God's faithfulness, I was greatly encouraged—both to see how God has moved in and through them, and to see how the story of God's faithfulness in their lives has intertwined with the story of God's faithfulness in my life.

Because without God's faithfulness in their life, I would be very different. They've had a huge impact on me. I know that many of you who listen to this podcast have been impacted by Foundation Worldview ministry in one way or another. So today, I thought I would share the story of how Foundation Worldview got started and the many amazing things God has done to both create and sustain this organization.

I hope that as you listen to this story, you are encouraged—not just hearing it as a story of something God has done for one organization, but taking it as a precious jewel of how God has been faithful in your life too. I know you have stories of God's faithfulness that I know nothing about, but this is a story I do know about. Since Foundation Worldview ministry has impacted you in some way, I hope you see how God's faithfulness towards us is also his faithfulness towards you.

The Beginning: 2011-2012

The story of Foundation Worldview really begins in 2011. Up until that point, 2011 was the hardest year of my life. I went through loss after loss after loss, and God was revealing himself to me and stripping away areas of sin I didn't even know existed in my life.

As 2011 came to a close and 2012 began, I was completing my fifth year of teaching. I had already noticed a problem (which I've mentioned many times before on this podcast): my students came from great Christian homes, received a biblically-based education, and were involved in church, but they lacked the skills needed to carefully evaluate the countless ideas that came their way every day and think biblically through them.

Because there had been so much loss in my life the previous year, in the summer of 2012 when I had time off from teaching, I was looking for something to do—some way to invest my time wisely. I happened to stumble across a website advertising a program called the Focus Leadership Institute, a young adult leadership program at Focus on the Family. It was semester-long for young adults aged 19 to 26.

I started reading about it and thought, "Oh my goodness, I am so passionate about all these things they're talking about! I would love to do this." But when I looked at the dates, their summer semester started a week before I finished teaching. So I called an admissions counselor and asked if there was any possibility I could fly out for orientation, fly back for my last week of teaching, and then return.

The admissions counselor said, "It's funny you should call right now. I literally just got out of an academic planning meeting where we decided to push the semester back by a week." I was so excited! I called my mom, but she reminded me that the new final week of the semester was now during our family vacation, which my parents had been planning for over a year.

After thinking about it and praying, I called the admissions counselor again and asked if I could leave a week early. He replied, "Elizabeth, you have the craziest timing with your phone calls. I literally just got out of another academic planning meeting where we decided to shorten the semester by a week this summer because of some conflicting schedules." The dates now fit perfectly with my calendar!

God's Financial Provision

The tuition for the semester was $5,500. After five years of teaching at a Christian school, I was barely scraping by financially with no way to afford this. I started thinking about babysitting or dog sitting to earn extra money.

My school had an endowment program where teachers could apply for scholarships for professional development. I had applied before but only for $1,500-$2,000. The maximum was $5,000, but nobody had the audacity to apply for the full amount. I thought, "Let me shoot for the moon, and if I land somewhere before that, I'm no worse for the wear."

I applied for the full $5,000, and a few days later, my principal called me into his office and asked how serious I was about staying at the school. I told him I would stay until God called me elsewhere. He replied, "We're going to give you this scholarship you asked for." I was elated! All I needed now was to raise $500 more.

Walking back to my classroom, I checked my phone and found a voicemail from the same admissions counselor at Focus on the Family. He said that because I had submitted my application early, they were waiving $500 off the program fee. In one afternoon, I had the entire $5,500 I needed!

A Pivotal Summer

That summer at Focus on the Family was a pivotal turning point in my life. As I attended classes, the lights started coming on. I realized what my students were missing: the ability to think critically, a foundational understanding of worldview, and a basic understanding of biblical apologetics.

Those seven weeks at Focus on the Family in 2012 remain the best seven weeks of my life, hands down.

Creating the First Curriculum

I returned to my school in fall 2012 with a passion for what I had learned. I asked for permission to start an after-school worldview class for third, fourth, and fifth graders. Many students signed up, but I couldn't find materials that accomplished what I wanted—giving students a basic understanding of biblical worldview and comparing biblical answers with other worldview answers.

The materials I found either didn't cover the scope I wanted or weren't educationally sound. One homeschooling curriculum company had a textbook with good information, but I thought, "Kids aren't going to learn what naturalism is as a worldview by reading one paragraph about it in some textbook once."

So I created my own curriculum. The transformation in my students was amazing—their thinking, their interactions with others, and their academic work all improved. Everyone saw it and was excited about it. Some school board members suggested I teach this in the regular classroom, not just as an after-school program.

After teaching it for two years, I finally got to incorporate it into the regular classroom. It was my favorite thing to teach all day long.

Setback and New Direction

Then everything came crashing down. One person was unhappy with what I was doing, and to this day, I don't really know why. They told me, "Elizabeth, you are not qualified to do this. You don't have any education in this. You're not qualified to write materials. I am going to do everything in my power to stop you from teaching this."

I was devastated. This person did make it so I was no longer able to teach this class at my school, and I was heartbroken.

As I prayed through this, I realized part of what they said was true—I wasn't formally qualified to write curriculum. I had done research and read books, but I didn't have credentials proving I was an expert in this field.

This was a wake-up call that I needed formalized training. I started looking into degrees in Christian apologetics, first at Liberty University (online), but then decided I wanted "the best of the best," which at the time was Biola University.

I thought I wasn't qualified because some top apologists I admired had graduated from Biola. I started an application but didn't finish it. An admissions counselor reached out and said they would waive the application fee if I completed it. I finished the application in December 2015 and was accepted in early 2016.

I planned to start in fall 2016, but received a voicemail about starting a semester early. After consulting with mentors, I called Biola back—oddly, everyone claimed they hadn't called me, but they let me register for classes anyway. Starting that semester was pivotal for Foundation Worldview because I developed relationships with people who would later be foundational in helping me start the organization.

The Hard Work of Education

Working on my apologetics degree while teaching was incredibly difficult. For two years, my schedule was:

• 4:00 AM to 7:00 AM: Biola homework
• 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM: Get ready
• 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM: Teaching
• 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM: More homework
• 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM: Sleep

During my second year, I experienced a restlessness I couldn't shake. I asked my parents, pastor, and close friends to pray with me about whether God was calling me to leave teaching and pursue what I was training for full-time, or if I was just being restless.

After six weeks of prayer, everyone agreed that God seemed to be calling me out of the classroom to finish my apologetics degree and start a company.

A Leap of Faith

I submitted my resignation letter, terrified because I was a single woman in my early thirties with little savings. Everyone said, "Elizabeth, this is great! This is the time to do this. You're young, you're single, take this risk."

I thought, "Young means I have barely any money in savings, and single means I'm the only one bringing in income. The buck stops here."

I had peace that it was the right decision, but I was scared. God kept providing, though. A few weeks after resigning, I was in the teacher's room making photocopies when a mom noticed I seemed off. When I explained my situation, she asked about my rent and wrote me a check for a full year's worth. I was shocked and suggested she talk to her husband first, but she said, "No, the Lord told you what to do, and now he told me what to do," and handed me the check.

Later, my childhood pastor suggested I become a short-term missionary supported by his church. First Baptist Church of Peekskill, New York, supported me for almost three years.

Starting Foundation Worldview

When I left teaching, I started Foundation Worldview with a passion for quality. I believed anything with Jesus's name on it needed to be top quality because "Jesus is the creator and sustainer of the universe. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills."

I knew starting the company, building a website, and filming curriculum would cost tens of thousands of dollars. A local businessman called me, asked about my plans, and offered an interest-free loan of up to $100,000. I was floored by God's provision.

In our first year as an official company (2019), we traveled to 14 homeschooling conferences. Throughout that exhausting year, I didn't have a single canceled flight or lost bag, despite traveling with multiple large suitcases containing booth materials and promotional items.

God provided in small ways too. One day at Midway Airport in Chicago, a man helped me with my heavy suitcases, asked for my business card, and later emailed offering to pay to have my bags shipped between conferences through UPS.

Growing the Team

As we began to grow from 10 to 100 curriculum users, it became evident we needed different people for different roles. At just the right time, my sister and her husband moved (he's in the armed forces), and she had to leave her teaching job mid-year. She started working for Foundation Worldview, handling all our administrative tasks excellently.

Two years in, our simple website wasn't sufficient anymore. Through unexpected connections, we found an amazing company that built us a new website and now handles all our digital marketing and media work. In fact, you're listening to this podcast because of their team's work.

When we needed someone for customer service and relations, I bumped into an old coworker who mentioned another former colleague looking for part-time work. This has happened time and again. Today, seven of us work at Foundation Worldview, and God has brought each person along in incredible ways.

A New Chapter

In 2021, I felt that same restlessness again. After prayer, it became obvious that God was calling me to move from Chicago, where I'd been for the past decade and a half, to a more affordable location.

God miraculously provided a house for me. I was more than $10,000 short for a down payment and prayed for provision. The next morning, my accountant emailed saying we had miscalculated my estimated quarterly taxes, and I was getting back several thousand dollars more than what I had prayed for.

What I didn't know was that in July 2021, Pastor Mike Winger from Bible Thinker would have me on his channel to talk about "Seven Common Lies That Our Kids Believe." I thought maybe 5,000 people would see the interview. What I didn't realize was that about 5,000 people watched it live, and over 400,000 would watch it later.

That interview took us from a tiny, minuscule company to a small company that now serves tens of thousands of people each year with curriculum to equip kids.

God's Faithfulness Through It All

Throughout this journey of starting and continuing Foundation Worldview, there have been many hard times, moments of discouragement, spiritual attacks, and financial uncertainty. However, the overwhelming narrative, the overarching story, is God's faithfulness.

I hope you've heard throughout this story that without God's supernatural provision, Foundation Worldview would not exist. I am honored and privileged to invest my time vocationally in this ministry, and I'm grateful that this is what God has called me to. But I have no delusions of grandeur—I understand that without God's miraculous provision, Foundation Worldview would not exist today. It has been solely by His grace.

I hope that as you've heard this story, you haven't just heard about God's faithfulness in my life, but have seen a glimpse that if Foundation Worldview has blessed you in any way, this story of faithfulness is also your story. God had you and your children in mind as He was doing all these things with Foundation Worldview.

I don't know how long God has called Foundation Worldview to exist—it could be a hundred years, a hundred months, or just one more year. But what I do know is that the existence of this ministry is purely by God's grace.

If you have stories of God's faithfulness in your own life (and I know most, if not all of you do), I'd love to hear about them in the comments if you're watching on YouTube. It's always encouraging to hear how God has been faithful in and through others.

Thank you for investing the time listening to this story of God's faithfulness in Foundation Worldview, which is also a small part of God's faithfulness in your life. As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care find yourselves, you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to conform you more into the image of His Son.

I'll see you next time.