Member Spotlight: Bill Jack of Worldview Academy

Bill Jack says he is an “accidental missionary.” He did not plan to co-found Worldview Academy, or to train thousands of young people, in addition to his own children, to think and live with a Christian worldview.

But as Bill discovered, God trains His children for their mission, and surprises them with joy.

“I’m always amazed I’m in the position I’m in,” Bill says, “It’s been a joy and a blessing. I’ve been able to go places and see people. It’s been something far greater than I could ever imagine.”

Bill enjoys the life of ministry God has given him with his wife, Tabby, a constant source of insight and support. Bill and Tabby have two adult sons, Caleb and Joshua, and a daughter, Ruby, who lives at home, finishing her senior year of high school.

God began preparing Bill for the ministry of worldview training when he was a boy, growing up in the small town of Herrin, Illinois. His parents took him with them to church three or more times a week, where his mom, a real estate agent, would play the piano and his dad, a businessman, would speak. He also spoke at other churches in the area. They taught him the first greatest lesson of his life: “faith in God and a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Bill saw what that relationship with Jesus looked like by watching his dad live out his faith, both in the business he owned—a combination lumberyard and hardware store—and in relationships, especially relationships with employees.

“Learned more from him than probably anything else,” Bill says. “What I do now is out of what I saw him do.”

His second greatest lesson came later, after he became an English teacher at his alma mater—Herrin High School.

As a public school teacher and a Christian, Bill says he was a “nice guy.” He cared about his students, and worked hard for their education. He also spent time teaching and serving with his church’s youth group, but he didn’t see any connection between his faith and his work.

Then the staff of a creationist youth ministry—the Caleb Campaign—asked Bill to sponsor a student-led Bible Club at Herrin High School. Bill says, “I thought they were nuts. … When I walked into the classroom, I thought I should shed my values like I’m taking off a sports coat. When I walked into church, I’d put my mind and intellect on the shelf in the foyer.”

The Caleb Campaign’s relatively simple request led Bill to make a life-changing realization:

“For the first seven years in my literature classes, I never mentioned the Bible—the first book read in outer space, the first book printed on the printing press, the most important book that secular college and university English professors say a student should read before he enters college. That is academically absurd.”

Bill realized that, even though he professed faith in Christ, he was thinking and living as if there was no God. His worldview—“the framework one has for understanding reality”—was not Biblical.

Though he dreaded de-compartmentalizing his faith and intellect, Bill agreed to become a teacher sponsor. Serving with the Caleb Campaign showed him that, “We’re not called for the ‘removing’ of our minds. It’s the ‘renewing’ of our minds (Romans 12:2). We’re to think God’s thoughts after Him.”

As he began the lifelong transformation of thinking and living out his Biblical worldview, Bill realized God was calling and enabling him to teach others to do the same.

After a few years, with the support of Tabby and his parents, he accepted a full-time position with the Caleb Campaign in Colorado. “It was a hard transition,” Bill says. “At the time, we had the only grandchild (Caleb) in the family. But I knew if I didn’t do this, it’s not that God would put me on a shelf, it’s that I’d miss His blessing.”

So Bill and Tabby moved their small family to Colorado with their new mission to “train teachers and reach several generations.”

Bill worked with the Caleb Campaign for 14 years. During that time he met researcher and writer Jeff Baldwin, who at the time was with Summit Ministries. Jeff, Bill, and fellow ministry workers Randy Sims and Todd Kent envisioned “a place where Christian students could learn to live courageously in the hope of Jesus.” Each man had his own ministerial strength to contribute to the vision, and as they spent time together dreaming and planning, Bill noticed God knitting their hearts together.

In 1996, this vision was realized in Tehuacana, Texas, at the first week-long Worldview Academy summer camp. Forty students attended that camp, led by just a handful of staff.

At home with their own children, Bill and Tabby recognized that if they were not intentional in teaching a Biblical worldview, they would leave their kids vulnerable to the un-Biblical culture around them. “Most people catch their worldviews from their parents initially,” Bill says, “and then from the educational system and culture as they grow older.”

To help their children learn to think and live out their faith in Jesus, Bill and Tabby chose to homeschool Caleb, Joshua, and Ruby for, at least, their early education. They also recognized the importance of engaging their children in conversations about the culture around them. Bill feels that “parents need to be intentional in directing conversations on current events, movies, and news items.” He says, “They need to point out the worldview behind the ad, behind the reporting of the news, or behind statements made by politicians, commentators, and celebrities.” While explaining what the Gospel means Biblically, parents can also demonstrate how a Christian thinks and lives in the world around him for the glory of God. “We can’t retreat from culture,” Bill says. “We must advance on the culture.”

Now that all of Bill and Tabby’s children are grown, they are each living out their faith in their chosen niche: Caleb, through his work at a bank and rec center, and his service with Young Life’s junior high program; Joshua as a husband and project manager for a construction firm; and Ruby as a house and pet sitter, and as an aspiring cosmetologist. “I wish I was half the man my sons have proven themselves to be,” Bill says, “and am looking forward to seeing how Ruby matures into the image of her mother.”

In addition to being a wife and mother, Tabby also ministers to others. She serves as a mentor, and cares for others’ pets, anything to help people, even as she has battled ovarian cancer. Bill has come to rely on Tabby for her keen insight into people, and especially her ability to tune in to her children’s personalities and temperaments. He is also humbled by her unrelenting trust in God during her illness.

Bill has found that Tabby balances and complements him as he serves the public. “Whereas I have the gift of the Old Testament prophet,” Bill says, “seeing things in black and white and calling the culture back to what Scripture says, Tabby has the gift of mercy. My gift can often come across as harsh unless tempered by someone, like her, who reminds me to be merciful.”

“The only times I have gotten into trouble while doing ministry,” he says, “is when I asked for her advice and then did not take it. I tend to be much like the proverbial bull in the china shop, while she is more circumspect.”

Eighteen years after the first camp, Worldview Academy has held 238 camps and trained 30,000 students, ages 13 and up, in worldview, apologetics, and servant leadership. This summer and fall, week-long Worldview Academy camps will be hosted at 23 locations, in three regions (West, North, and South) across the country, mostly at colleges and universities. Bill will travel with a team of faculty instructors to each camp within one region. Together they will lead more than 20 hours of lively classroom sessions and discussions.

Through creative activities, meaningful worship, and instruction that gives students “Biblical answers that match the real world,” Bill and his team will help attendees at each camp learn how to think and live out a Christian worldview. The process is a challenge and a delight, Bill says, “I enjoy watching the lights come on.”

Bill has also been involved in teaching Biblical worldview by leading Biblically-guided museum tours with B.C. Tours, by speaking at homeschool and church conferences, by co-hosting Radio Worldview—the official podcast of Worldview Academy—and through instructional DVDs such as Simple Tools For Brain Surgery and Artificial Authority.

Bill, Tabby, and all of their fellow laborers with Worldview Academy trust that the truths they’ve helped share in love will sink down into young people’s minds and hearts. They pray that students will apply their Biblical worldview, no matter where life takes them, and teach others to do the same.

Anyone, no matter their strengths or abilities, can live and teach a Christian worldview, Bill says. Just as Paul tells Timothy (in II Timothy 2:2) to “entrust” what he has heard from Paul to “faithful men who will be able to teach others also,” all of the spiritual “food” Bill shares with others was all given to him by other faithful Christians.

“I don’t grow the food, I don’t cook the food, but I can plate the food.” Bill says, “That’s not a big skill, but it’s what I do. I can put it on a plate and make it look tasty.”

After his many years of ministry, Bill says, “people often ask, ‘What is the fruit?’ It’s not like building a house. You can’t step back and say, ‘It’s finished!’ When you’re building into others’ lives, you don’t often get to see the finished product.”

But Bill has received the blessing of seeing fruit, not only in his own children’s lives, but also in many former students’ lives.

“We have a former student who is clerking for a U.S. Supreme Court justice,” he says. “It truly is encouraging to see someone we have helped train have such influence. However, it is equally encouraging to realize that numerous former students are faithful moms and dads, ditch diggers and dentists, politicians and plumbers … former students now applying a Biblical worldview in philosophy, economics, the arts, and the sciences.”

“The beauty of it,” Bill says, “is hopefully we are shaping the culture by encouraging them to think and apply their Christian worldview.”

This is “the point of the Christian worldview,” Bill says, “to be fruitful and pass on what we know.” Though he sometimes resists what God has called him to do, and he may not feel as adept at public speaking as others, Bill says, “When I do it, I love it. … It’s a challenge and a joy.”

It is crucial for Christians to live out their faith in Jesus with a Biblical worldview. Being a missionary to your family and your culture at large, Bill has discovered, only takes faith in Christ and a lifetime of living out a Biblical worldview.

“That should encourage other people that if I can do it, anyone can do it.”