How the Church Can Lead the Education Freedom Movement

Nathan Sanders: Well, welcome back, everyone. This is our first episode of Sunday School Choice of 2026, which is super exciting. We’re glad to start doing these interviews again.

Today, I am blessed to have with me Pastor Joshua Robertson. Pastor Josh is with Black Pastors United for Education. They’re an organization in which he will tell you a little bit about what they do in just a second, but just so happy to be with you, Pastor.

And I’m excited to get into this interview. Without further ado, tell us who you are and what your organization does.

Joshua Robertson: Well, first, I want to say thank you for the opportunity to be on the podcast and to share about this topic that is so near and dear to my heart. As you said, I am Pastor Joshua Robertson. I pastor the Rock Church, which is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and I am the CEO and founder of Black Pastors United for Education.

Black Pastors United for Education, we do two essential things. Number one, we help churches to provide non-traditional educational opportunities in their local assemblies. When you think about real estate, no one does real estate like the church.

Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., our Sunday school rooms are usually empty. And so when I look at the epidemic of problems that we have concerning education in America, where you see an issue, a problem with education, you see a cluster of churches that could be a part of the solution. And so I believe that church spaces should be utilized as educational hubs.

And I think that there are so many talented and gifted people and credentialed people within the local church that could help our children to close the gap in this educational challenge that we face in the 21st century, 100%. So that’s the first thing we do. The second thing we do is we advocate and we talk to lawmakers and we talk to pastors, we talk to parents, we talk to community leaders, and we help people to see the value of school choice, what we call education freedom, and to see it as the 21st century issue of our time.

And so these two are held in tension, creating educational opportunities that meet the demand that our children need and that the parents deem that they need, and at the same time advocating for the least of these, which I believe school choice gives all of us a chance to care for and to start with the least of these while extending it to all those, to all people.

Nathan Sanders: Yeah. So thank you for that, and I think you’re 100% right. But I grew up here in the South, and one thing about the South, it’s the Bible Belt, and so literally everywhere you go, every mile, there’s a church on the road.

And it could be a Baptist church, Catholic church, Pentecostal, you name it, but there are churches everywhere. And they have these buildings, like you said, that have tons of empty rooms during the week. And so that’s one thing I try to do when talking with pastors and other folks who are really interested in this stuff.

I’m like, dude, the hardest thing, honestly, when you’re looking at starting some type of school is real estate. You got it. And usually your congregants and everything, they’re 100% behind that because you could really disciple and minister to these kids who you allow in your schools.

So tell us a little bit how you got into all this. So you explained your organization, you guys do awesome work. What made you want to do this?

What started this?

Joshua Robertson: Sure. I think my own story is why I’m so passionate about it. Most people do not have the type of athletic prowess I had at that time.

And so because of sports, I was passed along. So my story, I’ll say it in brief that, you know, out of high school, I had all type of division 1A offers, but was not able to take them because I couldn’t pass the SAT. And so I took a 1AA football scholarship to Gardner Webb University in Bowling Springs, North Carolina.

And after three semesters, failed out .67 GPA. After I failed out, my dad, my mom and dad wouldn’t let me move back home.

So I started down mischievous road. And I thank God that, you know, I didn’t fully get down that road, but I had a brother, a friend who I grew up with, gave me some money and asked me to take him to Scranton, Pennsylvania, excuse me, Altoona, Pennsylvania. And I took him to Altoona, Pennsylvania.

I’ll tell you off camera what that was about. And when I got there, the bishop who I played the organ for at his church down in North Carolina called me and pleaded with me to move back down there with him, given that I had failed out of school. My parents wouldn’t let me live at home.

And that man taught me how to read. At 19 years old, bought me a Goosebumps book and a highlighter. And that man taught me how to read.

And after that semester of going to school with him, he enrolled himself and myself into Cleveland Area Community College in Shelby, North Carolina. And after that semester, I kind of had the basics of reading and, you know, I had, you know, just grown so much academically. And so I was able to get back on the right path.

And now I have my bachelor’s degree. Now I have my master’s degree. I was able to go back and play Division I football at the University of Minnesota.

And so my whole life changed from that. And that really tells you the power of these non-traditional educational opportunities, right? It took a smaller environment.

It took a man who could meet with me one-on-one and mentor me. And that’s where I feel like the church is so pivotal to this fight for our next generation. Because it’s not just competency.

It’s not just the x’s and o’s of academia. It’s also character. And so I think the church can play a critical role in the character development of these young men and women as it relates to their competency development as well.

And that’s what education isn’t just about the ABCs. Education is also about the formation of a person. And so if we want this country to be strong in years to come, we can’t have smart crooks, right?

We have to have the development of the mind as well as the development of the soul.

Nathan Sanders: Yeah. Well, amen to that. Yeah.

So at EdChoice, a little bit of polling plug here. We do a lot of polling and surveys to parents because we want to know what they think about outside of state capitals and such. And we ask them what they think the main reason for educating is.

What is schooling actually about to you? Academics is on that list, but it’s things like socialization and civics and safety. It’s a bunch of different things that make up what schooling is in parents’ mind.

And I think when you really get into these innovative education models outside of traditional schooling, that’s where parents can really go into those options and say, wow, this is exactly what I was looking for because it’s so customizable. And every kid is so different. So that’s incredible.

So you were telling me a story a while ago off camera. I’d love for you to tell that story again. It’s a really powerful story, if you wouldn’t mind doing that.

Joshua Robertson: Absolutely. Just going off of what you were saying, like education being customizable. We’re both sitting here right now and our suit is on, and we have a certain percentage of our shirt being shown because that’s how we are.

Whether your suit is tailor made or whatever that may be, it is to fit you. And so I think as Americans, we should be looking at education like how can we curate an educational experience that is customizable for each kid. And I was telling you four years ago, we started a program called the Business Builders, and it is helping kids to learn how to build a business as an alternative to some of the street businesses they get in that are illegal.

I’ll never forget four years ago, Brandon was shot at the local corner store on the same street as my church. He caught a ricochet bullet because Brandon sold drugs under the guise of washing windows. At 14 years old, usually you’re not a hand-to-hand drug dealer, but a drug dealer will give you a bag of drugs, put it in a book bag, and while he washed the windows, whenever the drug dealer came by, he just gave him the book bag.

But he got caught in a crossfire, caught a ricochet bullet. He survived. I saw him walking down the street, and I said to him, hey, Brandon, man, how much would you charge me to not sell drugs?

And Brandon was like, man, I make like a hundred dollars a week, man, you know. And I’m just a 14-year-old kid. That’s a lot of money.

And so I said, all right, how about this? Why don’t I pay you $200 a week and you can work here at the church? And I was like, and go get three of your friends.

I’ll pay you all $200 a week. Brandon was like, what? I said, yeah.

I said, there’s one condition. You can’t sell drugs. I said, so let me replace.

Do you want money or do you want to sell drugs? He really didn’t want to sell drugs because he knew jail and he had just been shot. So he took me up on it.

Well, four years removed. Well, let me say this. So he took me up on it.

And what we did was we took our Sunday school room that didn’t need new flooring, that did not need a paint job, but it needed it because that was the summer job for kids in the neighborhood to incentivize them to not go down the wrong path, but to come here to the church and go down the right path. And we were able to, you know, fill his life with people from our church. Licensed contractor who was my deacon, right?

I was able to pay him to do the job and pay him to run an apprenticeship program with these kids from the neighborhood. Four years removed this past summer. I wrote the letter of recommendation for those four kids to go to Theater Stevens, which is the local trade school.

That’s awesome. And these kids never returned to selling drugs. And now they’re in a trade school because they want to be a construction company.

Yeah. Right. And so I’m like, okay, let’s take this and let’s make this a national movement, right?

Churches all over this country that have Sunday school rooms. Can we make it a summer program where you teach your kids in your neighborhood about business? They weren’t just swinging hammers.

We taught them about payroll. They had to form their own mock LLC, 501c3, right? They had to do their own banking.

They learned so much more than just laying a floor and painting a room. We taught them what it means to run a business. And, and to me, that is what the church can really do.

And I think the church has to be the 21st century leaders in this movement.

Nathan Sanders: Amen. A hundred percent. That’s an incredible story.

I’m so glad you told it again. I know even with like, when it comes to trade, you know, manual labor and doing those types of projects, just me, a personal anecdote, like if I’m around the house working on something and something’s not going my way or I’m doing something wrong, like I get frustrated. Like I get, my wife tells me like, I’m going to work on patients, got to pray about patients.

So I can also imagine that there’s lots of those types of characteristics being built, how to deal with things that are going your way, how to deal with something that you don’t actually know how to fix it, but you got to figure it out. I love that. And so that segues me into my next question, which is how does, how does faith play a role in that?

Like what is the intersection with your church and your ministry and your school? What’s the intersection of education and character building and faith where God comes into that?

Joshua Robertson: I mean, I really feel like education, freedom, and leveraging what we call school choice gives the church a chance to fulfill what I believe is very clear in the scripture. When you read Deuteronomy chapter number six, and it talks about teaching your children the word, and you do it when they arise, you do it when you go to bed, you do it as you’re traveling along the way. You know, the responsibility to teach our children shouldn’t be a governmental responsibility.

It should be a responsibility that is entrusted to people who are leaders in your community, those, whether they be church people, whether they are just positive people from the community that reflects where that kid is. And I believe that although our public school system, I believe it means well, but I believe even our public school system today is antiquated as it relates to its educational endeavors. We are no longer an assembly line nation.

We’re no longer a manufacturing nation. Like we are in the age of technology. We’re in the age of AI, right?

And are we, do we have an educational model that is a requisite for the future for our children to be global collaborators or global competitors in a global economy? And I don’t think our current educational system does that. I’ll say another piece as it relates to character development and formation, I don’t think it’s wise to take for our kids to not be engaging the skill and the necessity of parenting.

For instance, in our K-12 education, I believe that in a classroom, we need to lower the teacher to student ratio. And if you can’t lower the amount of kids, I think that you put another adult in there that represents parenting, where you can have someone in there who is customizing the space and, excuse me, curating the space and customizing the opportunity. Each kid learns differently.

Who was in the classroom studying the kid to see how the kid learns best? And so I think if we really want to change education and change the formation of our children moving forward, we need to do it the same way we would as it relates to how we wear this suit right now. We customize it based off of our preference and what we like.

Kids need that same opportunity, 100%.

Nathan Sanders: So my last question to you, because we try to keep these podcast episodes short, this podcast series and a lot of my work, broadly speaking, nationally, is trying to communicate to pastors and other leaders in the community who really want a faith-based education model. Educating those folks on what that is, what are education models other than me going to a public or private school, and then how to get started with that. So what would be your advice as someone who’s been in this space for a few years now to those folks looking to get into this?

Maybe there’s an information barrier or a money barrier. What would be your advice to those folks?

Joshua Robertson: I think number one, you have to bloom where you’re planted. And so you have to take what’s in your hand and do something. And I think that whatever that something is, there is something that you can do that is within your capacity today.

Another thing is, shameless plug, my organization is more than willing to help steer you in the right direction. You can reach us at bpue.org, Black Pastors United for Education, bpue.org, on all of our social media. We’re on YouTube, we’re on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.

We’d be more than willing to help you and to guide you in whatever way that needs to be. And I believe resources come to visionaries who have integrity. And so I believe in the principle of scaling into capacity.

So start where you are. And as you are faithful over those few things, you know, the scripture says he’ll make you ruler over many. So I think it is, you know, all of this started with me with one lady from my church who lost her job and a group of kids who parents were calling the school, excuse me, parents were calling the church while the kids were enrolled in cyber school because of the pandemic.

And we answered the call at the level that we could. It was one person from our church, one lady from our church, and it was six students from the community, right? Now we have five different locations in Pennsylvania.

So you start where you are and you scale into capacity. And I believe that if you use that as a somewhat of a rubric or a mentality as you go about it, then you don’t mind humble beginnings. And so even the Bible says, do not despise the day of humble beginnings.

Start where you are.

Nathan Sanders: Love it. Well, Pastor Josh, thank you. Thank you for your ministry.

Thank you for your time and your stories. God bless you. And hopefully I can have you back sooner than later.

Joshua Robertson: Absolutely. I look forward to it. Thank you.