A Season for Change

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Eccl. 3:1

It was more than 25 seasons ago that Roxanne and I embarked on our journey to home school our three young sons. The year was 1983. Our oldest two sons had just completed their 2nd grade and 1st grade school year at a Christian school in our community. Our third son would be entering kindergarten in the fall. Finances were tight. Paying tuition for two children at a Christian day school was difficult enough. Now we would be adding a third. How we would manage became an earnest matter for prayer.

I don’t believe anything happens by chance. So, as God would have it, our family had an outdoor barbeque with another Christian family we knew during that summer of 1983. As the kids played, the adults conversed. As we shared our concern about how we would be able to afford Christian day school for three children in the fall, they mentioned they planned to begin home schooling that fall, something we had never heard of before that moment. As they described what they knew about it to us, our interest immediately peaked. With little information and almost no resources available at the time, we began our home school journey that Fall.

Our home school adventure soon became terrifying when a letter from our Intermediate School District attendance officer informed us that our children were truant and could be taken from us if we didn’t immediately enroll them in a public or private school. We scrambled to gather whatever information we could that would support our right to home school our children for the meeting the truant officer had scheduled with us to “discuss” our children’s truancy. Armed only with a court decision that permitted another family to home school in Michigan a few years earlier, we met with the attendance officer on the appointed day. To our dismay, she also produced a court decision that denied a different family the right to home school. It was a stalemate. Now what? After advising her that it was our intention to continue home schooling we were told our case would be referred to the district attorney whose decision it would be on whether or not to prosecute. So we went home, continued to home school our boys, and waited, expecting the police to show up on our doorstep and arrest us each and every day.

Then something unexpected happened. Instead of a visit from the police we began getting phone calls and letters, lots of them, from other home schoolers who had also gotten threatening letters. They wanted to know what we said and how they should respond. As we communicated and corresponded with everyone we began to realize that home schooling was indeed a growing phenomenon and that we weren’t alone. It became clear that we needed to, as Benjamin Franklin so aptly said, “all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Thus, in the spring of 1984 we held our first home school convention and formally began the ministry of INCH (Information Network for Christian Homes).

From those early days when people first began contacting us we felt God leading us into the ministry of serving the home school community. Many families felt alienated from their local church and ostracized by their extended family. Oftentimes, family members, someone in their church or the Christian school their children had previously attended reported many families to school authorities. The help and support INCH provided helped people cope and provided them courage to continue home schooling their children realizing they were part of something God was doing and that they weren’t alone.

Our desire to help became our mission: “to serve families interested or involved in home education by providing the information, resources and encouragement needed to teach their children at home in Michigan, and to work to ensure the continued freedom to do so.”
Much has changed in the 25 years since INCH was established. Our family grew from three to five children when we adopted our two youngest from Russia in 1998. Home schooling has boomed both nationally and internationally. It has become legal to home school in one form or another in all 50 states in America. Children have graduated from their home school program and have successfully entered colleges and universities, the military, trade schools, successful careers, and into adulthood and marriage. Some former home schoolers are now home schooling their children.

And so it is with both joy and sadness that Roxanne and I are announcing another change. It is time for us to pass the mantle of leadership on to others. We are joyful that we leave with home schooling flourishing in Michigan and that we are leaving INCH in the very capable hands of Mike and Kim Winter, founders and leaders of the C.H.E.S.S. home school support group in Lansing. We are sad because we will miss the frequent communication we have enjoyed with so many people from every corner of the state for so many years. But as we are reminded, “to every thing there is a season”, and we believe God is leading us to draw our season of leadership and service to the home school community in Michigan to a close.

Though we have been in the process of transition for many months, and will continue to do so, Mike and Kim have officially assumed all responsibilities and activities for INCH. Plans are underway for the 26th annual Michigan Home Education Convention and I’m sure many new and exciting improvements lay ahead for INCH.

It has been our joy and pleasure to serve home schoolers in Michigan and elsewhere for so many years. We eagerly await God’s leading as to how we might best serve Him in the future.

Best wishes and God bless you and your family,
Dennis & Roxanne Smith