Through online education model, churches can once again play a central role in educating our nation’s youth

Note: Liberty University subject-matter experts are available for interviews on this news story proposal, and the university has also made an editorial available for publishing.

Parental rights and the state of our nation’s education system remain at the forefront of public debate, and they are causing more Christian families to seek out faith-based alternatives.

A 2025 Pew Research Center analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data found that 83% of homeschooling parents cited concerns about the school environment — safety, drugs, negative peer pressure — as a driving reason for their choice, and 53% said they wanted to provide religious instruction their child wasn’t getting elsewhere. Conservative Christian schools now make up nearly 12% of the nation’s K-12 private school options, according to NCES’s Private School Universe Survey.

Parents value lessons taught from a biblical worldview, lessons that align with the teachings at home and their local church, so their children can learn about this fascinating world God created as they grow in their faith.

The concept of churches taking an active role in educating our youth is not new. In many of our country’s earliest towns, the church building was the schoolhouse. The building doubled as a school not only out of necessity but also because faith was so intwined with the way of life that the two could not be imagined separate. Children learned to read and worship in the same room, discipled by the same community.

Many churches today operate their own private schools, but for some, the high operational costs, including paying quality staff, simply aren’t in the budget, even if the church has ample space for a school.

Walk through most churches on a Tuesday afternoon and you’ll find the same thing: rows of empty classrooms. Sunday School rooms, fellowship halls, gyms — spaces filled with life for an hour or two a week and dormant the rest of the time. For a growing number of churches, that’s starting to change.

Liberty University, a pioneer in distance learning and a leader in online education today, offers a K-12 program that, in some ways, returns to the historic model where churches are true partners in education. Through the Liberty University Online Academy (LUOA) Affiliate Program, churches have opened a K-12 affiliate school (sometimes called a “learning center,” “pod,” or “co-op academy”) right inside their own walls with minimal overhead. Because LUOA supplies the teachers, curriculum, and grading, a church doesn’t need certified staff, a large budget, or new construction to get started — just a point of contact to handle enrollment, a facilitator or two, and a room with reliable Wi-Fi. Affiliate schools have launched with as few as 10 students.

Through the program, congregations are transforming underutilized classrooms, fellowship halls, and other church facilities into supervised weekday learning spaces, and parents are afforded the assurance that their children are receiving rigorous academic instruction within a Christ-centered environment.

This year, Liberty University Online Academy surpassed 20,000 students enrolled from all 50 states and more than 100 countries. The program saw a 240% increase in applications during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

>> To schedule interviews about this innovative model that is benefitting churches and families, email news@liberty.edu.