In 1969 a group of leaders in Christian education from Washington State formed a committee to explore starting a college with an emphasis on preparing teachers for Christian schools in the Pacific Northwest.  The following year this committee incorporated as Alta Vista College and Al Greene (co-founder of Bellevue Christian School) became its director.  Lacking the funds to establish a four-year college, Al Greene devoted his time to teaching undergraduate & graduate courses and seminars & workshops often in partnership with an area college.  The focus of Alta Vista College under Al Greene’s leadership was on combating the tendency in many Christian schools to separate education into two separate arenas—the neutral, public arena in which all people participate, supposedly without religious bias, and the spiritual arena in which people live out of their religious convictions.  This model of reality often led Christian education into a curricular model of teaching neutral, and often fragmented, subjects with a religious and often moralistic application.  Al Greene through his teaching and writing introduced many educators to a philosophical model of curriculum which accounted for each aspect of creation being unique and yet the fundamental unity of all of these aspects throughout creation.  The first twenty years of Alta Vista College witnessed a growing number of educational leaders in Christian education throughout the U.S. and Canada working (often together) to create a distinctly Christian curricular model and to produce educational materials to implement that model in the classroom.

During Al Greene’s tenure as director of Alta Vista College, many Christian educators started seeing that there was not only a need for a Biblically-based curricular model but a need for Christian educators to examine all the components of the educational process—instruction, assessment, organizational structures, architectural design of an educational facility and the designing process for generating goals for Christian education.  When Al Greene retired as director of Alta Vista College in 1992 there were many exciting developments in Christian education not only in North America but now throughout the world.  Doors of opportunity opened for Alta Vista both domestically and internationally.  Because most of Alta Vista’s academic work is now done through other colleges and universities, “college” gradually disappeared from its title.  With added staff & board members and increased networking among Christian educators & educational organizations, Alta Vista is helping lead the way in exploring how Christians (in Christian and public schools) should shape all aspects of the educational process and produce an international community of Christians who will challenge the troubling spirits of our age and turn the world upside down by bringing redemptive healing to a broken world.