History Of The Centre
Christians Advancing Transformational Education (the CATE Centre) grew out of a meeting held in the West Sussex town of Horsham in October 2016. The twelve participants agreed to work together to further the cause of transformational education. Backgrounds and interests differed, but they all shared a conviction that God was using education in a new and unusual way to build His church. This meant there was an exciting door of opportunity open to participate in what God was doing.
The vision that gripped the group was one of transformation in which individuals and communities were holistically changed by a type of education that impacted the heart, mind, and will of the individual. Unlike expressions of Christian education which promote behavioral indicators of code conformity, those who gathered in Horsham felt the key to effective, God-honoring Christian education was a focus on inner transformation.
Another characteristic of the founding group was that most were already actively involved in providing “transformational education services” through TeachBeyond Ltd., a Christian international organization founded in 1954 with the expressed purpose today of offering this type of transformational education. The gathered group wished to find ways to help TeachBeyond and other like-minded organizations and individuals clarify the meaning and expression of transformational education while seeing its global impact expand and deepen.
TeachBeyond responded favourably to a request from the original group to have TeachBeyond sponsor the CATE Centre. It also agreed to position the CATE Centre as operationally independent with a mandate to serve an evangelically ecumenical Christian community. Today TeachBeyond continues to sponsor the CATE Centre through financial grants and logistical support while encouraging it to partner widely as a free and open society committed to advancing transformational education.
Since the fall meeting in 2016 the CATE Centre has continued to meet once a year to review developments in transformational education and to plan activities for the new year. In 2019 the CATE Centre moved to establish a membership protocol and to designate itself as a society with a formal structure. It also adopted a strategy to expand its global support for transformational education through the creation of regional chapters of the CATE Centre.