Bishop McManus Academy was founded in 1975 on a desire to provide the congregation of City Church—then Lake Forest Church of God—and other interested parties with the opportunity of educating their children totally – in body, mind, and spirit – engraving the Word of God on their hearts (Deut. 6:6). Our philosophy centers on Jesus Christ as the focal point of all teaching and learning. Because we believe the Bible is the infallible, divine Word of God, we desire that students be conformed into the image of Jesus (Rom. 8:9), that they learn to think like Him and to live the whole of their life according to biblical perspectives and principles.
Bishop McManus Academy is a “discipleship” school. This means BMA sees its purpose to be complementing and supplementing to what is going on in the Christian home.  Therefore education, as the process of teaching and learning, occurs most effectively when instructors, students and their parents are properly related to God and each other through Christ.  The school’s role is to impress each student with the knowledge that God is the source of all subjects in the curriculum (Col. 1:17; Col. 17; II Cor. 8:6). Accordingly, teachers implement biblical principles into their classroom instruction and discipline.  Through this, we are obeying the imperatives of loving the Lord with our total being, and teaching the next generation to do the same (Deut. 6:5-7).
BMA sees education as a succession of the instruction and internal discipline based upon the teachings and principles found in the Bible, and defines education in the following terms:
Education is: (1) to shed light on the student’s academic comprehension and to expose his mind to justice, truth, and ownership of property (right of possessing, enjoying, or disposing of a thing inherent or natural); (2) to set free the mind so that the student will reason based upon the criteria of truth set forth in the Word of God; (3) to mold the student’s behavior so that the student may pursue the course of life in which Jesus Christ has chosen for him/her and, thus, be a beneficial and valuable asset to society.