Institute Admissions Handbook (2024-2025)

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Final Things

Crisis/Cult Communications

Brief: There is a website that calls GOD International a cult and has hateful, untrue things about us. We’ve contacted the makers of the site, lawyers, and squarespace trying to get the site down, unsuccessfully. The makers were very careful to make it something they can get away with legally and to hurt us on google search engines. This leads to some unfortunate and difficult communications at times.

I (Laurie), try to take on these communications as best as I can. But often people think it’s more authoritative to hear from the students/someone at a lower level, and not someone for whom “this is their job.” For that reason, you need to be equipped with some basics.

Reflect:

2 Timothy 2: 1b-5 I give you this charge: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist,discharge all the duties of your ministry.

ADD LINK TO CULT SITE LETTER

Questions

Are you guys a cult?

Nope. We’re literally doing the opposite work, equipping you to learn the Bible for yourself so that you can know the Lord for yourself. There’s no secret knowledge here. Just God’s Word.

We would never pass through our accreditation channels if there was anything suspicious happening here.

The internet is not fair, fake news travels faster than real, and persecution against Christians is real.

Did your President get arrested?

A few years ago, yes, in a case that has since been dismissed for being flawed and determined by the judge that it can’t be re-opened. I can send you an article if you’d like more information on this.

How did that happen?

We’re a unique community. We’re not solely a college, but a Christian community who lives in the same neighborhood, works together on mission in Nashville and around the world, and has several connected businesses. Unfortunately, there were some families from our K-12 school, many of whom have been influenced by the ex-vangelical movement, who misunderstood who we are and as a result, started a big social media smear campaign including a terrible website and wasted a lot of taxpayers dollars on an investigation. Many of those who testify on that website were people who were students for six months or less, some of whom were dismissed for immoral behavior, and others who have told people in other settings that they lied on the site.

The good news is, our school, ministry, and all related businesses have been vetted by every part of the government of Tennessee, in addition to our accreditors, and none of them have found anything amiss.

Any other questions, you can really just testify to your experience.

If people have pressing issues, or they want their parents to talk to you, you can refer them to me (Laurie). Your testimony serves as a baseline for whatever other conversations need to happen, so don’t be scared or alarmed, be yourself, and dismiss things as the bogus claims they are.

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