I just watched some of the Honor Academy recruiting videos on YouTube. They are really quite convincing. I was watching the first one and started thinking, “Wow, this looks awesome! I would totally do this if I was a teen.”
I AM NOT KIDDING. Those were my actual thoughts.
If I felt that way and I have already been through hell because of it, then naïve teenagers who are hungry for the Lord hardly have a chance!
I tell you this because I have had many parents and potential interns contact me over the past few months. From the outside, the Honor Academy looks awesome. But they’ve read some of the blog, and they want to know the truth.
Is the Honor Academy a place where they will grow spiritually? It is safe? What will life be like there? How will it help/hurt them in their adult life?
If you are a former intern or parent of an intern, I’d like you to share your perspective in the comments.
What do you wish you had known before going to the Honor Academy?
At the HA, do you think its possible to “eat the meat and spit out the bones?”
This is a post I will send future interns and parents that contact me, so please feel free to share at length in the comments.
26 comments:
I think for a lot of people they need to know that the HA is a “Leadership Academy” – even though it’s advertised as an “ATF Academy” or whatever….what you see at ATFs is very deceptive. Yeah you get to visit like 2 ATFs during your intern year, but chances are you won’t even really get to see any of the event. You’re not a part of putting it together either….not unless you stay for a second year and fight your way to become a Ministry Teamer…the LOWEST of the LOW.
Even what you experience of the HA when you volunteer, go to extreme camps or go on a GE mission trip is definitely not what you will find when you join the HA. What you see is NOT what you get.
I don’t think it’s possible to “eat the meat and spit out the bones” either. I mean, your entire year pretty much is spent around people that are outwardly (maybe not inwardly) devoted to Teen Mania and live in fear of saying anything otherwise. And the more time you spend with someone, the more like them you become. For me it HAD to be God that shook me out of what I was a part of and saw the truth. I mean, you can ignore God in it….many people did out of fear of rejection from their friends and family and the internship.
I can only liken it to a spiritual holocaust. There is a remnant that will survive, but most won’t.
January 21, 2010 7:06 AM
Anonymous said…
wow Ex-Intern–well said–esp. your last three sentences.
January 21, 2010 9:08 AM
D said…
I find the whole caste system very troubling. Why is being a “Ministry Teamer” (whatever that is) the “lowest of the low”?
January 21, 2010 11:38 AM
Anonymous said…
Funny, back in my day it was all I wanted to be!
Phil
January 21, 2010 11:57 AM
Ex-Intern Aug 07 said…
Ah, sorry I should have clarified!
Ministry Team are the guys that actually put on the ATF events. They set up and take everything down after, and they also take part in the dramas too.
For some reason, because of the amount of time they spend off campus they’re deemed “less holy” than the rest of the internship. same rumors went for CCM too because they’re allowed to listen to and watch secular media.
Personally I love the CCM guys and the Ministry Team guys – most of my Teen Mania friends that I still have are from both departments! And I also don’t believe the “lowest of the low” thing, it was just sarcasm. 🙂
January 21, 2010 12:07 PM
h. said…
1.) Along with Ex-Intern 07, I feel like the Honor Academy is marketed all wrong [or perhaps it’s just that teens lack the discernment to see the inherent flaws from the beginning]. I ended up an intern after a mission trip with GE, and coming from a non-church background, i was desperate for guidance and leadership that was going to help me grow closer to God, and know how to better serve Him. The idea of being a “leader” was appealing to me, as I had been in leadership positions often, but that wasn’t necessarily my whole heart behind going–although as Ex-Intern stated, it really should be called a “Leadership Academy” more than anything else. What followed was two years of little more than behavior modification using incredibly control techniques, threats, punishment, intimidation, and rewards for those interns who complied to the “standards”. I got swept right up into the fold, never really questioning anything but not recognizing that what i was being taught was pure religion. thinking back, there are very few classes that we took that spoke at all directly about actual theology–[at least in my time there]–but were more geared towards making sure that we looked, spoke, and acted the part of the “model intern”–character development, world missions, worldview, etc. We learned how to act, how to serve, and how to defend the faith…and yet the people in charge of our actual spiritual development [the Core Advisors] were only a year ahead of us in the program, and were just as indoctrinated and naive as we were [sometimes moreso]. My biggest struggle post-TM has been re-learning who Christ is, as my understanding of Him has been reduced to a god [yes, little ‘g’ god] who is interested only in what I can do for HIM. What has followed is an internal struggle to believe in His goodness, His faithfulness…and to destroy my religious pride that said “i can earn my own salvation” [per GE trips and the honor code and marking my accountability chart and…on and on and on] and must instead say “i am NOT RIGHTEOUS. only YOU are.”
we are not made holy because of what we do, or behaviors that we change. instead, we are JUSTIFIED by FAITH, and as a result are REGENERATE…as interns we were not taught that we were new creations [it was assumed we knew]–and our egos were fed about how fantastic we were, and yet very few [if any of us] actually had any real understanding of what Christ did for us on the cross, and in turn what that meant for our lives. we were young, naive…and had not a clue how to think critically or filter the things we were being taught, let alone to realize that those things were PARTIAL truths–RELIGIOUS truths–and that there was more to the story than we were being told.
January 21, 2010 12:37 PM
h. said…
[sorry, my response was so long i had to make it two posts!!]
2.) I want to say yes to this question, if only because i sit here today typing all of this out as one of those who has begun the process of eating the meat and spitting out the bones. but if i were honest with myself, i would say no–it’s not. in some cases i think not growing up in a christian home helped me, because i’ve been sorting out the Truth on my own for years–but most of my TM friends did not have my life experience,and had mom&dad (rightly so) telling them the Truth for years, and they never really learned to think it through themselves. The HA experience screwed with a lot of people’s heads, but instead of thinking through the “this may not be my fault” process, many of them get stuck in two places: either it is ALL their fault, and the shame becomes so horrific they never move past it or get stuck in a life of sin, or they return back to TM or programs like it because they are incapable of functioning in an environment that isn’t as tightly controlled. because it’s really a 24/7/nearly 365 experience, it’s near impossible to seperate the “meat from the bones” unless you’re out of the program, and even then it’s EXTREMELY difficult. unlike say, an ATF–where it’s only a weekend long–the HA is a LIFESTYLE…and the “deprogramming”, if it even happens, is a lengthy, messy, painful process.
[a quick, unrelated note about the Ministry Team (i have to say it, i was an MTer, haha)–we weren’t liked because they weren’t able to control us. we were messy, broken sinners who realized that fact and did our best to love one another and love Jesus. we still followed the rules laid out for us–but we weren’t “model interns” and didn’t ask how high when the HA said jump–we started to ask “why?” instead. it’s like it’s been said before–if you questioned the almighty-HA, you were scorned…and that was definitely the experience of the Ministry Team.]
January 21, 2010 12:42 PM
Ben said…
true story: i had no idea that it was an internship until i had been on campus for at least a week.
January 21, 2010 1:01 PM
Alum2000 said…
Just to give you a little context of my pre-HA attitude, I’ll start off by saying that I loved TM up until I went to the HA. I went to 3 ATF’s and 4 mission trips and loved those experiences. I grew up in a Christian home and was eager to jump right in. However, once I started attending the HA, things changed.
I think “hype” is a good word to use here – I felt like a lot of my year at the HA was leadership filling us up with a bunch of me-centered hype and never showing us how to live outside the “bubble”. Most everything we learned was “theory” and when it came time to “practice” outside the HA, I actually became depressed because 1) I never felt like I was good enough (shame brought on by constantly being judged at the HA) 2)I couldn’t figure out how to negotiate the things the HA had taught me with the world around me. I lived in constant fear of somehow messing up and God not approving of me – this is not something I had ever felt before going to the HA by the way. Making decisions became incredibly difficult because I was always afraid I would not be following God’s will and I would be punished for making the wrong decision.
Since the HA, I have come to realize that the HA did teach me a few things 1) How to be organized 🙂 2) How to squeeze as much into one day as possible for fear of not measuring up 3) How to hide the person I really am in order to look good on the outside (I got really good at this). Obviously, none of this has to do with what TM states the HA is designed for or with truly growing closer to God. I sometimes wonder if I would have learned the same things if I had just gone into the military for a year and might not have left so messed up. Who knows.
H. is right, it takes years to recover from an environment such as this (this year will be 10 yrs for me!) and it’s been a continual process that God has taken me through to relearn who He is and His grace. I will say that I have grown closer to God as a result of the struggles I’ve had since going to the HA (depression, an eating disorder – triggered by the overemphasis on “disciplining your body” at the HA, insecurities, fear of/bitterness toward the Church and Christians) however, if I could spare anyone from learning in this way, I would…I guess that’s why I post to this blog.
January 21, 2010 5:59 PM
Natalie said…
Hmm. I think the biggest problem with the Honor Academy is they don’t point people towards God they point people towards leaders and tell the interns to be like the leaders because they’re like Jesus. Instead of pointing them to be like Jesus themselves.
January 21, 2010 6:06 PM
Lisa said…
Well said, Natalie!!
January 21, 2010 8:13 PM
Curious George said…
Alum 2000, I couldn’t agree more! The 2 points you mentioned were always my 2 biggest beefs with the program well before I found out I wasn’t the only one who had issues with their time at the Honor Academy. Those are GREAT points to know for anyone considering the HA.
May this vindicate me in someway for the people I wholeheartedly recommended the Honor Academy to.
You are raised in a culture which is entirely different from reality and from everything you’ve ever known. You eat, sleep and drink this different reality and become accustomed to it. You basically lose touch with most everyone you knew before arriving because you have little free time and are states away. As a result you lose touch with the world around you since they are your only outside connection.
Then 4 days before you leave they start to debrief you. As a result of these few days in class, they expect you to be prepared to amalgamate back into a society you no longer know much about, and have had very little contact with for a year. Beyond that, you are probably very distant from your friends since you have barely talked and you now have a new, frightening ideology that many are uncomfortable with. None of your peers can relate to your experience and you feel more distant. You attempt to put into practice the things you learned at the HA only to realize that they don’t work because the world isn’t as black and white as you were taught. Your piles of HA notes don’t help because they still give you the same answers that don’t line up with reality. You attempt to reach back to those still at the HA for guidance on how to readdress these life issues. Due to their extremely busy schedule, you can rarely get ahold of anyone. If you do get ahold of them, they have the same cookie cutter responses which don’t compute and they can’t relate to what life is like for you outside the HA.
Like many abusive relationships, you still have this hope that it’ll get better. You are unable to see the HA for what it really was, because you still have some form of love for it. You justify the abuse or convince yourself that it wasn’t really abuse. Or sadly, you think there’s something wrong with you because you just can’t get it.
January 22, 2010 11:40 AM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
George, that almost sounds like a trailer to some manner of domestic horror movie. Kinda gets me thinking… “what if?”… 😛
January 22, 2010 12:14 PM
Becky said…
My stepdaughter is at HA now. Her father and I never wanted her to go simply because there was so much we COULDN’T find out about it. None of the “information” they give you on the website, etc. actually tells you anything about the program. The lack of transparency terrified us, but she went anyway. Therefore, as a parent, I wish we had known ANYTHING about HA before she went. I’m no less terrified now that she is so happy there, because I think she likes it because she doesn’t have to figure out how to be herself. I try to gently contradict some of the things she says (like the other day, her Facebook status was “pain is weakness leaving the body” and I made some points about how it sometimes can be a good thing but other times means something is wrong and should be changed) so that she is getting more than one perspective while she’s there. This hasn’t really answered the questions very well, but it’s what came out when I started to type.
January 22, 2010 12:53 PM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
Ma’am, I don’t know if this helps at all, but I apologize for what you’re going through.
I myself returned to the HA (I went for the first year, came back for four months, then went back for a second year), largely against my parents’ wishes. Their objections were different, of course, but I was so caught up in “OH MAN I HAFTA CHANGE THE WORLD BY GOING BACK” that I disregarded any wisdom they had as “the enemy trying to distract me”.
So, coming from that “EVERYTHING MY PARENTS SAY IS WROOOONNGG” mentality, I think I can understand how hard it might be to talk with her through what she’s learning. I found that, really, the only thing that could pull me away from TM was to be financially dismissed.
I only wish that I would have listened to my parents before all that had to happen… again, I don’t know if my story helps you at all, but if it does, then please share with her and let her know how much I regret that I didn’t listen to the covering that the Lord had put over me. I wish I could just go there and tell her myself, but alas.
Thank you for caring so much about your daughter. It’s encouraging, really. 🙂
January 22, 2010 1:26 PM
Ex-Intern Aug 07 said…
Miss Becky, if there’s any advice I can give you right now, it would be to pull your daughter out of the HA. Honestly, I mean that. You can call the HA all you want, you’ll never get any kind of true response from any of the leadership (my parents didn’t!). And if you mention this site I can tell you that they will tell you that we’re all bitter and unforgiving e.t.c.
Your daughter will probably fight against you, disobey you, and be really mad at you if you pull her out. If you pull her out then her friends there and the organisation are most likely going to shun you and your family. But honestly it’s for her own spiritual good. She’s being kept so busy that she’s not having any time to truly seek the Lord, or to read up in the Word the things that she’s being taught. The sooner you pull her out, the easier it might be for her to heal from Teen Mania (even if she doesn’t currently realise that it’s damaging her).
I loved Teen Mania and I was convinced (when I started the HA) that I would be there forever. Thank God that He opened my eyes to see what was really going on, and all the false teaching that was being given!
January 22, 2010 2:28 PM
Recovering Alumni said…
Ex-Intern – If I was a parent, I would definitely want to pull my child out…but I do question if that would lead to the desired results? Part of me thinks that you have to hit rock bottom yourself before you can really see the lies. Its possible that pulling someone out before they are ready will only entrench them further in their beliefs and make them antagonistic towards you…Not wholeheartedly disagreeing with you, just proposing other options.
January 22, 2010 2:58 PM
Becky said…
Thanks, folks, for all your support. We have not done anything to truly prevent her from going to/staying at HA for a few reasons. One is that her mother does not seem to have a problem with the program, so her father (my husband)would be fighting his ex-wife as well as his daughter. Also, we know that if we forbade her from attending, she would always think that her life turned out X way because of what we forced her to do; she would always be able to blame us if things didn’t go right. We fear that if we forced her out, she would always idolize the program. We will, therefore, continue to love her and gently provide a lifeline. We want her to know that we are always safe because we will let her fall if she wants to, but we will also help her to bandage her wounds. We discussed our feelings about the program before she left, but she still felt God was calling her there. So I just pray that He was and that it means she is there to learn that she will have to think for herself because she can’t rely on other people to tell her what’s right. I pray that it will teach her that she can’t keep avoiding real life and letting other people decide what’s right and wrong. And we can’t help her learn that if we decide that she is not allowed to be there. Every bird falls before it learns to soar. And all you can do is let her drop and just try to cushion the fall some.
January 22, 2010 3:15 PM
Alum2000 said…
Becky – it sounds like you are a wonderful parent. Your daughter is lucky to have people like you and your husband in her life. It may be years before she finally realizes the impact this experience has had on her, and she may be hard to convince of anything else in the mean time, but it’s encouraging to me to know that she has loving people in her life to help her when the time comes – keep it up!
January 22, 2010 3:38 PM
Ex-Intern Aug 07 said…
RA – I see your point. I didn’t think of that!
Miss Becky – You know what is best for her 🙂 and i’m with Alum2000, your daughter is lucky to have you and your husband in her life. I’ll be praying for you both, and for your daughter too!
January 22, 2010 5:35 PM
Curious George said…
Nunquam, if you’ll produce the movie I’ll shoot it. I’m starting the script right now 😉
Becky, you sound like a great parent. May you continue to live in wisdom and be able to gently urge her if you notice her changing in a negative manner. I agree with you and many of the others here. She is an adult and needs to make her own choices and mistakes. One of the hardest things anyone will ever have to do is to stand by and watch as their loved ones make mistakes and learn things the hard way. So much pain and heartache could be avoided, but sometimes its the only way to truly show love and to teach. I encourage you to continue to just be a constant and to be an encouragement if she falls. A loved one’s words come back to one’s mind while in recovery and speak much louder than they ever did when they were first said. I hope wholeheartedly that she comes out unscathed and with a right state of mind. Peace and love to you as you continue your journey with her.
January 23, 2010 2:47 AM
Eric P. said…
Outsider opinion here. I encourage everybody (and not just HA people) to read on the subject of Spiritual Abuse. One comprehensive internet resource on the subject is http://pureprovender.blogspot.com/; there are some articles on my own website as well. All the reports I’ve heard about the Honor Academy, positive as well as negative, describe this pattern exactly. It is abusive behavior, done in the name of God, with long-lasting emotional repercussions.
Then read what the Bible says about grace. Read Ephesians, Colossians, Romans, the Gospel of John. Read Ezekiel 34, Romans 8, 1 John.
In the words of the old song, “One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn’t belong.” Or in the words of the older song, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking stand.”
P.S. If you guys want a soundtrack for your movie, I’m all in.
January 23, 2010 11:05 AM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
Sounds like a plan, George 😉
Eric, two things: one, you’re hired. 😛 Second, I was actually wanting to write a paper on spiritual abuse for my Psychology class, so I’ll be using these blogs for reference. Be warned, haha.
January 23, 2010 6:01 PM
Ex-Intern Aug 07 said…
Ooh ooh! Can I be in the movie? 😀 hehehe!
January 23, 2010 6:47 PM
Anonymous said…
Does anybody see the hypocricy here?
“I only wish that I would have listened to my parents before all that had to happen…”
And they tell you to submit unquestioningly to your authorities…Who is the greater authority over a child, the parents, or the leader of some cult-like program? Why didn’t Dave Hasz ever teach his interns to submit to their parents, even when we don’t agree with their decisions?
February 12, 2010 7:28 AM
Anonymous said…
I think a movie is a FANTASTIC idea. You could do a documentary. Get the word out.
February 12, 2010 7:29 AM