Jeremy: well, there’s more. When I got to the ministry and started leading their marketing strategy department (the 9th person in 4 years), one of my main tasks was to “git rid of Recovering Alumni” on the internet from an SEO and digital PR standpoint. And, we did just that…built the systems and content necessary to wage an SEO war with RA. And we were largely successful. By the end of about 6 months of effort, we had knocked most of RA content to the second page of Google under “honor academy” and convinced google not to allow them to run AdWords under the keyword “honor academy”…in the process of combating RA, I was required (like any PR person worth their salt) to research the basis of the content we were trying to combat. Sadly I was unable to defend much of the negative because it actually happened. But that was my job, so I continued to do my job. but now, since no one is left (they like to fire people who come from the corporate world to impact TMMs success as “not a good fit”) to continue this, all that work is probably lost…but they can sleep in the bed they made for all I care.
Jeremy: yea, Mind Over Mania was a horrible piece of “journalism”, but it did at least rekindle the conversation in a very public way – a conversation that must be had.
Alumnus 2: This is an interesting thread (to say the least). I have a lot of thoughts…say what you will about RA but from what I saw, she confronted TMM and was told that they were going to investigate her claims, then they basically said – sorry – no investigation and immediately published their response website. If I had been hurt, confronted who I perceive to be my abuser, been led to believe that my voice was being heard (which would bring amazing healing) only to be dismissed and find that a website had been posted attempting to discredit my hurt…Well, I’d be more than upset.
Jeremy: they did “investigate” their claims…but they did so without an objective eye and with a pre-determined vision of it’s outcome and that predetermined vision of the outcome of the “investigation” was that TMM needs to listen to them, coddle them a bit so they feel heard and then dismiss all the issues that came to light with a tacit apology rather than critically looking internally at the issues and addressing them with humility and an awareness that they have some level of responsibility in the results the ministry had on these people. Then, in true TMM bad PR form, they reacted (against a lot of advice to the contrary) and developed the recoveringalumnirepsonse.com website (that has since been taken down) because RA was killing them at the intern recruitment level and causing scores of young people to back out of the internship (this last August class came in at 230 rather than the traditional 400+)…and with 42% of the intern tuition being “net excess” (basically meaning that 42% of their tuition amount was profit that can be diverted to other parts of the ministry) – that was KILLING their bottom line.
Jeremy: And, about that 42% net excess figure that I threw out, keep in mind that the amount of $ TMM spends on it’s interns per meal is less than the Texas penitentiary system spends on it’s inmates per meal. So, that puts into perspective of how valuable an intern is to the bottom line and function of the organization.
Jeremy: It’s business….keeps the lights on and the ATFs happening. ATF’s bring the missionaries for GE and the interns for the HA…they all work in tandem together. ATF is generally is consistently in the red and GE has a nice net excess as well. The margins on GE trips are well into the high teens and low to mid twenties
16 comments:
I love the % excess note in his post beyond just all the other things. It’s not the healing side of the quotes but it is an important one for others to notice.
More importantly coming at healing for hurting interns as a pr problem that just needs some visible coddling is seriously disturbing and should be for all those who were in the ministry. Why do I say that? Even if “things have changed, really” it speaks to how they handle hurts by interns even new ones. Say something happened this year even if it wasn’t by senior leadership, they would do some lip service and sweep it under the rug just like they did to all of us. As a parent if an organization did that to other people’s kids I certainly wouldn’t intrust them with mine. There are so many points to focus on here it could be ten posts but I think this shows what their actions really are. Dave’s favorite thing to teach is that “a lie is the intent to deceive”, this certainly shows that based on his own definition he and the entire ministry has been intentionally deceiving people for 25 years at this point.
Agree with TRO, so much about this post to discuss…but from me I want to say:
Let’s just state the obvious. Calling what TM/BOD did an “investigation” is like putting on your resume that you’re a CEO when in actual fact you had a lemonade stand when you were 5 and your parents were your only customers. It’s pure bullshit, there’s just no other word to describe it; a complete insult to not only everyone’s intelligence, but our humanity.
To top it off, the people they pushed under the bus are the people they once said they “loved”and “cared for” as their OWN staff and interns.
It is nice to hear Jeremy acknowledge it was a sham.
> “Sadly I was unable to defend much of the negative because it actually happened.”
Anybody considering using TM’s current “you’re just grasping at straws” stock response, please take note.
To be fair, they have corporate fasting days every other week, and they have two fasting weekends per year (at least last I heard), so that might put a dent in the overall cost of food.
Unless of course they have fasting days TO reduce said costs, which honestly wouldn’t surprise me at this point. Can’t imagine how much they would save doing that, so I guess this comment is moot. All the same, drops in the bucket?
“(The)… predetermined vision of the outcome of the “investigation” was that TMM needs to listen to them, coddle them a bit so they feel heard and then dismiss all the issues that came to light with a tacit apology rather than critically looking internally at the issues and addressing them with humility and an awareness that they have some level of responsibility in the results the ministry had on these people.”
This is what I found so unsatisfactory about our meeting with Dave Hasz. I felt like he was just trying to smooth things over—like everything would be okay if he just said the right words, regardless of the utter lack of authenticity behind those words.
I am a mental health professional who spent three years working in a men’s prison, and Dave reminded me of some of the personality-disordered inmates I used to work with. Narcissists and antisocials always think they are so much cleverer than you are that they will have no trouble pulling the wool over your eyes.
Um…. Why isnt Jeremy helping us???
I’m assuming he’s an outside source and could care less about the place and probably just wants a better job and to forget everything… But seriously. This is so freeing to hear.
Dave and Ron have been talking circles for three years. It’s so weird to think that they have litterally been lying. But quite freeing to know it.
Shiloh, I think Jeremy considers the RA crowd (us) to be going about this “process” in the wrong way (ie, maliciously). While I disagree with him, I also can’t blame him for not wanting to choose our “side”, given what he thinks of us, and stay on the outskirts of the controversy.
That being said, it _is_ nice to hear this. It can become a little frustrating when dealing with sociopaths like DH and narcissists like RL. We know what they are because we have seen it through clear-thinking bubble-less lenses, but convincing others who are either blinded by the holy glow pouring from TMM’s ass or don’t want to hear the truth can be exhausting.
Man, what’s the right way? This blog changed my life! I don’t think it was until pretty recent when it became very obvious that Teen Mania is not going to change that the blog sorta changed it’s out look from ‘I had a bad experience and I want to get over it.’ to ‘everyone had a bad experience, something wrong and it needs to stop.’
Anyways. Again, Jeremy, for what it’s worth, this was quite helpful. I’m assuming you weren’t an intern. But they really hold such a tight grip on their followers it’s quite sick. IMO- you are a really good guy and I’m so thankful you were honest.
Doug- they are clever enough to pull the wool over our eyes. That’s why they’ve been able to do it for 25 plus years…
@ Sean – really they’ve been able to pull the wool over the under-25 fundamentalist crowd. Once you have a bit of life experience and/or critical thinking skills its easier to see the lack of authenticity, narcissism and other sociopath behavior.
What surprised me most was the HUGE drop in the numbers of people attending the HA. To my knowledge, 230 is the smallest August class in over 10 years. I’m sure the economy is partly to blame for that but I think everyone who has shared their story here – whether in the blog or the comments – has had a hand in that.
I really wonder how the workload is being shared amongst such a small class….
I get why Jeremy wants to distance himself from us. As a professional, this could turn into a career killer. He has to keep a shred of respectability himself, and publicly saying negative things about a former client in the PR field could sink his company ship. To be honest, I would do the same thing. RA has the power to destroy careers and established ministries, and choke funding to celebrity pastors. To this particular culture, RA is a force to be reckoned with and even feared. Although fear was never the intent, it seems as though TM has something to be afraid of otherwise they would never have engaged as Jeremy outlined.
If there was nothing to our claims, nothing would come of this site. That being said, ask RL and DH how relevant we are to their bottom line now.
i think you are giving RA way too much credit by saying that they have the power to destroy careers and choke funding to celebrity pastors. I dont believe that for one minute
I just want to say this about the drop in numbers. I personally have been instrumental as a youth pastor in educating young people and their parents when asked about the honor academy. I have never told them not to attend but I have told them to visit this site and learn the other side of things. As a result not 1 of them has chosen to attend mainly because of good parenting decisions after knowing more than just a recruiters or encourgement reps story. I just cannot in good conscience encourage a young person to attend.
Jack Loves Jill thank you for helping kids make good decisions.
As far as how the workload is getting distributed from what I have seen lately they really push the two year program with ideas of a 1 year internship but then tracts for things like worship leaders and the like. What it seems like happens is that once the kids commit to one year they are really pushed to stay for two years even if they know they can’t afford that amount of money in truth. They even push people to stay third years just to keep enough people on/near campus to do the workload so the answer to how they manage the workload is that they keep adding years onto the internship so that they keep people there so now it’s even more dangerous because instead of most only seeing one year in the bubble they try to keep as many there as possible for as long as possible.
@That redheaded one: Do you think that’s why they’ve started adding more programs onto the internship, such as School of Worship, the new computer sciencey-one, etc.? To have built-in 2-year-(or more)-track programs to try to keep students in the internship longer?