A recent email from the CSU Board of Trustees to former employees provides an opportunity to update BBS/BBCST/CSU stakeholders on significant developments since the school abruptly closed the doors on July 1, 2024. There’s good news for former employees, but nagging questions remain for concerned stakeholders.
Theological Education
Clarks Summit University One Year Later
What’s been happening with Clarks Summit University since the school’s abrupt closure a year ago? There’s news about the campus and the former employees and students. Have we learned anything that might prevent similar debacles in the future? We’ll summarize the situation and conclude with thoughts on the future of Christian higher education.
Pastoral Concern Letter Sent to Cornerstone University
In this post we discuss the delivery of the letter of pastoral concern by USPS to the CU Board of Trustees. We talk about who signed the letter and why others didn’t. We also reflect briefly on the unpleasant yet necessary role we have played in this unsavory drama.
A Smear Campaign against Cornerstone University or DARVO?
A recent video interview provides information that enables us to speak directly to CU president Gerson Moreno-Riaño’s self-understanding and how it has led to the tumultuous events that have hurt so many CU personnel—administrators, faculty, staff, and students alike. GMR speaks of himself as a courageous and fearless leader, just like Joshua (Joshua 1:9). There is a vicious smear campaign against him, yet he responds to his enemies like King David did in the Psalms, by praying for protection. He even goes so far as to compare himself to Jesus, who was silent before his accusers during his passion. Really? Does the CU Board of Trustees support this narrative?
Sign on to a Pastoral Letter to the Cornerstone University Board of Trustees
It’s business as usual at Cornerstone University. Fall has arrived. New students have come; old students have returned. People whizzing by campus on the East Beltline don’t notice anything different. They don’t know about the eight faculty members who were summoned to video conferences and summarily fired last summer, despite having signed contracts in their hands. They don’t know that this was only the most recent and egregious example of administrative malpractice that values pragmatic program makeovers more than people made in the image of God.
We’re told to pray for the school, and of course we should. But it’s time to do more than pray.
Cancelled by Cornerstone (and other news from the East Beltline)
I have well-meaning Christian friends from outside the Cornerstone orbit who advise me to get off this negative topic. I’m inclined to take their advice, but then I meet a Cornerstone person at a church event, or at the grocery store, or I get an email from an alumnus/a. It’s uncanny how they all say the same thing, “Keep on writing about the school, someone has to tell the sad story.” So here I go again.