First, I wanted to acknowledge that any article that critiques an experience, by nature, opens the door for those who feel differently to claim that the author is bitter and/or just needs to move past the experience he or she writes about. My intention in writing this article is not to vilify ATI or Bill Gothard. Instead, I want to write about my experience as an apprenticeship student and how I feel this is a scenario where ATI over-promised and under-delivered. And I, like a dissatisfied customer, write to say, “Buyer beware.”

My folks enrolled in ATI just as I was entering my junior year in high school. So unlike the younger students where one has the luxury of worrying about an issue later down the road, my future vocation was of concern to me. The importance of vocation has not been completely lost on IBLP either. In their materials on courtship, they teach that the man must have “considered how he will provide for the basic needs of [his] family, such as food, clothing, shelter, and transportation.”

At our first Knoxville conference, there were many speakers and many testimonies. Stories were told of promising young people who’d lost their faith while attending college. Stories were told about the ungodly amount of debt that one incurs in going to college. I don’t remember all the details but I do remember leaving with this conclusion as to ATI’s position on vocational training: College (even Christian college) = Evil; Apprenticeship = Godly. Naturally I had a lot of questions, but my parents and ATI dismissed them with the encouragement that “God would open doors,” because as the Scripture says, “Eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, the things God has in store for those who love Him.” I was told that I should just be patient to trust God to work everything out. So I did. . . for a time. There were additional Knoxvilles where we were told about exciting new “developments.” We were told that employers had told Bill Gothard that they didn’t care about college degrees. They just wanted young people with character. At one point, Bill Gothard told us that he had employers calling him, begging him to send them one of us apprentice students to come work for them, but that he didn’t feel any were ready.

When we heard testimonies of successful apprenticeships, they almost always involved services–which, try as hard as I might, I never seemed suited for. I can’t cook. I take lousy pictures. I worked on the construction crew while I was at the IBLP headquarters and, during that time, I cut my finger on a router blade, splashed drain cleaner in my eyes, sustained a cut above my left eye, and split my forehead open. Clearly I don’t have the spiritual gift of construction. I continued to plug away, hoping my character might outshine that of my peers so I might be picked for one of these “exciting” opportunities Bill Gothard mentioned in Knoxville. I was never picked.

A few years later, ATI launched the Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy which would train people to be lawyers. And though I’d never had any great interest in law or politics, my parents felt like this was God’s direction for my life, and I think I warmed to the idea because at the time OBCL seemed to be the only game in town for those who weren’t gifted in construction, catering, sewing, upholstery, or photography. I earned poor grades in law school because I seldom comprehended what I was reading. Later I would discover that distance learning is a terrible match for my learning style. I need the ability to ask clarifying questions at the time when I am confused, and I also need to learn from interaction with peers.

By the grace of God, I managed to pass all my first year courses along with the infamous Baby Bar exam. I continued plugging along with my legal studies, struggling all the way. Along the way, after discussing the idea with my parents it was determined that taking a few paralegal courses at the local community college in conjunction with my OBCL courses might be helpful. I did really well and after taking about four classes, figured out how I could simultaneously earn my associate’s degree while completing my OBCL studies.

I earned my associate’s degree in 1998 and my family moved to Ohio. In 1999 I completed all of my OBCL coursework and earned my Juris Doctorate degree. The only problem though, was that I would never be able to practice law in Ohio, as its bar admission rules were written too narrowly to accept my OBCL coursework. My parents encouraged me to “just trust God to work everything out” and to wait and see how God was going to open the doors for me to practice law in Ohio.

Since I had just married, and my wife and I weren’t really in a position to pick up and move back to California, I obtained underemployment as a paralegal, first in a law firm and then for a company that sold legal research services. I was bored and in many respects it was demeaning to have knowledge and skills that I was unable to use lawfully in my career. At some point, I decided I wanted to finish my bachelor’s degree. I wasn’t interested in Verity Institute primarily because I didn’t need any more degrees I couldn’t use. And since that program was relatively new at the time, I had no desire to be one of its guinea pigs.

I enrolled in a Christian university that had a satellite campus near my house which specialized in adults who were seeking to complete their degrees. My parents weren’t especially thrilled about the prospect, because I “already had my law degree.” Eighteen months later, however, I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Management with a 3.9 GPA and a better understanding of business, myself, and the learning process. I also made a host of new friends. Within five months of graduating, I landed a new job that paid nearly 50% more than my previous job. Finishing my bachelor’s degree at 32 years of age left me with but one regret: Why hadn’t I done this sooner?

Going back, I think my parents wanted to believe all the promises made by ATI. Bill Gothard spoke with such conviction and faith in what God was going to do. I think they may have feared that I would lose my faith if I went to college and were exposed to different philosophies. Ironically, I have wrestled more with my faith in feeling like this Christian organization made baseless promises, if not outright lied. I also felt like it was completely irresponsible for ATI to encourage my parents to play Russian roulette with my future, based on a system that really had little track record of success (given the infancy of the apprenticeship program at the time my family joined ATI). For the record, between the two of us, my wife and I know at least 500 former ATI students and know of many more. I have yet to discover the identity of any recipient of one of those opportunities I mentioned above. And I’m only aware of one person who managed to “beat the system” by becoming an architect through apprenticeship without going to college.

As a side note, those struggles are mine alone, and I don’t “blame” ATI. No one held a gun to my head or to my parents’ heads and forced us to do anything. But as the old proverb says, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” And it ultimately all did work out for good for me.

In closing, I offer a few cautions: To those who are contemplating ATI, be leery of what is promised. In my case almost all of those promises were either not kept, or are so long in coming as to be useless (I’m already 37 years old and am married with 3 children–I don’t have the luxury of waiting in perpetuity).  To those who grew up in ATI who feel duped and want to get your life back on track, I encourage you to do it! It’s better than having the exact same regrets 20 years from now. I’d be happy to help in any way that I can. Just send an email to the Recovering Grace team via the links on this site and they will forward your message to me.