My Nonprofit Reviews

I was a student at Frontier between 2007 and 2009. I have very mixed feelings about my experience. I came with a great desire to deepen my faith and learn more about the God I love dearly. What I found was a school that was grounded in a desire for grace with a bent toward authoritarianism in order to provide what they deemed to be a protective environment. Understanding more now about psychological effects of trauma and other childhood dynamics- I would state that a large portion of the students I encountered were dealing with the unhealed ramifications of developmental trauma. This, in combination with a lack of knowledgeable care, created an environment for enabling abuse within the school. I do believe there were faculty members who desired to do well to the students in their care, but for the strong minority (I being one of them) who came with a dysfunctional view of reality and Biblical truths, I felt severely neglected. I left the school feeling disillusioned with faith, judged harshly, shamed by people, emotionally disregarded and left susceptible to believing false and abusive narratives concerning gender roles, and marital submissive expectations. I feel strongly these unaddressed damaging belief patterns in conjunction with my developmental abuse led me to be set up for my abusive marriage. Many of the students in my graduating class have very similar stories of marrying into abusive and controlling marriages. I would say easily 7 out of 10 couples I knew who met their spouse through the school are now recovering from traumatic relationships ending in divorce and family splits.
On an educational note- I felt the information I learned was akin to a Sunday School class.
I do not feel that I was educated. I felt like the time I spent there was focused far more on behavioral shaping than on maturity of character or elevating my Biblical understanding. The one faculty member who I felt was beneficial to me in my faith journey (Mr. Seymore) is no longer teaching. I would NOT recommend attending Frontier. I have learned more truth and have been drawn closer to God in three episodes of the Bible project videos than I did from the two years I spent at this school. I know that God can and will bring good out of every situation, and I pray that the faculty will take a sincere and dedicated look at the outcomes many students have dealt with after attending their school and reevaluate their priorities in order to truly reflect the heart of Christ. Be Jesus to a broken and deeply hurting world. Do not turn a blind eye, but lean into the difficult. Show grace and compassion to the hurting. And in this way, redeem the damage that has been allowed to flourish under this System.

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