The campus and assets of Northland International University gifted to Southern Seminary

[Don Johnson]

But some of the discussion has been: It’s Matt’s fault; No It’s the board’s fault; No It’s….

and on it goes. Ahh… yeah, well, not all that edifying at this point.

I agree, however, that those who pooh poohed the “alarmists” have a lot of ‘splainin to do.

[Mike Harding]

Leadership, among other things, is the ability to see the future consequences of present decisions. According to Les the direction under Matt was toward reformed charismaticism, not SBC. Southern is an improvement over reformed charismaticism. There is another fundamental college going through a similar transformation.

How would you describe reformed charismaticism? That is a new term to me - not the individual aspects but the two together. Also, I am curious what other fundamental college is walking a path similar to Northland’s - you can pm me if you prefer.

[Jim]

I answered Harding about the Patz family being in charge.

Please - and everyone should do this - acquaint yourself with Guidestar.org. Look up your organizations. Look up Northland. See who is on the board: Patz (1); Patz(2); Patz(3); and another who I understand to be a Patz with her husband’s surname.

It is unfair to blame Matt O.

IIRC Arlene Sailer is indeed to the Patz’s - I think she may be Paul Patz’s daughter or granddaughter. Not sure of the specifics.

I would like to know who exactly was on the Board from 2004-2010. The 2011-2013 990s are available on Guidestar, but anything older than that requires a $150.00 report which I can’t afford. I know Marty Herron was for a while, but don’t know any others. I can check in my old yearbooks, but those are largely before the period of time we are talking about.

The list Jim posted is current Board list. Lina Abujamra and Bob Bixby both joined the Board this year, and I support Bob wholeheartedly. Lina I don’t know much about. Scott Dunford was a year ahead of me (again, if I remember right), and he is a very sharp and very solid guy. Trevor was there when I was, but he was largely involved with Camp so our paths didn’t cross much.

[Mark_Smith]

I am curious when the decision was actually made to go SBC? By this I mean that Olsen and the Board (in full or partial) together decided to move away from the separatist position. At some point they knew that their funding support from separatists would vanish. Did they really think they could survive with a new separate identity, or was the plan all along to affiliate with Southern? To get there they had to start drifting the school that way.

On a “lighter” note, how many fundamentalists are aghast that they can now say they have made a significant contribution to the SBC?

What I suspect, based on the pieces that I have seen, is that the plan was to get NIU to survive on its own. When that wasn’t possible - or when the SBC got interested in helping - they made the tough decision to gift the school and have them try and make it go. It is a solid plan, even if it’s not what I had hoped.

[Jay]

Mark_Smith wrote:

I am curious when the decision was actually made to go SBC? By this I mean that Olsen and the Board (in full or partial) together decided to move away from the separatist position. At some point they knew that their funding support from separatists would vanish. Did they really think they could survive with a new separate identity, or was the plan all along to affiliate with Southern? To get there they had to start drifting the school that way.

On a “lighter” note, how many fundamentalists are aghast that they can now say they have made a significant contribution to the SBC?

That underlined portion strikes me as being very uncharitable towards the school and Board.

What I suspect, based on the pieces that I have seen, is that the plan was to get NIU to survive on its own. When that wasn’t possible - or when the SBC got interested in helping - they made the tough decision to gift the school and have them try and make it go. It is a solid plan, even if it’s not what I had hoped.

I’m not sure I agree that it’s a solid plan.

Pro - provides an accredited degree - which could be earned by simply going directly to Boyce if wanted.

Con - still way out in the boonies but really not that geographically removed from Boyce; I can’t come up with good reasons why very many students would rather go to this satellite campus instead of just attending the main campus - particularly with the current trend moving away from brick-and-mortar campuses toward online education.

[Mike Harding]

Leadership, among other things, is the ability to see the future consequences of present decisions.

I don’t want to keep beatin’ this one up, because at the end of the day I am not really that concerned if Northland was successful or not, that isn’t to say I wanted to see it fail, but in the big scheme of things, for whatever reason, it wasn’t that important to me. With that said, we cannot extrapolate that good leadership means success, and bad leadership means failure. When it was under one man it was good therefore that must have been blessed by God, and under another it failed, therefore that must not have been blessed by God. Job is an excellent example as are numerous other examples in Scriptures. God doesn’t need strong leaders, he needs individuals to rely on him. Moses wasn’t a strong leader, but that wasn’t what God expected. Lets be careful what we lay at the feet of man.

Leadership is so much more multi-faceted than this. There are very successful leaders that when put into one position are successful and put into another one they are failures. Ron Johnson at Apple Retail is one good example. He revolutionized retail while creating the Apple retail experience, yet when he went to J.C. Penny he was an utter failure. He is now in another venture and doing good. Sometimes even under the best leadership things fail. Again, not saying Matt was or wasn’t a good leader.

I think we should dig much deeper than Matt if we don’t want to repeat the past. Again, this was a slow train coming and many people raised the alarm bells for quite some time. The Board let Matt go and brought him right back in days. It was all over the place. Just as I indicated above, when Ron Johnson started going amok, the board made a change, fairly quickly. It would have made it sooner had not a key shareholder not pressured it to act differently. I think having a strong leader is important, but I think often times we overcompensate for a bad board, expecting a strong leader to handle it, and that isn’t always the case. In the end, it may not have even matter if Dr. O or Matt Olsen was at the helm. On the financial books, Northland was weak. It wasn’t in a convenient place, and it was competing with a lot of other institutions and limited money. This may have come regardless of leadership. It was bleeding for quite some time, and the board allowed it to bleed. Maybe with a different direction it would have succeeded, but then again, under a different direction it could have even failed quicker. This isn’t an isolated case. Every single fundamentalist institution was under extreme pressure over last 5-6 years, some had a better bank account, and others didn’t.

[dgszweda]

Mike Harding wrote:

Leadership, among other things, is the ability to see the future consequences of present decisions.

I don’t want to keep beatin’ this one up, because at the end of the day I am not really that concerned if Northland was successful or not, that isn’t to say I wanted to see it fail, but in the big scheme of things, for whatever reason, it wasn’t that important to me. With that said, we cannot extrapolate that good leadership means success, and bad leadership means failure. When it was under one man it was good therefore that must have been blessed by God, and under another it failed, therefore that must not have been blessed by God. Job is an excellent example as are numerous other examples in Scriptures. God doesn’t need strong leaders, he needs individuals to rely on him. Moses wasn’t a strong leader, but that wasn’t what God expected. Lets be careful what we lay at the feet of man.

Leadership is so much more multi-faceted than this. There are very successful leaders that when put into one position are successful and put into another one they are failures. Ron Johnson at Apple Retail is one good example. He revolutionized retail while creating the Apple retail experience, yet when he went to J.C. Penny he was an utter failure. He is now in another venture and doing good. Sometimes even under the best leadership things fail. Again, not saying Matt was or wasn’t a good leader.

I think we should dig much deeper than Matt if we don’t want to repeat the past. Again, this was a slow train coming and many people raised the alarm bells for quite some time. The Board let Matt go and brought him right back in days. It was all over the place. Just as I indicated above, when Ron Johnson started going amok, the board made a change, fairly quickly. It would have made it sooner had not a key shareholder not pressured it to act differently. I think having a strong leader is important, but I think often times we overcompensate for a bad board, expecting a strong leader to handle it, and that isn’t always the case. In the end, it may not have even matter if Dr. O or Matt Olsen was at the helm. On the financial books, Northland was weak. It wasn’t in a convenient place, and it was competing with a lot of other institutions and limited money. This may have come regardless of leadership. It was bleeding for quite some time, and the board allowed it to bleed. Maybe with a different direction it would have succeeded, but then again, under a different direction it could have even failed quicker. This isn’t an isolated case. Every single fundamentalist institution was under extreme pressure over last 5-6 years, some had a better bank account, and others didn’t.

I agree that good leadership doesn’t guarantee success and bad leadership doesn’t always translate into failure - in the short term. In the long-term, however, comparing the good vs the bad, the difference most often will be clear.

However, in Dr. Olson’s case he became president six years before the recession started and was told multiple times to cut back on spending. Clearly the appropriate financial adjustments were never made. It is one thing to have a one-off year of a $2M loss, it is another thing to burn through $10M in a matter of seven years. Which is better, to keep throwing good money after bad, or cutting your losses to save as much of the fund as you can and helping another ministry with those funds?

I don’t agree with the idea that because NIU was in a remote location away from jobs, etc, that lead to fewer students enrolling. If you have a top-notch, quality program with solid leadership and a clear vision for the present and future, people will come. Yes, the location has its challenges, but again, people will come if there is a program and leadership they can buy into.

When NIU’s leadership and programs were all over the map and they started making underhanded changes. For people on the fence, they didn’t know what they would be buying into. For many people, they had no confidence in what they saw happening. Pastors, Churches, and parents need to feel confident about the leadership, vision, and direction of the institution before they’ll pay out their hard earned money. Remember that open letter from Olson saying NIU was unchanged - when most reasonable people could easily see that was clearly not the case?? What Olson and NIU was doing over those last few years gave most people feelings opposite of confidence and the enrollment numbers definitely reflected it.

As Robert Apps above said, if Olson was working through his own personal theology and convictions, OK, fine. Just don’t work through it at the expense of an entire organization.

I will agree that Jay and others bring up valid questions about the role/non-role of the board in all this. Good and reasonable questions! That said, someone needed to own the leadership and management of NIU and the number one day-to-day person in that role was Olson.

As Don Johnson said above, “I agree, however, that those who pooh poohed the “alarmists” have a lot of ‘splainin to do.” Well, they had the president they wanted, the direction they wanted, the electric guitars and drums they wanted, & $10M in the bank. And they blew it big time! No excuses! Don’t give us excuses about the economy, the location, etc. In the “real” world when you have those kind of resources and that much time, you have no excuse.

I have read these comments with great interest but as an outsider that is connected to the GARBC stripe of Fundamentalism rather than to the FBFI stripe. Without a doubt there are some strong feeling about what really lead to the financial demise of NIU. But I find it fascinating that those who are more blaming Matt Olsen for his lack of leadership have chosen to ignore what Jim keeps on repeating:

Northland was/is the Patz’s show. They started it, they funded it, they had multiple family members on the board. You act as if the college somehow belonged to a group or a movement. It really belonged to the Patz family. And after Olson was fired .. hired … and fired again …. it’s a Patz family member at the helm. If the Patz family wanted Northland to go back to a “separatist” position they could have taken it that way.

Why isn’t anyone who is frustrated by what happened at NIU, whether it was burning through the millions of dollars or taking the school in a more contemporary direction, or embracing a different posture within the doctrine of separation, seeing the Patz family’s influence as a significant reason that these changes took place? All I can hear is crickets………

That is why I asked my question. I have no skin in this game. I am just conjecturing. The Patz family had been the primary supporters from inception. Of course they received some fundamentalist money as well. Somewhere along the line, the family and Olsen decided to change that formula and move away from separatist fundamentalism. To do that would mean they would loose some financial support. Did they really think they could make a go of it as an independent conservative evangelical school? Or was the plan all along to negotiate with Southern or some other SBC school for support?

[Chip Van Emmerik]

Jay wrote:

Mark_Smith wrote:

I am curious when the decision was actually made to go SBC? By this I mean that Olsen and the Board (in full or partial) together decided to move away from the separatist position. At some point they knew that their funding support from separatists would vanish. Did they really think they could survive with a new separate identity, or was the plan all along to affiliate with Southern? To get there they had to start drifting the school that way.

On a “lighter” note, how many fundamentalists are aghast that they can now say they have made a significant contribution to the SBC?

That underlined portion strikes me as being very uncharitable towards the school and Board.

What I suspect, based on the pieces that I have seen, is that the plan was to get NIU to survive on its own. When that wasn’t possible - or when the SBC got interested in helping - they made the tough decision to gift the school and have them try and make it go. It is a solid plan, even if it’s not what I had hoped.

Jay,

I’m not sure I agree that it’s a solid plan.

Pro - provides an accredited degree - which could be earned by simply going directly to Boyce if wanted.

Con - still way out in the boonies but really not that geographically removed from Boyce; I can’t come up with good reasons why very many students would rather go to this satellite campus instead of just attending the main campus - particularly with the current trend moving away from brick-and-mortar campuses toward online education.

The Camps have been mentioned several times. A few days ago, I found the following job posting at SBTS’s website. Here are a few lines of the posting:

Position Title: Director of Northland Camps and Events
Department: Northland Camps
Date Prepared: 9/19/14
FLSA Status: Exempt Non-Exempt Full Time: Yes No
JOB SUMMARY:
The Director of Camps and Events is responsible for management of the Northland Camps and
Events at Northland College in Dunbar, Wisconsin.

SUPERVISION:
The person in this position will supervise all Event and Camp staff.
The person in this position will report to the Vice President of Hospitality Services.

[dlhanson]

The Camps have been mentioned several times. A few days ago, I found the following job posting at SBTS’s website…

Here’s the link:

http://www.sbts.edu/current-students/files/2009/01/Director-of-Northland-Camps-and-Events.pdf

I agree that good leadership doesn’t guarantee success and bad leadership doesn’t always translate into failure - in the short term. In the long-term, however, comparing the good vs the bad, the difference most often will be clear.

However, in Dr. Olson’s case he became president six years before the recession started and was told multiple times to cut back on spending. Clearly the appropriate financial adjustments were never made. It is one thing to have a one-off year of a $2M loss, it is another thing to burn through $10M in a matter of seven years. Which is better, to keep throwing good money after bad, or cutting your losses to save as much of the fund as you can and helping another ministry with those funds?

Lets be honest here, the financial problem was not Dr. Olsen’s but the board. The board approved the budgets and the board did nothing to reverse the trend. While they were frustrated, they chose not to react. It is the board’s responsibility to decide if they want to cut the losses or burn through money. Hasn’t anyone ever worked for a company and interacted with a board at that company?

With that said, institutions like BJU are suffering nearly as bad. The Greenville News just reported that attendance is down by as much as 50% over the last decade and the school is closing a number of dorms. They have cut programs and laid off teachers. The exact same thing happening at NIU. But because NIU was changing, everyone wants to blame the change. Why are BJU’s numbers falling? NIU had a very small endowment. $10 million is nothing. It was by far and away the Patz’s money. They exteneded the lines of credit to the school, and they chose to keep moving in the direction that had been laid out. At some point they felt that they no longer wanted to continue financing it. Not knowing when to cut your losses is also a problem for many.

This is a much more complex, mult-faceted issue, than to just say Matt Olsen brought in drums, and the school collapsed. “See, when you bring in drums, the devil takes the whole place down”. This obviously can’t be true, since we know of some religious institutions who do bring in CCM and are doing just fine. The leadership chose this direction right or wrong, the entire leadership is responsible for this direction, and there are numerous institutions both religiious and non-religous, public and private, who are feeling the strains being put on the education system. If the school had stuck to its roots, maybe it would have lasted a bit longer. But we shouldn’t be surprised that a school in a remote region that was never really large, struggled over quite a period of time, had very little resources, and was largely financed by a single individual would not be capable of being succumbed to these pressures, regardless of which direction it went. It is easy to look back at the haydays of Dr. O, and say those were the days. If we just kept doing that, the school would have been even more wildly successful. The truth is that we have no idea. I didn’t want to see NIU fail, and as an alum of BJ, I don’t want to see that fail. But the time could come when BJ could fail, despite keeping a course. That may be good or that may be bad. The fact is that God doesn’t need NIU or BJU or any other institution. He hasn’t needed it in 9,000 years, and he won’t need it for the future to accomplish his plan. These schools were useful and they thrived during a time where America sought God. The days are increasing as people no longer seek Him and therefore we will continue to see these results.

Several have mentioned the economic downturn as being a factor in the decline of Northland. No one has really mentioned how a school like Northland (and the other colleges whose doors are still open at this point) benefited from the Christian school movement that peaked in the late 1980s-early 90s. I think that is something that may not be “to blame,” but at least needs to be acknowledged- both in how it channeled students and the kinds of opportunities it offered for graduates of those schools.

[dgszweda]

With that said, institutions like BJU are suffering nearly as bad. The Greenville News just reported that attendance is down by as much as 50% over the last decade and the school is closing a number of dorms. They have cut programs and laid off teachers.

I hope I’m not derailing this thread, but this is a worthwhile, relevant article:

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/2014/10/16/steve-petti…