How sad. Some people are just born to manage, not lead. Vineyard's success at Hammond and Thomas Road seems to indicate that he was one of those men.Jim's college eventually had over 500 students. Counting their families, that alone would have given him a good crowd. Pushing his bus ministry, Jim probably was running over 1,000.
One of Jim's great failures was running off his staff members. In the 22 months I was there, we had over 100% turn-over in staff, and almost all left because of Jim's abuse. We had better academics than Hyles-Anderson, better spiritual attitudes among the students, and a better high school than Hammond Baptist. But Jim drove off his best teachers, pulling down the quality of everything.
Talking to some of my former students over the decades (mostly on Facebook) it appears that Jim's behavior got steadily worse, and he began making more demands of his congregation.
The former pastor of my church who was the Executive Vice-President of OBC was there from 1979 to 1986. According to what you have said, am I safe to assume that those years would have been during the institution's growth or peak?
Finally, do all you old "OBC hands" think that it will ever close, or will WHBC (now HGBC) continue to sponsor it in a reduced form?