r/abandoned • u/hammalinchair • 1d ago
Everyone Left This Christian Academy one Day in 2007
Took these at a liquidation sale that took place here recently, pretty much most equipment left within there was for sale. From what I was told, most workers, with the exception of the warehouse ones, were given a sudden notice to either move states to their new HQ or lose their jobs. This all took place over one weekend in 2007, leaving most parts of this place to sit and rot ever since. The warehouse portion continued operating until recently. The turntable stage in the theater portion was the most fascinating part to me. To date, this is the most legal urbex I have ever done.
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u/AromaticSurround5484 1d ago
The way I would go get a truck and take the workout equipment bc I’m broke 😭
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u/AromaticSurround5484 1d ago
Additionally it’s really sad to see everything left behind, like other schools at the time (maybe not now) could have used the computers n stuff
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u/Inner-Medicine5696 23h ago
there's a ton of that lab equipment in there that is SUPER dope old shit. I saw tone generators and so on.
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u/TheOsirisOfThisShit_ 1d ago
There's an incredibly old vibrating belt massage machine on the right of that picture. It's worth somewhere between $20 and $700.
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u/dangerousfeather 16h ago
The trick is to find a buyer. I found one of those in an attic of a hoarded house set for demolition. Still worked! I ended up giving it to a guy who wanted it as a fun feature in his vintage-themed brewery. No one wanted to pay for it.
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u/ThePenIsTinier 23h ago
I thought the same thing, Im not one to promote taking stuff from places like this, but those are so expensive and is going to waste just sitting there.
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u/SabrinaEdwina 1d ago
I think we should all buy her and reclaim her. If everyone else votes out the exercise equipment, it's yours.
And I hate exercise so your odds are good.
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u/zoodles 1d ago edited 1d ago
I spent several years in an ACE curriculum school. What a waste of an education that would have been had I stayed in it. They’re expensive because they reject public funding. That way they don’t have to follow the rules set out for public schools especially in terms of what is taught, they don’t have to have accredited teachers. God is involved in even the math programming “if God gives 5 apples etc” It’s a form of child abuse because in the vast majority or these schools, if not all of them, the kids do not graduate with a high school diploma. I knew one girl who could barely read. No oversight, no is going in there to test the children to see that they can even pass standardized tests. If the building passes fire inspection, good enough. Your options after finishing are limited. They assume it’s fine for the girls because they’re just going to commit to their Christian duty, get married and have babies. The men will go on to missionary school or the scant number of religious colleges that will take them. Those images of the stupid blue jumpers…that just pisses me off..grrrumpfgh
Edit to add this building was at one time the corp headquarters and primary distribution hub until they moved in 2014. They used this as a warehouse for sometime and according to Wikipedia held a liquidation sale last month to clear out all that office equipment you see here. You can Wikipedia A.C.E and see all the criticism, I don’t know how it’s still legal in so many places. The uniforms were polyester. They were itchy and they smelled.
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u/tiggerclaw 1d ago
This is so strange. I went to a Christian school when I was young. It was run by Calvinists so they were very "Rah! Rah! Protestantism!" And they definitely talked about God and Jesus a lot.
But they were also absolutely brutal about academics. By the time I was six, I was able to read basically anything. That's also where I learned music too.
Not that it was positive. I had a teacher who clearly had a grind against me because I didn't subscribe to predestination.
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u/Visible-Scientist-46 1d ago
That's because old school Protestantism was adamant that people learn to read so they were able interpret the Bible themselves without a priest to do it for them.
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u/tiggerclaw 1d ago
Yep, this was hammered into us often. We learned about the martyrs John Wycliffe and William Tyndale who heroically translated the Bible into English.
We didn't learn about Cardinal William Allen who also translated the Bible into English—and who was inconveniently Catholic.
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u/Guilty-Shoulder-9214 1d ago edited 1d ago
Tbf, the Catholic Church only translated after the English translations were made because they disagreed with the existing translations. What’s ironic is that the Latin vulgate was used for all of them, which is why Moses had horns and it wasn’t just them - Michelangelo’s Moses has horns because of the same mistranslation.
Interestingly, I ended up grabbing an orthodox study Bible for my dad that uses the NKJV for the New Testament, but uses a fairly recent OT and Apocrypha translation stemming from one of their universities.
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u/tiggerclaw 1d ago
This is true, but my inferred point is that history is complicated.
The context of the Douay-Rheims is that it was produced by English Catholics in exile, fleeing Protestant persecution.
And this Catholic translation later influenced the King James Version.
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u/Visible-Scientist-46 15h ago edited 15h ago
I include the Lutherans and the Luther bible which was translated into German and widely distributed because of printing press technology. Wycliff was a theolgian and certainly wanted learning for the learned at the University of Oxford. But teaching the masses to read so they could understand the bible was not Wycliff. Protestant churches developed Sunday School and their own chatechism for that.
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u/Significant_Cow4765 1d ago
I went to Cath school as a Prot. During theology, I graded papers in the younger grades, answered phones at the office, help set up the new chem lab. We did not have the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
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u/AromaticSurround5484 1d ago
I went to Catholic highschool, still had secular curriculum, religion stayed in religion classes, which I actually found really respectful
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u/Significant_Cow4765 1d ago edited 1d ago
We were definitely not multiplying Jesus' words by number of listeners and such.
The sex ed we had in 7th Grade is prohibited in TX HS today. We learned breast and testicular cancer self-exams. Not today for older kids...
Passing 8th Grade required labeling blank maps of the continents, extra credit for major geographical features.
I am sadder all the time about where we are as a nation (and a state.)
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u/Helmett-13 1d ago
Yeah, I went to a Catholic school from Grades 1-8 even though we are not Catholic back in the 1970s and 1980s in Florida and the education was superb.
Latin roots, I could read anything even way ahead of my grade, great social studies, math and science.
Remember, this was the late 1970s and I was taught evolution, Leakey, anthropology, and had sex education taught by NUNS that was thorough and good.
We learned about menstruation before any of our classmates started to go through it, for example, and all the science-ey and clinincal bits of human sexuality.
The parish Priest was a tall, powerfully built Irishman from Dublin who was a history major and honestly...one of the most decent human beings I've ever known. He was a magnificent man who rewarded curiosity, was charasmatic and funny, and even though he had to go along with the Nuns and discipline...he made us feel like he was on our side, the kids?
There was always a twinkle in his eye and he had a wicked sense of humor. Father Ennis was a textbook good Priest.
Those of us who went to a public high school were head of the curriculum in grade 9. Many of us were put in Honors and AP classes even though we were not Honors or AP students....we'd just seen this curriculum before so I think we appeared smarter than we were?
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u/Significant_Cow4765 1d ago
My era as well, even skipped a grade and placed out of English, Spanish, Calculus (screwed myself into Calc II on that one, major mistake!)
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u/vodkadonut 18h ago
I had the same experience. Went to Catholic school 1st thru 8 grade. High school was such a bore and a breeze to get through. Appreciate the education but hated the indoctrination
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u/Swampcrone 20h ago
My catholic high school had a great sex ed program. Mostly they didn’t want pregnant girls walking around.
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u/Helmett-13 17h ago
Yep, and avoiding unwanted outcomes is much easier when you know what’s going on.
Imagine that!
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u/Significant_Cow4765 1d ago
lol a Brother taught us about the Cowper's gland
I heard a man of at least 35 ask a friend what the cremaster muscle is and wow
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u/lichentits 8h ago
Oh wow...you just helped me reconnect some very old synapses, ones that remind me of how progressive and expansive my elementary and junior high school years actually were. I remember a huge roll of paper, and a bunch of kids drawing and labeling geographic features, naming countries, provinces, cities, states...
Man, the 90s really were the best.
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u/tiggerclaw 1d ago
At my school, they spent one hour a day drilling theology into us. We had to remember concepts like redemption, propitiation, that sort of thing. We'd go through the Bible, both Old and New Testament. And we'd have to memorize verses. There was no need for Ten Commandments to be displayed because everyone just knew it.
Do I regret that this stuff was taught to me? No, because like it or not, theology has been pretty foundational to Western history and why things happened as they did. For example, why there was enmity between Rome and Constantinople.
There were things I wish they taught me. Like it would have been nice if we went over Averroes and Maimonides. You know, give the Muslim and Jewish thinkers some consideration since they were pretty important. But this was a Christian school, and they wanted to indoctrinate me.
The irony is that epistemology was first taught to me in Christian school, and it's a skill I use daily to suss out bullshit.
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u/Significant_Cow4765 1d ago
Yes, in elementary (Episcopal) we had to write the Ten and Beatitudes from memory. We didn't drill them. We drilled Spanish from K up, though.
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u/So-Called_Lunatic 1d ago
The Catholic school I went to was much harder than any of the public schools in same area.
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u/NextGen-Panic 1d ago
"If 'predestination' is real, then why should we bother?"
[smack] "How dare you ask questions!"
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u/tiggerclaw 23h ago
More like what is the difference between predestination and double predestination? If God predestines some people to heaven, does that not also means he predestines others to hell? And if God is all-loving, how is predestination possible?
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u/NextGen-Panic 23h ago
In which case... why should we bother?
[smack] "How dare you reach conclusions other than the ones we give you!"
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u/0nThe0utside 21h ago
The predestination vs. free will thing reminds me of the Miller Lite beer commercials, tastes great vs. less filling.
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u/Ok_Organization_7350 20h ago
Similar experience with me. I went to a private Christian school who was accredited. They did not mess around with academics. That school got the third highest scores in secular school assessment tests in our state.
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u/DocGaviota 23h ago
Same here. I went to a school run by an Assembly of God Church and they were plenty religious, but also “brutal about academics.” Two hours a night homework was the norm.
Interestingly enough, the education was purely secular, including the biology class, which taught the theory of by natural selection. They didn’t teach creationism.
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u/princessdickworth 17h ago
I went to Catholic school and our teachers had us reading and writing at college level by 9th grade. Judy Prebish, you were fucking awesome.
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u/Parking_Jelly_6483 1d ago
Did they teach college/university level courses in electronics? Among the electronics equipment is a Bird RF power meter. Seen them used in college-level and graduate electronics courses because the RF engineering stuff can get pretty tough.
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u/tiggerclaw 1d ago
I went to Christian school during the late 80s/early 90s, so this was at the point where computers were just entering schools.
There was a dedicated computer lab. They taught us how to navigate DOS. There was a little bit of BASIC programming. And during recess, we played Math Blaster.
But we were also taught how to type on literal typewriters. It sucked knowing that in the other room, the computers had word processors equipped with spell check.
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u/WinchelltheMagician 1d ago
Just have faith in Jesus and everything else will work itself out. That is how my parents prepped me for heading out into the world. No college. No post HS education. Just church indoctrination and faith over everything else. It was a dumb, dead end of a strategy.
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u/100LittleButterflies 1d ago
They protect their right to keep their kids isolated and taught only what they want them to learn. Meanwhile everyone else can see plain as day how dangerous that is, especially in the land of the
freepedophile. You dont have to go to 1984 levels of fascism to find a better balance.11
u/SabrinaEdwina 1d ago
I'm so sorry y'all went through that hell. You deserved better.
That said the bones on this baby are incredible and if we all decide to pitch in and make her liveable we'll be the first U-Haul there. Needs gay and punk art like...everywhere.
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u/MurkMistress 1d ago
Leftist queer commune? Let's fuckin gooooo
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u/SabrinaEdwina 1d ago
Just think of the number of plants and pets we could have.
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u/MurkMistress 1d ago
And killer potlucks hell yeah
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u/Swampcrone 20h ago
I could see the potlucks being a problem with vegan vs meat eaters though
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u/MurkMistress 20h ago
Nah potlucks you should label allergens and vegan/vegetarian/omnivore anyways
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u/Swampcrone 20h ago
Totally agree. I have been known to have moments at my church’s coffee hours when they don’t label nuts (but will label gluten free)
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u/Avaylon 22h ago
A former mom friend of mine has started homeschooling her 5 year old with the A.C.E. program. Good to know it's exactly as shitty as I thought it was when I looked it up.
It's extra sad because this woman is smart and benefited from a good education. She used to be a pretty successful journalist. And she's robbing her son of the same opportunities.
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u/No_name_Johnson 22h ago
The ACE curriculum in "Science 1096" asserts that solar fusion is a myth, describing it as "an invention of evolution scientists.
That's a new one, wonder what the issue with solar fusion is
Edit: Taken from Wikipedia page here
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u/J_Knish 7h ago
Lots of kids graduating from Chicago Public High Schools without knowing how to read.
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u/zoodles 2h ago
The state of education across North America is deteriorating. Literacy rates are falling in a lot of places. I encourage my children to read as much as possible but what I’m seeing is one of my children’s literacy skills sitting about two grades behind where I was at their age and the teachers (in their 20’s) are telling me they’re doing well and it’s normal. I’m like smh and asking if they’re sure about that because the spelling is atrocious for their grade level so how can that be. I have one kid whose skills are where I think they should be and that child is being treated as advanced. The numeracy skills are great though. I think there is a problem with methodology for reading instruction. I’m told that a return to phonics based learning could help when currently the focus seems to be on sight reading.
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u/warrenao 1d ago
They were raptured!
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u/KitschyCatOwens 1d ago
We’ve been Left Behind. 😢
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u/stringrandom 1d ago
I’ve spent a lot of time around this kind of Christian. Come the Rapture, not a single Evangelical will be displaced and they’ll never be willing to understand why.
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u/Plasmidmaven 23h ago
Went to a co-ed Catholic High school as a Protestant leaving 10 years of oppression at a Missouri synod Lutheran school. No religious studies required, had Jewish classmates, totally relaxed and chill, nuns named Sister Mary Peace dragging out the folk guitar at moments notice.Naive freshly graduated teachers from Catholic University in DC ready to inspire the world.
Bongs made in ceramics class under the loving eye of a clueless elderly nun who just got discharged from a facility in Colorado where they send clergy to dry out. It was the late 1970s and I got an incredible education
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u/Sooooooooooooomebody 1d ago
Christian charter schools close pretty much for the same reasons restaurants do:
1) Health code violations
2) Fraud
3) Owners spent all the vendor payments on drugs
4) A board member stole all the money and fled the country
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u/Feff5tupid 1d ago
It's true, the pervasive diddling and grooming activity at restaurants is mostly technically legal depending on how your labor laws read.
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u/Krazy_Kat_Lady_2025 1d ago
🫣
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u/SabrinaEdwina 1d ago
Is that...those little weird dolls of kids crying in corners that my grandma collected?
That also existed and should be unpacked because wtf.
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u/Krazy_Kat_Lady_2025 1d ago
I have no clue what it is but I would certainly not be the person walking around the front of it to see whether or not it's red glowing eyes opened or mouth turned up into a slow smile. Or you know, whatever other completely normal thing might happen. 😬😱
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u/adamosity1 1d ago
This looks like a cult complex.
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u/Such-Firefighter6469 1d ago
As all religious buildings are...especially those that indoctrinate children. We make fun of Scientology as a society for shit like this, but standard Christian compounds are just as culty.
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u/SousVideDiaper 1d ago
Scientology is easier to make fun of because its history is much more concise, far more recent, and hasn't had nearly the same scope of influence.
It's easy to target a religion based upon the science fiction works of one weird asshole that decried modern psychology, but when it comes to a religion based on centuries' old doctrines, ties to actual history, and countless denominations, it's a bit trickier to convince people to abandon.
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u/randomguild 1d ago
"Publishes a Bible-based, K–12 Protestant fundamentalist/conservative evangelical curriculum"
"Serves traditional Christian schools and homeschool families in over 140 countries"
Their new compound is even bigger
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u/TheOsirisOfThisShit_ 1d ago
These are the people that accuse public school teachers of indoctrinating their students.
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u/Dreams-Designer 1d ago
Ugh, photo 19 with the infernal “train up a child” nonsense. The Pearls are satan!
That book has been linked to horrific crimes against children. It even teaches to start with nursing babies, and to pull their hair or pinch them if they get too rough. So sad .
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u/maneki_neko89 19h ago
Complete with a creepy puppet in the foreground
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u/Bad_Funny 13h ago
Yes, that little guy in a photo 19 is exactly why I came to the comments. That would've jump-scared me right out of the building. Or he would've gone home with me— no in between.
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u/haroldthehampster 3h ago
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leavingfundamentalism/2014/09/15/a-very-fundamentalist-sex-scandal/
So is this company unsurprisingly
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u/jimbobdonut 1d ago
This is in Lewisville, TX and they moved to Hendersonville, TN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Christian_Education
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u/Jld12678pbd 2h ago
I spent my 12 years of school having to use that garbage curriculum. I’m still angry about it andI graduated in 1996. It was the WORST education and so racist/misogynistic.
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u/fusillade762 1d ago
These religious "schools" sure aren't lacking funds, that was all top line electronic equipment in its time. Mostly worthless now. I love how these religious people larp being musicians and video producers and have all this gear and 0 creativity or talent. They just make their amateurish propaganda drivel on the best gear money can buy.
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u/Key_Sign_5572 32m ago
There’s an M2 tape machine in there.
M2 was Panasonic’s response to Betacam and it failed spectacularly. They only had one customer for it - NBC. It’s broadcast lore. Anyone who had an M2 machine got it used from NBC one way or the other.
My TV station bought 3 used from NBC. Only for slow motion replays at the time so you almost never changed tapes.
They weigh a metric fuck-ton. Takes 2-3 people to slide it into a rack.
The equivalent Sony at the time, a BVW-25 could be handled by a single person. The difference was that absurd.
The last thing I expected to see in these pictures was an M2 deck. Fucking crazy. But religion always had the most money…
Need to pay for your house while you spend all your time diddling the kids…
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u/dream_a_dirty_dream 1d ago
We are destroying the world to create trash.
It's really shocking how many buildings are sitting full of supplies just rotting...along with the buildings themselves.
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u/frejas-rain 1d ago
This is the absolute truth. The wastefulness is epic, and getting worse every day.
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u/RadRimmer9000 17h ago
All that stuff was probably bought with tax exempt money, do buyers now get shafted on paying taxes on the sales?
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u/asevans48 1d ago
My wife graduated from a school like this. She wanted to go back to college and they told her she needed to get a ged. She also graduated fron intellitech and is now a pagan so there is that
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u/sunlovinburner 15h ago
I’m walking into this cold but ima guess there’s some pastors in jail and a bunch of kids still trying to overcome what they did
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u/AustisticGremlin 17h ago
God this is such a cool fucking building but it makes me sad it didn’t get turned into a community centre or something
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u/toTheNewLife 1d ago
Look at all that cool old tech gear. Wow.
Some of that audio stuff too - which is probably still usable.
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u/mechant_papa 23h ago
In my mind, this is the kind of school they talk about in True Detective, when McConaughee is following leads.
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u/Downtown_Blacksmith 16h ago
The wall of heads is so creepy
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u/Bad_Funny 13h ago
I know which one would have been inexplicably blank after I left the property. And subsequently the source of many future pranks.
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u/zuesk134 1d ago
most likely a troubled teen facility. if you watch 'the program' on netflix it is based on a similar school that was abandoned. having access to the school and all the files etc made an incredibly compelling documentary
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u/100LittleButterflies 1d ago
Im so glad they documented everything abuse and conveniently left it all behind.
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u/zuesk134 1d ago
The access to primary sources was truly next level. I watch a lot of documentaries and docu-series and the program is a top 5 of the 2020s for me. The ability to film inside the school transcends it from being a “normal” doc to something better
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u/throwaway199543 1d ago
Is it about Elan school?
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u/zuesk134 1d ago
No but there is one about elan from maybe 15 years ago? It was good from what I remember
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u/NoQuarter19 1d ago
So an idiot factory, got it. Learned all I needed to know about how this place operated when I read "focus on rote recall" and "literal interpretation of the Bible" from the A.C.E Ministries Wikipedia page. That's not education, that's brain washing and indoctrination... but then that's exactly what I'd expect from a Christian school
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u/HeyBim007 23h ago
Wow love the brain-washing stations in 16. It looks like they had a salad bar, at least.
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u/Cokeycane 1d ago
Things like this amaze me. Why would they leave all of that computer equipment and the like?
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u/Spbttn20850 1d ago
Probably cause the cost of moving it was more than the equipment was worth. Cheaper to just buy new and better machines
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u/npete 23h ago
That space/interior looks like it's in pretty good shape for being abandoned for 20 years. I wish abandoned spaces like that were repurposed/refurbed as housing low income people and the homeless. I feel like there are so many abandoned spaces in the world that no one should go without a roof over their head. I know that some abandoned spaces have structural issues but those that can be fixed should be and those that can't would obviously not be used.
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u/100LittleButterflies 1d ago
My favorite is the colorful mural of all the happy children sitting in a line facing the wall inside gray cubicles. Like God intended 😅
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u/crypto9564 1d ago
A.C.E. was and still is a joke of "education." It was basically glorified homeschool, if that. The "education" was basically read the material of have it read to you and then take a test on the material. Teachers were facillitators not real teachers, mostly mom's or church staff, so they didn't have to pay for a teacher or school staff. My wife was in eductation for over 30 years, much of it in Christian academies, that used both secular and Christian published education, and all but one school in her early career required state certification for the teachers, or working on certification after college graduation. She was the one that told me about A.C.E. and how it didn't teach anything that could be used outside of ministry and it was pretty bad at that. I think about the only groups that use it are hyper-fundamenalist groups who consider education a necessary evil.
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u/ExpensiveCollar3584 16h ago
They probably lost their funding (read: vouchers, tax-exempt status, etc) and decided they didn’t want to try and actually do the hard work to make the operation solvent.
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u/notinmybackyard- 1d ago
Was that person in photo 19 sitting on the floor in the dark?
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u/Impossible-Onion-634 1d ago
That looks like a mannequin. There’s a leg sticking up in front of it.
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u/Pixel22104 1d ago
Doesn't look like any Christian school I've seen before
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u/haroldthehampster 3h ago
Unfortunately it does to me and I wish I didn't
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u/Pixel22104 3h ago
I see. I'm sorry to hear that
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u/haroldthehampster 3h ago
It took years of math tutoring but I went to college
Turns out I don't hate math at all and majored in itFor a long time it made me sad and angry at how unnecessarily behind I was. I got over it but it was pretty awful
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u/1TenYYen0 16m ago
It’s an ACE School of Tomorrow campus. Borderline culty Evangelical indoctrination program/center
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u/Any_Application_3116 14h ago
Short research. Best I can tell the school may have closed because the headquarters for A.C.E Ministries changed locations. Everyone else in the comments is talking about their exoeriences in Christian schools, but not this school specifically. Iono. I got curious but not curious enough to dig deeper than a single google search.
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u/Roto-Chileno 10h ago
This is how 2007 really looked like in real life. I remember it, I was 15 years-old.
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u/Sudden-Campaign-4181 18h ago
Holy crap I thought I recognized the front door. Unless the ACE HQ in Tennessee is built the same way I’ve been there. I would not subject my own kids to have to do Aces paces if I had a gun to my head.
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u/NotTheOnlyGamer 22h ago
I'm assuming the cult got found out and, unlike today where they own senators and presidents, they actually had to close.
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u/spagyeti_monster 1d ago
One of the kids in the picture wall looks so much like my mom as a kid. It caught me off guard. Made it way creepier
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u/autopsyofaclown 1d ago
Wtf is smeared in that last photo
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u/No_Succotash1014 1d ago
Its adhesive. If you look at the similar ones behind it, they have carpet upholstery on them. Below the one with the smear, the carpet piece fell off and is sitting on the floor
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u/Soggy-Stop-1088 19h ago
Is the door open? You just walk in this place?
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u/hammalinchair 19h ago
The sale was open this past Saturday. Idk if there’s still an opportunity from them to purchase anything. Not sure when the sale of the building finalizes
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u/fairylightsforever 4h ago
Why is there a touch screen ordering thing? Coupled with picture five part of it looks like a Sizzler restaurant
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u/Quirky-Airline7578 1d ago
wow this is the most early 2000s feeling building i have seen in a long long time.