Abundant Life Academy Admissions Criteria

Abundant Life Academy is one of a few leadership-based Christian boarding schools for troubled teens, where the admissions criteria is straight forward and simple. We are looking for gifted kids who are rejecting their Christian heritage, struggling to understand their own Christian belief's, rebelling against parental authority, and living for today with no concern for the future.

To enroll your teen into Abundant Life Academy you need to make sure that ALA is God's will for your child. Our strongest admissions criteria is based in prayer. We ask you to pray and to seek Godly counsel. This is a huge decision, and most of the time parents don't have the luxury of time.  Sometimes things have gotten to a crisis point and a move has to be made.  Pray!  Seek God!  The peace He will give will get you through the crisis and beyond.  Sometimes parents have some time and can methodically go through the enrollment process.  Thank God if you have time.  What ever your situation may be, crisis or not, if you are certain that Abundant Life Academy is God's will for your family then the next step is to fill out the form to the left, and request more information.

When we evaluate a prospective student we look at the family as a whole. The Abundant Life Academy admissions criteria is not only about the troubled teen.  The family as a unified team prospers.  We will look at the parent's willingness to grow, forgive, and seek grace and mercy in all ways. Our family evaluation and admissions criteria are based on the family's commitment to the process of Christ-centered reconciliation. Many times the parents have a history of rescuing their child from difficult situations and in doing so have become the problem. At Abundant Life Academy we cannot work with parents that "rescue" their children, it just doesn't work, and everyone is undermined. Our job will be to slowly reintroduce adversity into the life of the child (we expect greatness from our students and we hold them accountable). Our hope is that the parents will refrain from rescuing their child from any struggle they encounter, and in doing so their child will grow into a powerful adolescent who can make good decisions, especially under pressure and through adversity.

In order to fulfill our goals we require a great deal of our student's parents. We expect the parents of our students to be a partner in the process of reconciliation. We expect the parents of our students to be supportive and a source of encouragement for our staff. We hope that our student's parents will join the battle by making a commitment to pray for the staff and students of ALA. We need our parents to be prayer warriors and consistent encouragers to those of us in the front lines of the battle.

ALA Admissions Criteria: Prospective students of Abundant Life Academy are kids who are gifted, yet unmotivated (academic and spiritually unmotivated). Abundant Life Academy does not serve students who are in need of acute mental health services (self harm, suicidal ideation, or currently taking medication for psychosis and/or servere mental dysfunction), are convicted of felonies (for violent or sexual crimes), or in need of medical detoxification from drug addiction.