Churches May Establish an Articulation Agreement with Christian Leadership University

This does not make the church campus a satellite campus (which is prohibited by accreditation standards), but rather allows you to establish your own Bible school which maintains a cooperative relationship with CLU.

Highlights of the Arrangement

1. You may choose your own name for your church-centered Bible school and appoint a school president, dean, and secretary. You may distribute the full CLU catalog to your participants so students can see how the training from your local church may be applied toward CLU’s degree program. You may also produce your own catalog, using a specially reduced CLU catalog describing the portion of Christian Leadership University’s curriculum that church-centered Bible schools typically want to provide themselves.

   Masters of this reduced catalog can be found in the Operations Manual. For a small fee, you may request additional personalization of this catalog to more fully meet your church’s needs.

2. The reduced version catalog offers non-accredited certificates but not degrees. Students who enroll in your Bible school and desire a degree, rather than a certificate, will also need to enroll directly with CLU (i.e. dual enrollment). Your local church-centered Bible school is not offering the degree. Rather, CLU headquarters offers the degree. Since your church is not offering a degree program, you do not need to contact your state education department for permission to operate, nor do you need to meet their standards nor be evaluated by them.

   Note: If a church wants to offer degrees itself, see the section below entitled “Legal Issues for Degree-Granting Institutions.”

3. All prospective faculty members of the church-centered school are to complete CLU faculty application forms and be approved by CLU headquarters as adjunct CLU faculty members.
4. Your students enroll directly with your church-centered campus. The adjunct CLU faculty at your church-centered campus will do all grading, keep a set of student records, set the tuition at the level they wish, and keep all tuition money. CLU will provide forms and procedures for record keeping, etc. (found in the Operations Manual).
5. Those students desiring a degree from CLU must submit a CLU New Student Application Form (with a $25 check) to CLU headquarters. This is a one-time requirement for the student.
6. CLU faculty at the church-centered campus forward a copy of all course grades for all CLU students to CLU headquarters each quarter. The students’ grades are officially entered in the CLU master file. Each student will receive a cumulative transcript each quarter from CLU headquarters. A fee of $10 per student per course is required.

   A listing of the names and addresses of all students who audited the course will also be sent each quarter to CLU, and listed as auditing students utilizing CLU’s curriculum.

7. Full-time students may find themselves simultaneously taking some courses in classroom settings from the church-centered campus, some courses involving one-on-one mentoring by CLU adjunct professors, and some courses directly through CLU headquarters. Any course taken directly with CLU, and not handled and graded by faculty at the church-centered Bible School, will be billed according to CLU policies rather than the church-centered campus billing policies.
8. The only courses which are unconditionally transferred into CLU will be those taken using CLU course syllabi. Other courses must be evaluated on a course-by-course basis. Churches may develop additional courses of their choosing. CLU recommends they follow CLU standards for course development (found in the Operations Manual). Send developed courses with $25 to CLU for evaluation at least one month before the class begins.
9. Professors of church-centered extension schools should complete the seminar “Spirit-Anointed Teaching” (book, booklet, cassettes and videos are available from CLU headquarters). This can be completed in a 5-hour seminar session or taken as a complete three-credit course entitled “Experiencing God in the Small Group,” and/or the three-credit course “How Do You Know.”
10. The annual fee is $250. This is a $250 Curriculum Discount Fee which allows a 20% discount on the purchase of all materials which are developed by Mark and Patti Virkler.
11. CLU will lease the right to a church-centered school to receive all current and future course syllabi and reproduce them for their own students for a one-time charge of $900 (90 course syllabi currently available).

    A secondary option is that the church may pay $25 per course syllabus master, purchasing masters semester by semester as they decide which courses they are going to offer. These may be reproduced as needed for their student body.

    A one-paragraph description of each available course may be found in the CLU catalog.

Legal Issues for Degree-Granting Institutions

Most states closely guard and license the words “college,” “university” and “degree.” Before using these words, you will need to be sure you are not violating any of your state laws.

Some institutions want to be able to boldly state in print that they are a college or university which offers accredited degrees, as opposed to saying they are a church-centered Bible school offering certificates. If this applies to you, then read on.

Each state Higher Education Board creates education laws which a degree-granting institution must be in compliance with before they will be allowed to begin operation. If you decide you want to offer degrees, in addition to certificates, you will need to contact your state capital and request a copy of the laws which apply to religious colleges and a form to complete for “Religious Exemption Status.” You may call CLU headquarters to get the phone number and name of the person who oversees your states’ higher education department. This completed form is submitted to your state education department with a copy of the CLU catalog, as an example of the program you are seeking to offer in your state.

Hopefully, you will fall under the “religious exemption status” of your state. This means you are exempt from licensing because you offer only religious training. This would then allow you to put in writing in your community that your church offers a degree program. Some states will allow this but will then limit you to offering only religious degrees, and not the A.A., B.A. and M.A. degrees. In this situation, we would need to personalize the CLU catalog for your needs.

If you do not fall under your state’s exemption clause, then you will need to either meet the requirements for state licensing, or operate as a church-centered Bible school which offers certificates and diplomas but not degrees. In this case, your state may also have laws which do not allow you to put in writing that your program is transferable to a degree-granting program. However, you could pass this information on verbally to interested students, or you could simply hand them a copy of the full CLU catalog, along with your church’s abbreviated catalog. Thus they could see how the programs work together and they could initiate dual enrollment with your campus and CLU.

All prospective church-centered campuses seeking to establish degree-granting ability, and utilize and distribute the official CLU catalog to their students as the main catalog which their church-centered campus offers, are required to provide CLU headquarters with a letter of permission from their state Higher Education Board saying they will be allowed to operate legally, utilizing the CLU program.

Other pages of the CLU catalog could also be personalized, including a letter from the church-centered Bible school’s pastor/president, and any specialized pricing and policies you may want to adopt. CLU can assist you with these changes for a small fee.

However, in this case, you still are not technically considered a satellite campus (because of accreditation problems), but rather a church-centered university that has an “articulation agreement” with CLU and utilizes CLU’s program.

CLU will also guide you in the process of obtaining accreditation for your campus if you desire that.

If a pastor has questions about establishing a church-centered campus, he may contact Dr. Mark Virkler at 716-652-6990. email president@cluonline.com.

If you are ready to proceed with establishing an Articulation Agreement with CLU, then you should print and complete this form (which is in Adobe Acrobat format - see below), or if you prefer you may use this version of the form, which is in "web page" format, but may not offer as high of quality a printout.

For a more thorough explanation of this process, you may download the free booklet How to Set Up a Bible School in Your Local Church (2.4MB) as a zipped Adobe Acrobat PDF file. To access this file, you will need both a program to unzip the file (such as WinZip, which is freely downloadable at www.winzip.com), as well as the Adobe Acrobat Reader (which is also freely downloadable at www.adobe.com). You most likely already have both of these programs installed on your computer.

Initial Set-Up Costs for A Church-centered Bible School

1. The “Articulation Agreement” can be purchased for $250. This grants you the right to use Christian Leadership University’s courses in your church and also provides you with a 20% discount on all books produced by Communion With God Ministries.

2. The CD-ROM can be purchased for $900. It contains 90-100 currently-available course syllabi that you may print and freely reproduce for your students each quarter. Each syllabus is 20-60 pages in length and lays out the 12-week course in a detailed, week-by-week manner. Purchased one at a time, these course syllabi cost $25 each.

3. The “Core Pack” can be purchased for the discounted price of $1100, and includes all the materials for 31 of our most popular courses.

The total value of the above three items is $2250. They can be purchased together for only $1995. Make checks payable to Christian Leadership University, 1431 Bullis Rd. Elma, NY 14059. All major credit cards also accepted.

Core Curriculum Pack at Approximately 20% Discount!

Purchase your initial library of all texts, videos and cassettes for the thirty-one “Core Courses” that are required for students earning a bachelor’s degree. These will likely be your most popular courses. Included are approximately 50 books, 10 cassette series, and 8 video tapes or video series. These materials can also be used by your staff as you evaluate which courses you want to offer quarter by quarter. Courses are as follows:

Bible Knowledge (13 courses) BIB 100 Understanding the Bible BIB 101 Pentateuch BIB 102 United Kingdom BIB 103 Divided Kingdom BIB 104 Poetry Books BIB 105 Major Prophets BIB 106 Life of Christ BIB 107 Acts and Epistles BIB 108 Epistles and Revelation THE 120 Foundational Experiences THE 121 The Law and the Spirit THE 310 The Bible Speaks to Contemporary Issues BIB 390 Biblical Dissertation Life in the Spirit (8 courses) THE 101 The Basics of Christianity REN 103 Communion with God REN 204 Naturally Supernatural COU 202 Counseled by God REN 206 Increasing the Anointing REN 208 War in the Spirit WOR 101 Believer’s Worship I REN 310 Wisdom through Dream Interpretation

Life Skills (3 courses) BUS 102 Fulfill Your Financial Destiny HEA 102 Take Charge of Your Health COU 203 Cornerstones of Communication Leadership Skills (7 courses) GOV 101 The Christian Heritage ofAmerica GOV 301 The Ministry of Civil Government EDU 102 Apprenticed to Leadership LEA 103 Gifted t o Succeed! LEA 205 Creating Your Mission Statement LEA 321 Visionary Leadership LEA 201 Creative Problem Solving Discounted package price only $1100 (includes S&H) Order Now! 1-800-466-6961