Religious university without students on Missouri campus raises questions

Fox 2 Now/November 3, 2024

By Linda Wagar

Lexington, Missouri — From the Los Angeles Times, to Newsweek, even Christianity Today is writing about a Christian college system embroiled in controversy from coast to coast.

And now that system is expanding in the Show Me State, raising concerns among some who live nearby.

In Lexington, Missouri, a sprawling campus once home to Wentworth Military Academy has been taken over by Jubilee University, a Christian music college.

The school opened four years ago, but if you take a walk on its campus, it’s eerily quiet. There are no students.

That’s something that Chloe Heisler, who lives nearby, can’t help but notice.

“It’s very odd,” she said.

That’s not all that’s odd about Jubilee University. It’s part of a larger network of schools connected to World Olivet Assembly – a church started by controversial South Korean Pastor David Jang, who was once a follower of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.

So far, the state of New York has shut down another of Jang’s schools, Olivet University. The state rescinded the university’s certification after some of its executives were convicted in a money laundering investigation by the New York District Attorney’s office regarding a $35 million scheme.

And in California, two Olivet universities there are fighting expulsion by the state agency that oversees religious colleges. Plus, four former students filed suit against one of the campuses, claiming they were held hostage, required to work for free and didn’t get the education they were promised.

Multiple news reports claim Homeland Security is investigating the California schools over allegations of money laundering, visa fraud and labor trafficking.

The President of Olivet University would not talk to FOX4 on camera, but in a lengthy email repeatedly denied all wrong doing. He said former students who have spoken out against the school are lying.

Back in Missouri, what’s going on at Jubilee University? To find out, we paid a surprise visit and met university President Marcus Lundin. He’s a follower of the Olivet religion and a graduate of the Olivet University system. He defended the schools.

“As far as I know there are no felonies, they are misdemeanors,” said Lundin, referring to the convictions in New York.

Although the Homeland Security investigation is still ongoing, Lundin claimed, “they didn’t find any human trafficking. It’s kind of ridiculous.”

Lundin said Jubilee’s Lexington campus has been operating online for three years with about 30 foreign students, none of whom are charged tuition.

He told FOX4 the school will eventually have dozens of foreign students on campus once it gains accreditation – though that could still be years away.

“We are in it for the long haul,” said Lundin. “We are not planning to go anywhere. We are not going to abandon the place. We are making improvements and our long-term goal is to have hundreds of students on campus.”

Since no one pays tuition, where does the money come from to maintain the sprawling campus, which the school purchased for about $1 million.

Lundin said the majority of the money comes from church members around the United States who own businesses. He would not provide specifics about who the business owners are, but a Texas lawsuit provides a clue.

A Texas E-commerce loan company, 8fig, sued Olivet, Jubilee and other affiliates for racketeering. The lawsuit claimed Olivet World Assembly and its affiliates defrauded the company out of millions of dollars by taking out loans for multiple online businesses it operates with no intention of ever paying the loans back.

The lawsuit claims the businesses are operated by people who work for Olivet University, including Jonathan Park, the president of Olivet University. Park denied all the allegations. The lawsuit also claims that Jubilee University was a direct beneficiary of the scheme.

The lawsuit goes on to claim that the universities are part of a façade used by the church to “enrich its members, eliminate criticism and provide ever expanding reach into the American populate.”

Olivet University also denied those claims. The case was settled out of court this summer. The terms were not disclosed.

Back in Missouri, Lundin insisted nothing about Jubilee University is fake. He gave us a campus tour, showing us where students will one day live and go to class.

Constantly trailing us was a Korean woman who was introduced to us as a violin teacher at the school who had just moved to Missouri from California. She told us she was disturbed by us being there because the “media doesn’t like Christians and can’t be trusted.”

Not long after speaking to Lundin at Jubilee University, he left the school because his contract was not renewed. We’ve not been able to reach him since.

Although California and New York have either shut down or are taking steps to shut down the universities, Missouri has taken no action, even though St. Louis is listed as the religion’s world headquarters.

The church owns at least five buildings in St. Louis, including the historic Orpheum Theater, which appears to be empty. Another building houses Jubilee World, which Lundin said is the parent organization for the church and its schools.

Nearby, is another branch of Olivet University, which also sits empty. We learned that most of the mail is going to a church a few miles away called Immanuel Community.

The few people we met there, would not talk to us. Even the head pastor, Anthony Chiu, declined to go on camera. He, however, told us in an email that Immanuel Community is, like Olivet World Assembly, all part of the same evangelical Presbyterian denomination with 105 churches across the United States.

That’s a claim Reverend Douglas Douma, a veteran Presbyterian minister, doubted. Douma was so curious about the denomination when New York first began investigating it in 2018 that he started doing his own research.

He wrote a blog post, calling it a “Phantom Denomination” that doesn’t even list the addresses of its churches.

“The more I looked into it the more ridiculous it got,” Douma said.

FOX4 Problem Solvers also tried to find out the addresses of the churches and were rebuffed.

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