Visible Year 6: Good Things Come in Pairs

In the fall of 2006, we attracted another 30+ students to Visible Music College with the newly accredited programs and the first Bachelor Degree candidates. We had become a school of one year certificate, second year certificate, and then third year graduate with a BA…or BFA…or whatever we were trying to pull off with so little backing. We had made it though a year of severe lack based on attempting to become accredited and our partnership with another college falling apart on their end (treating our students so poorly in customer service). I could not believe the state of higher education and we became the “new school” in accredited circles and saw a surge in determined and longer staying students that seemed like the right place to land. We’ve changed very little since 2006 in program and plan and we had a phenomenal staff like we do now.

What we DID see that was encouraging in 2006, was the arrival of so many matched pairs - brothers, sisters, marrieds, even twins!

We saw married couple Bryan and Crystal Bergman arrive last minute from the Central Coast of California. We enjoyed growing with the Hazlerigs, the Behrs, the Garners, the Isons, the Kellys, and the Marriotts. So many family people began joining our family and it was a time of exciting musical expression, records coming out of the fledging record label run by students and the expansion of the rooms we could use at the old Huff n Puff Road building. We kept developing the Days Inn as student housing and pushed out some of the criminal element living there. We got more involved with the Grammy folks in Memphis and constantly bridged the church/industry gap for people.

Wild and fun family time.

Seven years is hard to keep something going with such passion and lean staffing and low financial support. We struggled with grant writing for the first time, explaining ourselves to Memphis donors and having (very poor still) alumni now with ministry jobs and visiting friends from the CCM world seeing what we were achieving at Visible - pretty amazing. We’ve lived in this dichotomy as many independent ministries do - incredible ministry breakthrough and training and success in small ways, coupled with a tough sell and tough funding behind the scenes, always running as clean as possible and helped in secret ways by quiet donors at just the right God moment. Without the heroes of God's sustainability plan, we would have closed long ago.

What a blessing to have real family in ministry, as trainees, trainers, and supporters.

God gives us the family we need, in pairs, in threes, in hundreds.
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Todd and Emily Marriott are Battle Victorious, a young married couple from another ministry who grew and changed Visible, and landed in North Carolina with a precious family.