Second 8th Week Ministries, Inc. founded Second 8th Week International Accreditation Agency (S8WIAA) in August 20, 2004, launching a new accreditation institute in response to the pressing need for high-quality Christian Education and responsible program development and oversight. S8WIAA is a standards developer and practitioner, serving the global faith community by promoting accountability competency.  

Overview of current accountability limitations:

There are over 6 billion people in the world. Between three and four billion people are actively involved in the major religions. The need for religious understanding has never been greater. Many in the science community have joined hands with religious leaders and educators in pursuing research that will advance and promote tangibility in connection to seemingly intangible questions of ultimacy, truth, and religious practice.

Lack of tangibility translates into major spiritual crisis. Research shows that current frameworks and guidelines continue to fail in critical aspects of faith development. Reports of faith crisis correspond to a lack of competent faith education. The resulting Exigent Faith symptoms speak of program failure. The American Psychiatric Association responded to the epidemic of religious and spiritual crisis in America and developed a new diagnostic category, "Religious or Spiritual Problem" (Code V62.89) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-Fourth Edition (APA, 1994).

The question of tangibility is perplexing and crosses religious boundaries. In an age when the global society is looking for material answers, the demand for accountability assurance in Christian Education has never been greater. Tangibility is further mystified with accountability standards that are based upon a Sliding Scale that adjusts to program inequity.

What has fueled this legacy of disorder? Diverse faith languages, conflictive methods of establishing criteria for responsible Christian Education, program development titrated with negative data points, and accountability process disparity are some of the key factors educators face. While Faith Educators and Practitioners continue to set standards based on prediction and engagement of Christian Performance Index (CPI), faith participants continue to set expectation on outcome of the index. Differences in the objectives of the two standards lead to differing emphasis in the accountability process.  

Impact Studies (IS) point towards the difficulties Christian leaders have in identifying key growth indicators. Production concerns such as church attendance, spiritual growth, discipleship, church growth, affective worship, finding purpose, and outlet for meaningful service did not translate into God’s Intelligent Design for Christ-Centered Spiritual Transformation (IDCCST). Programs, therefore, had a negative impact upon trust. Erosion of faith participants’ trust in Christian Leadership resulted in spiritual disillusionment. Program inequity, lack of relevance and meaning was perceived as par for the course and compensation came through the rise of hundreds of diverse, howbeit, persuasive accountability models, each promising to undo the errors of the previous generation, each promising new spiritual horizons.

Unable to address the core issues and satisfy a wide audience, accountability was set within prejudicial, self-verifying models with carefully controlled transparency protocols that were based on single-scale requirements rather than multi-scale requirements. A greater focus was set on improving surface credibility as opposed to improving the quality of processes that lead to program effectiveness.

Materially distinct questions such as human origin, purpose of life, and eternal destiny were not met with materially distinct responses. Faith Educators, although trying to distance themselves from the reports continue to favor Response Adjustment Protocol (RAP) through such applications as Themistic Law and Journey Masks, and the above-mentioned Sliding Scale. These subjective, self-verifying tools encouraged an Intuitive Faith rather than Cognitive Faith resulting in inability of faith participants to make educated, informed choices about how they chose to engage their faith. RAP is therefore intrinsically inadequate and results in spiritual and religious problems, which faith practitioners were unprepared to handle.

Current Gap Analysis Reports (GAR), Disparity Index (DI), and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) reveal underlying conflict in approaches towards Christian Education and piece-meal efforts to revitalize the existing accreditation system. It is unlikely that these trends will reverse themselves. Subsequently, the conditions are right for raising the bar in accountability excellence through Apostolic Governance. Core to this positive transition is a new Spiritual Accountability Rating System (SARS) that uses multi-scale analysis to disambiguate performance rating.

Emergence of Apostolic Governance:

The emergence of Apostolic Governance was driven by demands for improvement in Christian Education, the need for a credible accountability rating system, and global interest in IDCCST.  Apostolic Governance is based on stewardship of First Generation Knowledge (FGK¹) in recognition of the Headship of Jesus Christ and has resulted in a reference standard that identifies the qualitative nature of the power of Christ upon His knowledge and the tools of His kingdom.

Apostolic Governance is more transparent in that accountability is set within an equitable system with visible, material processes and outcomes. S8WIAA is prepared to handle the complex issues that accountability raises, providing such things as Gap Analysis Reporting (GAR) and Disparity Index charting, bringing to the surface the hidden antipodal data points embedded in current accountability systems, spotting problematic pathways that materially alter Christian experience, and offer remedies that rehub Christ back to Christianity.

The objective of S8WIAA is to establish accreditation for college and university programs in Cognitive Faith and Choice Education for IDCCST. As such, disciplines such as Psychology, Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, Neurophysiology, Ontology, Comparative Religious Studies, Theodicy, Systems Theory, Philosophy, Christology, Angelology, and Phenomenology have also been standardized to the same high level for quality assurance. Programs and labs offered by Second 8th Week University and Colleges are accredited disciplines.

Dr. vonAnderseck, founder and president of Second 8th Week Ministries, and Provost of the University, and founder of S8WIAA has engineered the vonAnderseck Assessment Scale (VAS), a multi-scale analysis that provides a concise means of measuring doctrine and discipline against Primary and Secondary Stem to determine where the exigent faith lies and how to assist those in faith crisis to make choices that will enhance their Christian experience rather than destroy it. 

Dr. vonAnderseck’s 28 years of research into the science of doctrine and truth led to the creation of a nomenclature, standardizing a basic language of faith that accurately defines the dynamics of Christ-Centered Spiritual Transformation, thus demonstrating Intelligent Design in God’s spiritual ecosystem. Nomenclature further proves IDCCST against an exigent faith, providing a much-needed disambiguation of faith.

Dr. vonAnderseck’s 28 years of research yielded theory and program application, leadership, and quality assurance in higher Christian education when in March of 2003 Second 8th Week Ministries was formally incorporated to provide a full university curriculum through distance learning program.  Second 8th Week Ministries, Inc. also provides leadership internationally through apostolic networking. Second 8^th Week University now has a global impact with colleges in South Africa, London England, the Philippines, Nigeria, and throughout the United States.

S8WIAA is a governing body under the Headship of Jesus Christ, which recognizes Jesus Christ as the Head of the Church. The institute is the first accreditation agency to successfully remap the geography of faith, providing the ontological processes of Cognitive Faith without paradox.

Those serving on the Accreditation Advisory Committee (AAC) are professionals. They are called apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers who have responded to the call of God upon their lives and currently serve in various capacities.  They are representatives from Second 8th Week University and affiliate Colleges. They share the same goals of excellence in Choice Education and Cognitive Faith, and have come together to engage in program assessment, oversight, and facilitation, to assure that the University and those colleges seeking accreditation through S8WIAA adhere to the high standards set by the agency for Christ-Centered Spiritual Transformation.

Services provided by S8WIAA include program criteria development, program proficiency oversight, accreditation services, and reporting services that offer gap analysis in regard to faith disparity. S8WIAA also reports on the program success rate of the new Spiritual Accountability Rating System (SARS) developed by S8WIAA.