Austin Gardner, lying and scheming, never responds to this email

In September of 2021, after Austin Gardner was put under church discipline; he sent out a barrage of mostly copied and pasted emails. He told this couple, “I will drive to you to ask forgiveness or whatever I need to do.” The couple had already forgiven Austin but said that they still did not trust his repentance since he had a habit of apologizing but not changing.

They provided Austin with very specific things he could do to show that he truly wanted to make things right. Austin Gardner never responded to the email by the couple. Instead, Austin ran from church discipline after admitting and confessing to having major sin problems, then started his own ministries after denying to Vision Baptist Church leadership that he truly had any problems at all.

Please also note:

1. Austin's pattern of insincere fake apologies which were noticed and called out in previous years
2. Austin has not shown signs of true repentance or honest admission of sins rather denying that he meant what he said when he apologized in front of the church
3. Austin had previously stated his plans to start his own ministry if the church did not let him do what he wanted. He thought the meeting with the deacons was "a joke" and just a show recorded by this witness.
4. Austin was clearly lying and insincere when he said, "[I] have no plans to be in the ministry till God fixes me if He chooses to ever use me again." Austin not only had plans to continue to do ministry and start his own non-profit (the first attempt was Advancing Global Missions and the second attempt was Alignment Ministries) but he also started his exclusive and secret Society of Mentors for those followers still loyal to him which still include VBM missionaries and VBC members.
5. Pastor Trent Cornwell of Vision Baptist Church and VBM's president Jeff Bush were both well aware of Austin's actions and both neglected to clearly communicate to the church and the VBM missionaries how Austin should have been treated as a heathen and a publican. They did that in order to protect him and keep the doors open for Austin to continue to do ministry as was their hope as exposed in the uncovered Marco Polo video showing how Vision Baptist leadership chose to ignore serious accusations against Austin including sexual, child, physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental abuse allegations made by dozens of people.

Austin Gardner's initial email is below:

On Sep 17, 2021, at 22:36, Austin Gardner xxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:

Dear ________ and ____________

I write you to tell you that God had to totally humble me for me to see the wicked person that I had become. I have in my arrogant pride not seen my sin. I have hurt you over and over again. I want you to know that I have repented. I will drive to you to ask forgiveness or whatever I need to do. I know that it will be hard to believe me but I will try to prove with my life that I have truly repented. I am not in the ministry and have no plans to be in the ministry till God fixes me if He chooses to ever use me again. 

I will never ask to be part of Vision Missions again. I have failed all of you. I thank you for beginning this process of repentance by coming before the men. I was wickedly wrong. I am so sorry. I failed God and I failed both of you. You do not need to answer this email. It is simply me starting down the road to repentance that I should have done long ago. Please forgive me

God bless

W. Austin Gardner

The couple responded with the following email on September 21, 2021:

I appreciate you writing to us to apologize. I want you to first know that we forgave you long ago. However, forgiveness does not mean we trust you and it does not mean that there has not been repercussions for the actions that you have caused by your sin. 

My concern right now is that you have not really looked hard at all that has gone wrong. You gave very vague statements about your sin. I know that the Holy Spirit works in specifics, He is not vague. I hope you will truly and humbly seek God to reveal to you what and how you’ve sinned against not just us, but the church, board, and others. I know that you have seen specifics named several times through the years. I would guess those emails and letters exist somewhere in your inbox. Perhaps revisiting them and praying over what has been said will help. It will be both painful and humbling to do, but I believe it is necessary.

My next concern is that you are once again trying to do this privately. These matters are far beyond being private. Your sin is very public. Public sins require public repentance. Your sinful leadership has created a culture at the board that has harmed not just us, but many others. If you truly are wanting to get this right, I suggest these actions be taken for us which was not done in January:

1. Apologize 

• Name specific sins you have committed. This is important on all levels. A general “I’m sorry I was bad or did bad” is not a true apology. 

• Apologize publicly - this is on different levels, and it will not work if you can’t be specific with what you’ve done

• To the church

• To the board as a whole

2. Make it right — our move has cost us greatly

• I can give you a list of VBM missionaries I would like you to speak with personally to tell them that the reason we left was because of your sin and the culture you have created (specifics are key); tell them that you are sorry for leading them this way and they should not shun, unfriend or think poorly of us. We did right in confronting you with your sin, but you have been wrong in not truly dealing with it. Again, this not just personally for us, but all who have had to leave. 
• I can provide a list of churches for you to call to admit that your sin and the culture you created that caused us to leave, ask for them to support us again
• If you can’t reach them by phone, email them or write a letter 

These things will not automatically fix everything. Past experience has shown me that you like to “fix” things very quickly and move on. This will take time, but steps like these show that you are working towards making it right. Doing these things will not mean you got the checklist done so you are good to go. There is much heart-work to be done, but these can be an act of good-faith that you want to make things right. 

We hope for true repentance and change. We would love to see VBM and VBC’s culture move into a healthy and biblical model rather than what has existed for so many years.