Historical Timeline

Historical Timeline

1996 | California founding. Gregg Garner leads the group's first trip outside the country, alongside Tara Garner and Robert Muñoz, to Mexico, the same year informal Bible studies and community gatherings take hold around Azusa Pacific University. Garner marks 1996 as the establishment of Global Outreach Developments, on the premise that developing people must precede and sustain infrastructure.

1997 | Community Service Becomes Routine; Kenya trip prepared. Garner and his college team facilitate community service in the Azusa region of California, and begin preparing a service trip to Kenya, the group's first venture into East Africa. Jason Roufs officially joins the founding circle this year.

1998 | Kenya trip; full commitment. The Kenya trip planned the prior year takes place. Garner has said it made clear to him that stated conviction required visible action to mean anything, and it was the point at which he knew there was no plan B: this was the work he had to do full time. The first version of UnNamed Servant also forms this year in California.

1999 | Nonprofit status; marriage. Global Outreach Developments completes nonprofit incorporation and federal tax exemption. Gregg and Tara Garner marry. The A-Team establishes Global Outreach Developments’ first East African hub in Embu, Kenya.

2000 | Move to Nashville. The organization relocates its base from California to Nashville, TN.

2001-2002 | Band and internship formalize. The Nashville lineup of UnNamed Servant forms with Garner, Robert Muñoz, and Paul Olson; the band releases its self-titled debut, recorded for roughly three hundred dollars using a plastic drum set and only twenty-four tracks, without external preamplifiers. The first summer internship runs with roughly a dozen participants, among them Skylar Aaseby, who joins the same year as the organization's first audio engineer and later becomes a full performing member of the band.

2003 | Nashville offices; early business plans. The organization secures its first dedicated office space at Perimeter Park off Harding Pike, giving the work a fixed professional address for the first time. Garner also drafts his first commercial business plans this year, though the timing is wrong and they go unused until 2011.

2004 | The Institute opens. The Institute for Global Outreach Developments begins instruction at Perimeter Park with twelve students and seven staff, registering with the Tennessee Higher Education Commission in its first academic year. Dr. Phillip Michael "Mike" Garner serves as the Institute's Founding Director and Academic Dean through 2010.

2005-2006 | Rapid growth. Enrollment doubles from twelve to twenty-four, then to forty-eight, and later reaches roughly seventy over successive years. A mature annual rhythm takes shape, encompassing academic terms, service trips, and a summer internship, and an advanced internship tier called Immersion begins for participants ready for more independent responsibility.

2004-2010 | Music and academic expansion. UnNamed Servant releases Yeah (2004) and Anthem (2008); Skylar Aaseby becomes a full band member in 2007.

2007 | Nyumba. The organization purchases a karaoke bar near campus and converts it into Nyumba, a student lounge, office, and informal social center that also becomes an early recording space.

December 2008 | Old Hickory campus. Global Outreach Developments International relocates from Antioch to a former segregated school in Old Hickory, completing a forty-day renovation in time for the next semester. The Institute graduates its first class that same year.

2009 | Da' Mission. The organization replaces its traditional summer-internship format with a new program, Da' Mission, focused on purpose and vocational calling; the format runs for approximately three summers.

2010 | Invitation to Exile. UnNamed Servant releases its fourth and final full-length album.

2011 | Accident and enterprise. A serious accident during an East Africa tour interrupts UnNamed Servant's international touring. National touring continues after 2012. Garner begins a first group of businesses, including MCH Nashville, NOVA Birth Services, Details Nashville, and Center Street Recording Studios. Two Institute student dormitories are built.

2012-2013 | One-acts and new institutions. Garner writes five original one-acts, What Matters, Anonymous, In the Dark, Real Meaningful, and It's Elementary, after Institute students want to stage plays the school cannot afford to license. In 2013 he founds both the Academy K-12 School, beginning as an elementary school under the name G.O.D. Elementary, and The Arts at Center Street, a separate nonprofit arts organization.

2014-2017 | Full-length theatre and school growth. The Academy's high-school program begins around 2014-2015, and by 2017 the school offers instruction across the full K-12 range under the name Academy for GOD. Garner writes and stages ALIEN: The Musical (2014), Mental (2016), and Homeless (2017). He writes Breathe: A New Musical in 2016; it premieres in March 2017. ALIEN receives First Night’s Outstanding Original Work award for 2015, presented in January 2016 and reported by BroadwayWorld. Mental and Homeless later receive support from the Tennessee Arts Commission through The Arts at Center Street.

2017 | Accreditation begins; registration formalized. The Institute starts a multiyear accreditation process with the Association for Biblical Higher Education, roughly thirteen years after registering with the state of Tennessee.

2018 | Operational turn. Garner steps back from forms of spiritual leadership and concentrates more heavily on business, operations, and institutional sustainability, expanding the entrepreneurial portfolio into accounting, human resources, media, and technology services, and establishing a holding company connected to real estate management, The GJXMI Group, alongside a co-founded real estate brokerage and wellness business.

2020 | Pandemic continuity. The Academy adapts its curriculum into home-education resources and Zoom-based classrooms serving roughly 230 students in the United States, Uganda, and the Philippines.

February 2021 | Candidate status. The Association for Biblical Higher Education grants the Institute Candidate Status, a pre-accredited stage marking roughly seventeen years of progress since the Institute opened and four years since the formal accreditation process began.

2021 | Public recognition. Organizations and businesses associated with Garner's work receive sixteen top-three placements across education, nonprofit service, the arts, construction, and other categories in the Nashville Scene's Best of Nashville Readers' Poll.

2022 | Financial leadership. Garner becomes Chief Financial Officer of the nonprofit organizations, alongside his continuing executive responsibilities.

2023 | International tourism; renewed programming. Garner opens an African safari lodge, and the summer internship program resumes after a pause of several years.

2024 | Accreditation and PlainSpoken. The Institute receives initial accreditation from the Association for Biblical Higher Education, twenty years after opening with twelve students. The Academy earns Cognia accreditation and is named a 2024 Cognia School of Distinction. PlainSpoken, produced by Center Street Media with Garner as executive producer, premieres on Georgia Public Broadcasting on September 23 and begins a year-long PBS engagement.

2025 | Athletics and revival. The Institute fields its first collegiate athletic teams, men's soccer and women's volleyball, as a provisional Division II Mideast member of the National Christian College Athletic Association. The Academy's junior-high boys basketball team wins the school's first state Division I championship. A revival season brings the 2012-2013 one-acts back to the stage, including a new staging of It's Elementary and Real Meaningful. By 2025, more than 120 students have graduated from the Institute.

Today | Historical archive and current work. Garner's current work focuses on executive advisory, writing, and selected entrepreneurial ventures. Current professional inquiries are directed to GreggDGarner.com.