Guarding the Heritage and Culture of Teen Challenge Lessons of The Cross & The Switchblade

compiled by Karissa McCarter

We started this series in past newsletters.  Today we look at the last of five lessons learned from The Cross & The Switchblade that we can apply to our lives and ministries.

Paragraphs are quotes from the book with summarization points following.
Lesson 5: The Teen Challenge Atmosphere

There, in the Teen Challenge Center, we would create an atmosphere that was so charged with this same renewing love I had watched on the streets, that to walk inside would be to know that something exciting was afoot. And here we could bring boys and girls who needed special help. They would live in an atmosphere of disciple and affection. They would participate in our worship and in our study. They would watch Christians living together, working together; and they would be put to work themselves. It would be an induction center, where they were prepared for the life of the Spirit. -p. 129 (2nd page of Ch. 14)

What is the atmosphere of your Center? What do people perceive as soon as they walk inside? How can you create the right atmosphere?

To me, one of the real functions of our ministry is getting people like Walt Hoving, Grant Simmons and Clem Stone interested in the work of the Pentecostals. I would often hear remarks like this: “I’ll have to admit,” said one of our Episcopalian board members who had been to service at our chapel, “that I was a little shocked that I first heard your young people ‘praising the Lord’ and watched them raise their hands as they prayed. But I’ll also have to admit that there was something very real going on in our hearts. We Episcopalians talk about the Real Presence of Christ. He’s here in this home.” This was the highest compliment our work has ever received. It is this Presence that makes the healing work of the Teen Challenge Center possible. -p. 142-143 (Mid Ch. 15)

People heal and are changed in the Presence of Jesus.

Five hundred boys and girls had been gripped by the message of the Spirit; their lives had been radically changed; they left the gangs; they sought jobs; they started going to church. Of this five hundred, perhaps a hundred came to the Center for special counseling. And of this hundred, only a handful were in such trouble that they needed to live at the Center, absorbing directly its atmosphere of love. -p. 154 (Mid Ch. 16)

Some have such serious life-controlling problems that they need more than just discipleship – they need to know that they’re in a safe place.

Teen Challenge Center is the only place on earth where Lucky has stayed overnight of his own free will. The moment he walked in our doors he felt as if he was coming home. “The thing I like specially,” he says to newcomers, whom he greets with a broad smile, “is here they don’t care what your race is or what your nationality is. Look here, they’ve got white boys and colored boys and Spanish boys and they’re all mixed up in God.” Lucky has had an amazingly deep religious experience. He associates the new warmth and outgoingness with the Center so strongly in fact that we’re having trouble getting him to move on into the next step of his career. He doesn’t want to do anything but stay right here and help us. So… we let him stay. Lucky is our maintenance man, and a dependable one too. He earns his ten dollars a week many times over. Some day, when he is ready, Lucky will move on, as all of our boys do. But until that time comes, he is welcome here. -p. 158-159 (End of Ch. 16)

One life at a time…TC is a home where people are loved and ministered to individually–there will always be―special cases at TC, they just need to know there’s a place where they belong.

The thing that constantly amazed me about our workers was that they could have this desire “to burn out for God,” without themselves becoming taut, intense personalities. I’ve wondered about the reason for this. And I think it’s that the Center has turned out to be just what we hoped it would be: a home. Full of love, subject to spiritual discipline, heading toward the same common goal, but free. There’s a release in that kind of atmosphere that can’t be overestimated. It keeps us from becoming tied up in knots. It allows us to laugh. -p. 169 (Ch. 18)

The atmosphere of the TC Center is just as important for the staff – otherwise it can be such an intense atmosphere that people cave to the pressure and warfare.