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

compiled by Karissa McCarter

We started this series in the last e-newsletter. See connections.teenchallengeusa.com for last weeks article. Today we look at the first of five lessons learned from the book that we can apply to our lives and ministries.

Paragraphs are quotes from the book and summarization points are placed right after.

Lesson 1: The Role of Prayer

How much time do I spend in front of that screen each night? I wondered. A couple of hours, at least. What would happen Lord, if I sold that TV set and spent that time-praying? 

I was the only one in the family who watched TV anyway. What would happen if I spent two hours every single night in prayer? It was an exhilarating idea. Substitute prayer for television, and see what happened. Right away I thought of objections to the idea. I was tired at night. I needed the relaxation and change of pace. Television was part of our culture; it wasn’t good for a minister to be out of touch with what people are seeing and talking about.

I got up from my chair and turned out the lights and stood at my window looking out over the moonlit hills. Then I put another fleece before the Lord, one that was destined to change my life. I made it pretty hard on God, it seemed to me, because I really didn’t want to give up television. “Jesus,” I said, “I need some help deciding this thing, so here’s what I’m asking of You. I’m going to put an ad for the set in the paper. If You’re behind this idea, let a buyer appear right away. Let him appear within an hour…within half an hour… after the paper gets on the streets.”

When I told Gwen about my decision next morning, she was unimpressed. “Half an hour!” she said. “Sounds to me Dave Wilkerson, like you don’t want to do all that praying.” Gwen had a point, but I put the ad in the paper anyhow. It was a comical scene in our living room after the paper appeared. I sat on the sofa with the television set looking at me from one side, the children and Gwen looking at me from another, and my eyes on a great big alarm clock beside the telephone. Twenty-nine minutes passed, by the clock.

“Well, Gwen,” I said, “it looks like you’re right. I guess I won’t have to-“The telephone rang. I picked it up slowly looking at Gwen. “You have a TV set for sale?” a man’s voiced asked. “That’s right. An RCA in good condition. Nineteen-inch screen, two years old.” “How much do you want for it?” “One hundred dollars,” I said quickly. I hadn’t thought about what to ask for it until that moment. “I’ll take it,” the man said, just like that. “You don’t even want to look at it?” “No. Have it ready in fifteen minutes. I’ll bring the money.”My life has not been the same since. – p. 16-18 (Ch. 1)

TC never would have been founded without this initial decision by Dave Wilkerson – TC will continue to develop and see success as we continue in lives of prayer.

Nobody was listening. Directly in front of me a boy and girl were doing the Fish, the grinding hips that brought whistles and clapping from onlookers. Others picked it up, cigarettes hanging sideways from their mouths, bodies quivering with excitement. It was hardly the setting for a sermon. In despair I bowed my head. Lord, I said, I can’t even get their attention. If You are doing a work here, I will have to ask You even for this. While I was still praying, the change began. It was the smallest children who settled down first. But when I opened my eyes I noticed that a lot of the older boys who had been leaning up against the school fence, smoking, had straightened up, taken their hats off and were now standing with heads slightly bowed. I was so startled by the sudden silence that I was at a loss for words. – p. 76 (middle of Ch. 7)

David’s prayers were never long and religious, they were simple and from the heart and made the difference. As Oswald Chambers says, “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work, prayer is the greater work”

But in the meantime, I found certain advantages in my monastic existence. My little cell of a home was a perfect place for prayer. There were no physical comforts to offer distraction. The ten-by-twelve room had just one desk, a hard straight-backed chair and my couch. I found that it was a pleasure to pray in this setting of austerity, and each night I look forward to my old television-viewing time-midnight to two a.m. – as a time of renewal. Never did I get up without being refreshed, encouraged and filled with new enthusiasm. – p. 131 (second page of Ch. 13)

Find thatperfect place and time for prayer – that’s our source for what we’ll need to be a TC worker.

I got together with my central committee, which was really just a fancy name for the group of six ministers and three laymen, all men of wonderful spiritual vision, who were interested enough in young people to give time to our organization. I told them of the growing need for a home where gang members and narcotics addicts could associate with Christian workers. I told them about Gwen’s feeling that we ought to commit ourselves to a place first, then worry about paying for it later. The committee was willing to go along with the idea. “We can think of it as an open experiment in faith,” suggested Arthur Graves, one of the ministers on our board. This is the sequence of events that immediately followed our decision: On December 15, 1960, at two o’clock in the morning while I was deep in prayer, I received the sudden clear impression that there was a particular street in Brooklyn we were supposed to investigate. – p. 131 (middle of Ch. 14)

Sometimes God willgive us clear and specific direction that can save us wasting a lot of time doing it in our own way – this onlycomes to a heart tuned to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Like everything else at the Center, we get our food by praying for it. This is one of the projects in which our living- in gang members take a most active role. Each day we pray for food, and the way it comes in is a vivid lesson to boys just learning about faith. — p. 180 (third page of Ch. 18)

Involve the staff and students in praying for the needs of the Center. Pray specifically and watch God answer specifically. Here is an example of an answer to prayer on pages 180-182.

One day, the kids awoke and washed and went down to breakfast and there wasn’t anything on the table. By the time I arrived in the office from home, the center was buzzing with the problem of no food. “Your prayers didn’t work I guess this time, did they, Dave? said one of the gang boys. Lord, I said to myself, teach us a lesson in faith that will live with us forever. And aloud, I said, “Let’s make an experiment. Here we are without food for the day, right? The boy nodded his head. “And the bible says, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ right?” “If you say so.”

I laughed and glanced at Reverend Culver, who shrugged and nodded his head as if to say he’d teach the boy the Lord’s Prayer. “So why don’t we all go into the chapel right now and pray that we either get the food for this day or money to buy the food.” “Before lunch, Dave?” said the boy. “I’m getting hungry.” “Before lunch. How many people do we have here?” I glanced around. The number in the center was constantly shifting. On that day we could count 25 people who need to be fed. I figured it would cost between 30-35 dollars to feed that number of people lunch and supper. Others agreed. So we went into the chapel, closed the door and began to pray.

“While you’re at it Lord,” said the little hungry boy, “would You please see to it that we don’t go hungry for the rest of the summer?” I looked over, mildly annoyed. It seemed to me that this was stretching things a bit. But I had to admit that it would leave us freer to work at other kind of prayer if we didn’t have to pay so much attention to such basic needs as food.

One of the things about our prayer at the center is that it tends to be a bit loud. We do pray aloud often, and there is a wonderful freedom in the Spirit that sometimes frightens people who hear it for the first time. They may think it is uncouth, without realizing that we are just expressing our true feelings before God. If we felt concerned, we say so not only with out lips but with the tone of our prayer. And this morning we were quite concerned.

While we were saying so in tones that left no doubt about how we felt, a stranger walked in. We didn’t even hear when she knocked on the door of the chapel. When finally she opened the door and saw all 25 of us on our knees, thanking God for the food He had given us in the past and thanking Him, too, for the food He would be giving us, somehow, in this emergency, I’m sure she was sorry she had come.

“Excuse me, “she said softly. “Excuse me!” she said, louder. I was near her and immediately got up. The rest of the workers and gang members kept right on with their prayer.”When did you begin this prayer?” the lady asked. I figured up. “About an hour ago.” “Well,” she said, “that it truly extraordinary. I knew very little about your work. But an hour ago I received a sudden impulse to do something that is completely out of character for me. I felt that I was supposed to empty by piggy bank and bring the contents to you. Now I know the reason.”

She reached into her purse. She placed a white envelope on my desk and with an expression of hope that it would be of some help, she thanked me for showing her our center and left. That envelope contained just over 32 dollars, exactly the amount we needed to feed ourselves for the rest of the day. And, do you know, the teenagers prayer was answered, too! For the rest of the summer, we never again wanted for food.

Think about it:

• Do we depend on God to meet our personal and ministry needs?
• Do you have a plan that encourages staff and intercession?
• Is our faith in man or in God to meet our needs?
• We will look at the next 4 of the 5 lessons in the next e-newsletters.