Inside Teen Mania

06 November 2010

Triumph or Teen Tragedy? Cult Comparison Surfaces in Texas

Part One of Two Parts

INSIDE TEEN MANIA: Behind the doors of the Garden Valley, Texas ministry, ResonateNews.com had free reign over a period of days in September and October to openly speak to students - called "interns" - at Teen Mania headquarters located 90 miles east of Dallas

By PATRICK BUTLER
ResonateNews.com

Is Teen Mania, the Garden Valley, Texas ministry to thousands of teen-agers during the past 21 years, a cult?  Comparisons become clearer when viewed alongside comments of those who actually belonged to a cult – such as the People’s Temple of Jonestown, Guyana – and lived to tell about it.

Questions about Teen Mania were raised in September when a former student – a self-described “recovering alumni” of the ministry – drew the attentions of an East Texas television station with claims of “spiritual and physical abuse.” The alleged abuse, extensively detailed on the alumni’s blog site, occurred at Teen Mania’s Honor Academy 11 years ago.  The alumni’s claims led the station’s newscast during four consecutive nights with largely inconclusive results.

Teen Mania’s David Hasz, director of the ministry’s two-year Honor Academy program, said he offered to respond to what he perceived as slanted newscasts – if he could appear live on TV.
“I was told ‘no,’ by the television station,” said Hasz.

But the former student’s claims beg the question; is anyone really watching Teen Mania closely in the rural East Texas countryside?  How visible is the ministry to neighboring churches in the East Texas community or America’s major media as a whole? And how close can a non-Teen Mania visitor really get to the day-to-day operations at the 500-acre Garden Valley campus, allowing students to talk about their experiences?

GETTING CLOSE – GEMEINSCHAFT

On any given Sunday the Rev. David Hickey of Community Christian Fellowship faces up to 150 Teen Mania “interns” – students – sitting in the chairs at his church.  Interns have been coming to his Garden Valley fellowship at approximately that rate for the past 13 years, Hickey said.
About 900 people attend Community Christian each Sunday, said Hickey, who holds a Master’s degree from Southwestern Theological Seminary in Forth Worth.
“What I have seen (concerning Teen Mania) each week for 13 years are  passionate, dedicated, spiritually hungry kids coming from around the country for Christian discipleship,” Hickey said. “I’ve never had a problem with any Teen Mania intern. Ever. Though the (interns) have limited time because of their studies, they have assisted us in our Sunday school classes and with the director of our Children’s ministry. They have always been helpful.”
The worship director for the church is Paul Baloche, an internationally-known worship composer. Baloche has often played in front of Teen Mania interns lining the front rows of the church’s sanctuary. Baloche helped start a “School of Worship” at Teen Mania’s Honor Academy in 2006 and taught in it on occasion, said Teen Mania staff.
Music teams of interns from Teen Mania sometime lead worship at Community Christian and other churches in the area, said intern Nathan Weibe, 19.
“Sometimes when Paul is out of town, we fill in,” said Weibe, as interns did at CCF on Oct. 31. “I’ve played on other teams in other local churches around here.”

GETTING CLOSE – GESELLSCHAFT

Most, if not all, of the interns hear of the Honor Academy as a result of the ministry’s stadium-sized media and music-driven event, “Acquire The Fire” (www.acquirethefire.com). The large and loud teen-oriented evening of hot sounds, lights and special effects, dramatic presentations and a good-old-fashioned religious “testimonies” was presented last weekend in Chicago after the previous week’s date in Hamilton, Ontario.
The out-front, very public event is creatively led by former Los Angeles VH-1 producer, Doug Rittenhouse who directs Teen Mania’s Center for Creative Media at the Garden Valley campus.  The center is “intern-led” said three students interviewed at the center in October. Students conceive and produce the video and special effects for Acquire the Fire, the interns said.  Rittenhouse is a three-time Emmy winner for his work with VH-1 – and nominated 20 times for an Emmy – as a music-industry journalist.
Teen Mania founder Ron Luce will typically speak at Teen Mania rallies. The event may include local pastors or national-level speakers. Baseball pro Mariano Rivera and former gang member Nicky Cruz were part of the Teen Mania rally held at the Greater New York “Battle Cry” rally in New Jersey in 2009. Cruz may be best recalled as part of Teen Challenge and the Cross and the Switchblade saga, made into a feature film starring Erik Estrada as Cruz.
The Acquire the Fire event is sometimes broadcast internationally, giving the ministry even more exposure.

NATIONAL CONTROVERSY

Major media has also latched onto Teen Mania on occasions.  Luce, Teen Mania and the ministry’s ideas - such as the Teen Age Bill of Rights and Battle Cry - has been featured on the front pages of the New York Times and the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle.
Not without controversy, however. The city of San Francisco supervisors passed an extraordinary resolution in 2006 withdrawing the welcome mat from their town – famous for  inventing the  “Love In,” – after Teen Mania kids read a “Teenager’s Bill of Rights” on the steps of City Hall. Luce said the Bill of Rights, which high-school-age Christian youth group students read at city hall,  pointedly asked leaders to help free teens from drugs, suicidal depression and immorality.
San Francisco’s sudden censor of Teen Mania drew a sharp editorial from the Chronicle. The newspaper’s Op-Ed page evidently slapped its supervisors to their senses, by calling them “sanctimonious” and declaring Luce’s Battle Cry music event “peaceful” on the Sunday front page. One supervisor apologized publically after the Chronicle’s article and Op-Ed piece.

BLUNT

The ATF extravaganza has operated publicly for 21 years and tours throughout America, said Luce.  During ATF’s 20th year, Luce bluntly said in an interview that part of his focus was to help stop a nation-wide sexual practice known as “Friends With Benefits.” That is a practice by teens in groups of friends, said Luce, who feel free to have sex with one another with no exclusive commitments.
Such frank talk is commonplace from Luce and his direct approach to teen-age issues draws antagonists and advocates. Some critics wonder if he has gone too far. Others say no one is doing more for teens to confront life-controlling traps than Teen Mania.
“What teenagers are facing today is intense,” said Beth Powell of the Teen Mania Executive Office. “What Teen Mania tries to do is be intensive enough so they can stand on the Word (Christian parlance for the Bible) on their own.”
In years past, Teen Mania has hosted up to 900 interns in a school term during the ministry’s 14-year-tenure in East Texas, said Hasz in 2009.  This year there are 450 interns, including those touring with Acquire The Fire, said Ms. Powell. The ministry currently has a $20 million dollar yearly budget.
According to IRS 990 figures, Luce’s 2009 salary and benefits totaled $163,000. All the financial figures of the corporation, salaries and benefits are public. Figures were provided promptly by Teen Mania upon request for this story.
To be considered, however,  alongside the extraordinary claim of physical abuse perpetrated by a national-level, highly publicized organization frequented by “celebrity” speakers – along with the spiritual  “control” of hundreds of teens for more than a decade while getting away with it – is the location of Teen Mania itself.

REMOTE LOCATION

Because the Honor Academy’s location in the pastoral East Texas countryside seems remote, questions about potential autonomous control have been raised occasionally during the years of the ministry’s operation.
But Teen Mania’s is not alone. The 500-acre campus is situated near the 500-acre international headquarters of Mercy Ships and the 500-acre campus of Youth With A Mission, a few miles north of Interstate 20 on Farm-to-Market Road 16. The combined staff at those ministries represents hundreds of people.
The Restorative Justice ministry, Calvary Commission in located in nearby Lindale, Texas. The Teen Mania campus is within 17 miles of the largest city in East Texas, Tyler, a town of about 120,000 people, 90 miles east of Dallas.
It was in this rural stetting that a four-day “Ropes Course” style event held in September – called the Emotionally Stretching Opportunity of A Lifetime, (ESOAL) –  was called into serious question by the former intern. The complaints were given voice by a Tyler ABC television affiliate, KLTV.
The “Ropes” obstacles course style is a tool used by corporate team builders and youth ministries internationally to challenge participants to embrace team trust, collaboration and a degree of risk taking.  The Teen Mania version of ropes, the ESOAL course, is extensive (up to five days), intense and demanding. Participation in ESOAL is voluntary and not required, said Hasz.
The personal blog of the former student claims that “unbelievable” and “mind-boggling” effects of voluntary physical  “simulations” sponsored by Teen Mania are too stressful and not examples of Christ’s love or methods. Video footage – shot by Teen Mania staffers – of groups of teens involved, was identified on the former intern’s blog as “never seen before” scenes. The blogger’s claims of abuse were also featured in the newscasts to the incredulity of some Teen Mania staff and students.
“It’s our own footage,” said Hasz.  “Not only has the video been seen before, we distributed it as a memento to our own students. There was nothing ‘hidden’ about it.”
An admittedly difficult and physically demanding course, said Hasz, edited scenes and audio from the souvenir CD made the experience look harder –and harsher - than it was, or is, today.
“The ESOAL experience has evolved over the years,” he said. “We’re always working on it to make it better, protect the participants, to help them be prepared for whatever life may throw at them. It’s not the same program it was years ago. It’s not even the same program it was two years ago, because we are constantly changing, constantly putting in new safeguards and constantly re-evaluating our approach”
There are others safeguards, Hasz said.
“No one person runs ESOAL or says what happens in it. There is a team-leadership approach to it. There is no ‘dictator’ with absolute powers over this program. That (leadership model) was put in place years ago to protect the participants.”
Given the flux of the program’s development, Hasz said that the recent critique of the ministry’s methods is 11 years old – at least.
“What is so odd about the complaint is that this former intern has never been through an ESOAL because it didn’t even exist when they were here,” he said.

CULT COMPARISON – KNOW FEAR

Inevitable comparisons of Teen Mania to Texas cults such as the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in El Dorado, or Waco’s Branch Davidians – a true Texas tragedy in the 1990’s where followers died during a federal standoff –  may exist. Comparisons seem counter-intuitive and dissimilar when viewed in the light of those who joined cults and lived to tell about it.
Author and speaker Leslie Wilson, a survivor of the Jonestown cult massacre of 1978 in Guyana, South America, said cult-like behavior often includes sequestering and non-communicative strategies, cutting off followers completely from contact with the outside world.  Wilson was one of a thousand followers duped by the Rev. Jim Jones into leaving America for a clandestine location and a promised paradise, she said. But the reality was that Jonestown was hell on earth.
“Jim Jones watched us constantly,” Ms. Wilson said. “He had spies everywhere. There were armed guards. We were not allowed to go anywhere.  There was fear that we would be found out and punished – such as cutting off our food allotment – that no one trusted anyone else. It was scary and there was paranoia every day.  It was a miracle that someone finally trusted me enough to let me in on the escape plans.”
Because of trust finally extended on the very day Jones forced about 900 followers into suicide, Ms. Wilson and a son escaped death. But she heard the gunshots that killed U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan and his entourage at the cult’s airstrip.  Her husband, remaining children, her sister and her nephews and nieces died at Jonestown.
Contrary-wise, Teen Mania interns are not only encouraged to leave the campus while attending the Honor Academy; they are required to do so each week.  Teens may choose to attend – and do – some of the largest churches in Smith County including Green Acres Baptist Church, the non-denominational multi-campus church Grace Community Church and the nationally affiliated Vineyard church, among many other denominations represented, such as Lutheran, Church of God, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and more.
“And we want those kids to have total access to the pastoral, counseling and supportive fellowship of the community,” said Melissa King, a Teen Mania staffer. Ms. King said she is an ordained minister who formerly worked with gangs in the Virgin Islands before joining Teen Mania. She went through the same Honor Academy program herself 11 years ago, alongside the current main complainant against Teen Mania.
“Far from beating our kids down, we are here to build them up,” she said, “and (the complainant) knows that. I just hope the younger brothers and sisters of our interns are not worried from hearing these news reports.”
In a letter to the editor, the pastor of the 14,000-member Green Acres Baptist, the Rev. Dr. David Dykes protested the treatment Teen Mania has recently received publically and then endorsed the ministry, encouraging others to follow suit.

DRAMA

At Community Christian Fellowship in early October, congregants filed out of the Sunday worship service.  Leaving with her mother was 18-year-old Emily Nieble who is a rarity among Teen Mania first-year interns; she grew up in, and still lives, locally.
“I saw the reports on TV and really don’t know what they were talking about,” said Miss Nieble as her mother listened a few feet away.   “ESOAL was the funnest thing I’ve ever been through,” and shrugged her shoulders.
Miss Nieble described herself as a drama student with no athletic training. She said she had never been advised by Teen Mania supervisors to refuse questions from the media. She spoke freely in a soft-spoken manner for about ten minutes until she had nothing left to say. There was no apparent hesitation, nervousness or apparent concern in her manner. Her mother let Emily speak for herself with no interjections, addendums or qualifiers to her daughters’ statements.
In a live follow-up on Nov. 4, Miss Nieble pronounced herself “happy” with the Teen Mania program, classes and work assignments.
“The whole place is run by the interns,” she said, in the similar easy-going attitude displayed a month previously. “I like it. I’m happy.”
Leslie Wilson said, “If I could have told anyone about the hell we were going through with Jim Jones, I would have done it at the first chance.  There was simply no opportunity. We were being watched constantly. Everything we said was being monitored, or at least, we were afraid it was.”
And far from being a clandestine, remote and closed location such as the polygamist compound in El Dorado, Teen Mania’s openness to major media is well known and documented.   Rolling Stone – the same magazine that published a story leading to the firing of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal in 2010 – was given free reign over a course of days in 2007 to roam the campus and talk to anyone, anywhere at anytime.     
The local daily newspaper, Tyler’s Morning Telegraph, the largest daily in East Texas has featured Teen Mania several times since 2003 with the same courtesies extended on each occasion given to Rolling Stone.   For this report ResonateNews.com was also given complete access to the campus with no escorts and extending for a period of days. No supervision staff was present during any interviews with interns, nor were any interns selected by supervisors for specific interviews.

But there was a public apology, regrets expressed, commitments made and invitation given by Dave Hasz during his interview with ResonateNews.com.

Read Part Two of Teen Mania: Triumph or Teen Tragedy here at ResonateNews.com