05 November 2011

EDITOR'S NOTE: A documentary about alleged abuses at Teen Mania will air Sunday on MSNBC. ResonateNews.com published a two-part series, “Inside Teen Mania,” last year. It is being republished to offer another news perspective on the controversial claims now being revisited on a national scale. Part two will be posted Sunday.

By Patrick Butler | ResonateNews.com

Is Teen Mania, the Garden Valley, Texas, ministry to thousands of teenagers during the past 21 years, really a cult? Comparisons to dangerous cults become clearer when viewed through the comments of experts who actually belonged to a universally recognized cult — such as the People’s Temple of Jonestown, Guyana — and lived to tell about it.

Some questions about Teen Mania were raised in September 2010 when a former student — a self-described “recovering” participant of the ministry — drew the attention of a small East Texas television station with her claims of “spiritual and physical abuse.” The alleged abuse, extensively detailed on the alumna’s blog supposedly occurred at Teen Mania’s Honor Academy 12 years ago. The alumna’s claims led the Smith County television station’s newscast during four consecutive nights last year with largely inconclusive reports.

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 — on the condition he could appear live.

“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 for years, the Rev. David Hickey of Community Christian Fellowship faces up to 150 Teen Mania students — called “interns” — sitting in the rows of his church located a few miles from the Teen Mania campus. Interns have been coming to his Garden Valley fellowship at approximately those numbers for the past 14 years, Hickey said. 
About 900 people attend Community Christian Fellowship, or CCF, each Sunday, said Hickey, who holds a master’s degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Forth Worth, Texas.

“What I have seen each week for 14 years from Teen Mania students 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 Hickey's 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. He eventually helped start a “School of Worship” program at Teen Mania’s Honor Academy in 2006, teaching on occasion.
Music teams made up of interns from Teen Mania sometime lead worship at CCF and other churches in Smith County, said 19-years-old Teen Mania intern Nathan Weibe.

On Oct. 31, 2010, a worship team comprised of Teen Mania interns led the praise time at the CCF during the main Sunday service, to a packed auditorium.

“Sometimes when Paul is out of town we fill in here,” said Weibe. “I’ve played on other teams in other local churches around the county, too.”

GETTING CLOSE – GESELLSCHAFT

Most, if not all, interns become aware of the Teen Mania Honor Academy as a result of the ministry’s stadium-sized media and music-driven event, Acquire The Fire.

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 in Chicago after the previous week’s date in Hamilton, Ontario, in October 2010.

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,” three students interviewed at the center in October 2010 said. Students conceive and produce the video and special effects for Acquire the Fire, or ATF, 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 events 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 known 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 “Teenage 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 the “Teenage 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 the city's supervisors by calling them “sanctimonious.” The Chronicle declared Luce’s Battle Cry music event “peaceful” on the Sunday front page. One supervisor apologized publicly 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 nationwide 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 teenage 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, formerly 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, Hasz in 2009 said. In 2010 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 occasionally been raised during the years of the ministry’s operation. But Teen Mania is not alone in Garden Valley.

The 500-acre Teen Mania 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, is 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 96,000 people, 90 miles east of Dallas.

It was in this stetting that a four-day “ropes course”-style event held in September — called the Emotionally Stretching Opportunity Of A Lifetime, or ESOAL —  was called into serious question by the former intern, who had never been through the course. The complaints were given voice by a Tyler ABC television affiliate, KLTV.

A “ropes” obstacle course 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, 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 or teens involved for a souvenir DVD for participants was erroneously identified on the former intern’s blog as “never seen before” footage.

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, Hasz said, edited scenes and audio from the souvenir DVD 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. This (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

Texas is painfully familiar with recognized cults such as the polygamist fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in El Dorado, or Waco’s Branch Davidian — where followers died during a federal standoff in the early 1990s.

Comparisons seem counterintuitive and dissimilar when viewed in the light of those who joined cults and lived to tell about it, said cult expert, cult survivor, author and speaker Leslie Wilson, now of Atlanta, Ga. Ms. Wilson is a survivor of the Jonestown cult massacre of 1978 in Guyana, South America, and 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,” 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, Wilson and a son escaped death. But she heard the gunshots that killed U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan and his entourage at the cult’s airstrip. Her husband, remaining children, her sister and her nephews and nieces died at Jonestown.

Conversely, 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 participate with — 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. 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 publicly and then endorsed the ministry, encouraging others to follow suit.

DRAMA

At Community Christian Fellowship in early October 2010, 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 East Texas and still lives locally.

“I saw the reports on TV and really don’t know what they were talking about,” said Nieble as her mother listened a few feet away. “ESOAL was the funnest thing I’ve ever been through,” and shrugged her shoulders.

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 10 minutes until she had nothing left to say. There was no apparent hesitation, nervousness or apparent concern in her manner. Her mother let her speak for herself with no interjection, addendum or qualifiers to her daughter's statements.

In a face-to-face follow-up interview on Nov. 4, 2010, 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 Gen. 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, commitments made and invitation given by Dave Hasz during his interview with ResonateNews.com.

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

 

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