Teen Challenge: Possible missionary mill?

I've written quite a lot on the subject of coercive "behaviour modification" facilities in past--including legislative efforts to stop the industry in its tracks as well as exposes of their heavy usage as a dominionist "parallel economy" alternative to legit mental health and info on gross abuses in these facilities.

Over the next few days, we are going to focus on a specific chain of these facilities (which have been compared to Abu Ghraib)--Teen Challenge, a chain of Assemblies-run "faith based rehabs" that was the target of a "get out of jail free" deregulation of the "kiddie gulag" industry in Texas by none other than George W. Bush.

In a continuation of the series, we focus on how Teen Challenge operates in part as a de facto "missionary mill" for the Assemblies of God--and in fact as a particularly insidious recruitment front for the group.  

Part 1, intern kids and prisoners.  Part 2... Part 3: Profit!

The Assemblies of God, it can be argued, may well have found the "part 2" that the Underpants Gnomes were seeking--"Part 2", in this case, involves "get kids in Teen Challenge in mandatory Training Program that is lay missionary core, pressure them into joining as staff, and profit".

The "Training Program"--which, as noted yesterday, is step 2 of a detailed description of Teen Challenge's program that has largely been redacted from their pages but is still available via Internet Archive--also has its fair share of warning signals.  Among them are the fact that "Trainees" are apparently put in position as shepherds (cell-church style) of "inductees":

Advanced students are also required to assume leadership responsibilities amongst the Induction Students and their peers in the Training Program. Advanced students will be asked to help supervise Induction activities and asked to help keep their peers in the Training Program accountable for keeping the rules of the program. It is expected that every student in the Training Program should aspire to reach the advanced level. Failure to do so will mean that you cannot graduate the program.

This is a danger signal on two separate levels.  One, it's a sign that the abusive cell-church model which had its ultimate origin within the Assemblies is in use here; secondly, groups monitoring abusive "behaviour modification" facilities agree having former students/clients as staff is a universally recognised warning sign of a potentially coercive facility and that having clients supervising clients is a separate warning sign (again because of the extreme likelihood of "discipling and shepherding" coercion).

All persons in the "Training" program are required to be missionaries (and, since Teen Challenge is an Assemblies front, it can be legitimately argued they're training to be Assemblies missionaries and, quite possibly, eventually Assemblies pastors--as I've noted in previous posts, the Assemblies missionary core is almost entirely a "lay missionary" core, and the Assemblies of God has some of the most lax requirements of any denomination for pastoral training--you can literally serve as a lay missionary for Teen Challenge for two years, get a pastor to give a good word, and essentially get ordained without any formal seminary training whatsoever).  The site gives more info:

We have determined that outreach ministry is an important part of the Teen Challenge program philosophy. There are benefits not only to the many who receive a special touch from God through participating in a team, but also helpful as a part of the redemptive process while here at the Teen Challenge Farm.

All students in the Training Program must take part in outreach . These teams include church outreach teams and one of our community volunteer teams (i.e. Youth for Christ, prison ministry, street evangelism). The following criteria shall apply to any student who signs a written commitment with an Outreach Team:

   * Your word is your bond. If you sign it, plan to follow through without excuse.
   * Outreach is not a holiday, but a vital part of God's program for you.
   * In all ministry situations, you represent Jesus Christ and Teen Challenge.
   * All rules of the program apply to you throughout your commitment to the team.

(Interestingly, Youth For Christ would appear to be the target of a steeplejack.  YfC was founded by Billy Graham, but now has close links to Campus Crusade for Christ, a group with sufficiently close links to the Assemblies that it can be considered either an "Assemblies daughter" or an Assemblies frontgroup, and it is difficult enough to classify that I typically refer to it as a "conjoined twin" of the Assemblies).

Not revealed in the initial post, but revealed in the followup, is the hidden "third level"--namely, ETP, which is training for staff (and actively uses codewords used in "discipling and shepherding" groups):

When you graduate from the Teen Challenge Farm you may be offered an ETP (Extended Training Program) position for you to continue your growth under the covering of this ministry.

ETP is a six month program which offers the graduate the opportunity to work and train in the Teen Challenge ministry. While an ETP receives a small honorarium and free room and board, he is not classified an employee, but is a volunteer in training. After successfully completing ETP Training, the individual may leave Teen Challenge or apply for a formal Staff Trainee position, which is a further six months of training. You must make formal written application a minimum of 2 months prior to your graduation to be eligible. Your application will then be reviewed and a decision provided by the Program Director."

(Note the use of the phrase "under the covering of this ministry".  This is another hint that "discipling and shepherding" is actively used--people being "shepherded" are described as being "under the covering" of a shepherd or shepherding organisation.)

So Teen Challenge pressures people to join for upwards of two years--which, coincidentially, is just long enough to get ministerial credentials without seminary training in the Assemblies.  In fact, per a report produced by an exit counselor for the Arizona Department of Corrections (which was considering allowing Teen Challenge as a form of alternative sentencing), the solitary goal of Teen Challenge by admission of its directors is to forcibly convert people into Assemblies of God theology--and if they can get future preachers, so much the better:

I visited with Wayne Soemo, Phoenix Center Director for "Teen Challenge" at 2810 North 16th Street on Monday, June 4, 1984. We spoke together for some time reviewing the activities and goals of Teen Challenge within the ADOC.

Mr. Soemo openly admitted that the primary purpose of Teen Challenge is the promotion of a specific religious belief system. He made it clear his focus is conversion. Mr. Soemo also admitted that his organization is not meeting any specific denominational liturgical requirements.

Mr. Soemo also advised that his organization does not posses, nor does he have on file, any specific consent forms that are signed by the custodial parents of minor children currently involved with Teen Challenge at juvenile facilities within ADOC. He also explained that the parents of minor teens do not receive any notification when their children initially become involved in Teen Challenge programs.

While at the Teen Challenge office Mr. Soemo gave me literature about the organization. Throughout that literature the intent of the organization is made very clear.

Phase I of the five phases of Teen Challenge, according to their literature, is "Basic Confrontational Evangelism."

Phase II, III and IV revolve around constant and continuous indoctrination or "Christian studies," also accomplished through "One on One and Group Counseling."

Phase V, which is about re-entry into society revolves is based upon the principle of putting a client in an "established . . .. local Church." That church would apparently meet the doctrinal requirements of Teen Challenge.

Actually, Teen Challenge wouldn't need to meet "liturgical requirements"--as I've already noted, the Assemblies of God does not in fact have liturgical requirements like those of non-dominionist mainstream Christian churches.  Pastors are not required to have seminary training at all--you can, in fact, literally get your "preacher wings" by a simple vetting by a pastor, two years as a deacon or "lay missionary", and taking a multiple choice quiz.  That's it.  The only groups easier to become an ordained minister are the Universal Life Church (and that's because they ordain everyone free on the Internet) and Calvary Chapel and Vineyard (and that's because they are ordination mills that require signing a statement of faith and paying a yearly "membership fee").  In fact, the Assemblies, Calvary Chapel, and Vineyard probably have the loosest ordination requirements of any religious group whose pastors are accepted as credentialed in all 50 states (not all states accept ULC online ordinations).

Further in the report, it is noted that:

Those four steps are based upon the following scriptures within the New Testament:

   * John 3:16

   * John 10:10

   * Roman's 6:23

   * John 1:46

   * John 1:12

The four steps are very similar to what has also been called "The Four Spiritual Laws," as defined by Bill Bright the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. Obviously, this is focused upon proselytizing and indoctrinating people to accept a specific religious belief system.

The similarity to Campus Crusade's "Four Spiritual Laws" isn't surprising--Campus Crusade, as I've noted earlier, is very closely connected with the Assemblies (and I'd not be shocked to find the "Four Spiritual Laws" were in fact borrowed from Assemblies theology popular at the time).  

John 3:16 is fairly familiar to most folks (the usual "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son") so I won't gloss too much on that.  The other verses, in the NIV, are of various verses on how essentially Jesus is meant to be the only way to live without being completely destroyed--with the exception of the rather bizarre inclusion of John 1:46, which is actually incomprehensible without context:

"Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked.  "Come and see," said Philip.

(This is, without a doubt, one of the more decidedly bizarre bits of selective quoting I've seen.  Unless one already knows that Jesus is traditionally seen as a Nazarene, and that this was part of a narrative in which the apostle Philip is introducing Nathaniel to Jesus (and Jesus tells Nathaniel things about himself he doesn't tell others), this makes no sense.)

We do hit paydirt in regards to explicit promotion of "Joel's Army"/"Joshua Generation" theology with the last verse mentioned, John 1:12:

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—

This verse--and in particular the NIV reading--has been used to justify the revival of "Manifest Sons of God" theology known as "Joel's Army" theology...a theology that is now the dominant theology within the very denomination that runs Teen Challenge.  It's also heavily used as a justification for dominionism (in that the "children of God" are "naming and claiming" what they see as rightfully theirs because they are on a "mission from God" in doing so) as well as "name it and claim it"/"prosperity gospel" (because God obviously "wouldn't want his children to want for anything").

The prosyletisation report also gives a little more info on just what goes on with those mandatory "devotional" meetings:

Each service begins with "testimony" and various areas of "study or sermon," with conversion always the obvious goal.

And...needless to say, when people are increasingly being forced to attend as a condition of parole...this could be a wee bit problematic.

Tomorrow--revelations at the Florida Teen Challenge boy's camps--which include literal "God Warrior" imagery, right down to the camo and drill patrols, not to mention some particularly disturbing insights as to the levels of abuse.

Previous posts in this series:
Part 1: Teen Challenge: The Assemblies' own "kiddie gulag"
Part 2: Teen Challenge: Coercive groups disguised as rehab
Part 3: Teen Challenge: A typical week in the "Jesus Gulag"
Part 4: Teen Challenge: Life within the "Jesus Gulag"

•  Tip jar

  Tomorrow we get into a lot of the meat of the matter--where it becomes really apparent that Teen Challenge is, at its heart, naught but an Assemblies of God Gulag.

  I'd also like to thank those who've been recommending, who've been commenting (even if they don't agree with everything here), and who've been rescuing these diaries.  Thank you.

  Also, thanks to those of you who are calling your congresscritters and asking them to support HR 5876. (Hell, maybe we can start asking Mrss. Clinton and Obama about this issue, too!)

  by dogemperor on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 02:03:13 PM PDT

•  Thanks again

  About three years ago an Assembly of God church opened in our community and we've been fending off the crazies ever since. The Teen Challenge people (who are all from someplace else) are very aggressive at our Memorial Day parade and carnival, our town's big event of the year. Dozens of them hand out fliers advertising a free chicken barbecue at their church; if you say no they still keep pestering you. It's like the drug dealers of my youth in 1980's NYC. Another thing that I find somewhat disturbing is that the families most closely involved with the AG church have adopted large numbers of African-American children who are homeschooled and kept separate from the outside community. It really hurts to see groups of these isolated kids being whisked around in vans.

  I'll send this diary to some of my neighbors. We've suspected that this church is a quasi-cult, now I'll be able to provide more information.

  by beltane on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 02:19:07 PM PDT

  •  Feel free to use the whole diary.

    I've written quite extensively regarding religious abuse and coercive tactics within the Assemblies--feel free to look through the archives, and feel free to forward along :3

    by dogemperor on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 02:24:51 PM PDT

•  Thank you, dogemporer

  I was a child raised in the Assemblies of God church (in Springfield, MO, no less -- basecamp for the crazies -- my family was friends with John Ashcroft, to give you an idea of how deep the poison goes).

  The mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse perpetuated by that branch of wackos that I endured from 0 to 18 ... ::shudder::

  It's a wonder I am a functional adult who doesn't spend hours in therapy, although I do see its residual effects in my daily life. I'm now 33, it's been 15 years since I made my escape, and I don't talk much about what I witnessed, what I was put through ... mostly because I don't have the words. How do you describe something so fantastically crazy without sounding like a loon yourself?

  All I can say is thank God (::snicker:: for lack of a better entity to thank) that I was willful and rebellious enough to keep a strong sense of self and that I learned to emotionally detach from most of what was going on around me.

  Your work to expose Teen Challenge is to be commended.

  by ariadne137 on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 03:07:12 PM PDT

  •  There's a lot of us out there, it seems.

    I myself dealt with the whole "how the hell do I even begin to describe this stuff"--trying to talk about it and even being frankly accused of being nuts or exaggerating, then pretty much clamming up to an extent (save on forums like the now-defunct Walk Away forums and the present Ex-Pentecostals forums) but also knowing--in part from investigation into some network abuse issues in 1995 where Scientologists had tried to deliberately destroy a walkaway forum on Usenet and several guides on coercive religious groups that had been posted--that I did, in fact, grow up in what amounted to a Bible-based cult.

    This kept up until me and a few friends had what had started out as an innocent talk on how hard it would be to come out to our parents as gay.

    I told them I envied them because they would have that chance...and they asked why, and pretty much everything started spilling out at once.

    I was told that I needed to write this down to inform the world.  I was also directed to Dark Christianity over on Livejournal, and I've been pretty much writing ever since November 2005 or so on this and haven't really shut up since.

    I'm still a little floored when people tell me I'm supposedly one of the very few people writing on this--more people need to write about it, more people need to expose this.  I also realise most people who, like me, lived through that particular type of holy hell may not want to touch it with a 40-foot bargepole.

    I write, in part, in the hope that no more lives will be hurt like ours were.  If I can eventually keep kids from going through the same holy hell as we did, it's all good.  And thanks to places like Talk to Action and Dark Christianity and even here, the news is starting to get out about this stuff.

    by dogemperor on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 07:53:31 PM PDT

•  Have rescued several people from

  Teen Challenge.
  Glad to see this diary.

  by Deoliver47 on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 04:42:41 PM PDT

  •  Thank you for your efforts. (n/t)

    by dogemperor on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 07:45:50 PM PDT

•  Very Interesting

  thank you for the information.  Its funny/sad how everyone seems to be unable to stop these cults - mostly because they have "bible" and "christian" in their mission statement - and there seems to be a "see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil" standard from the press and general populace.

  Yet the amount of damage they can and do, do is amazing.

  Congratulations on getting out of there with sanity.

  by shiobhan on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 10:19:26 PM PDT

•  Where does the money go?

  These programs suck money insatiably.  Who gets it?

  by kurt on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 10:28:00 PM PDT

  •  A good chunk goes to mega church facilities

    And then there are these guys.

    by mataliandy on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 11:26:32 PM PDT

•  Inmates running the asylum (literally)

  First you subject everyone to intense psychological and physical trauma.  Then you encourage these victims to traumatize each other.  Then you promote the traumatization of others as the sole means of social advancement...  Inhuman does not seem an adequate description, but I am failing to find a better one.

  Is it no wonder so many of them relapse?  I'm not sure I would be comfortable around a "Graduate" that had not relapsed at least a little.

  by hillgiant on Thu May 01, 2008 at 07:53:11 AM PDT

•  "former students/clients as staff" - !?

  Certainly I have to read quite a bit more - but I'm really not sure about that warning sign on ISAC's list ("The staff includes former students/clients of the facility."). Nothing else on the list was arguable, to me.
  Many nonprofits would cease to exist without former clients. That vague warning sign doesn't differentiate between paid and volunteer staff, or support roles that have no client contact. Preferring them to work at some competing facility instead of the one they were in could be useful, shining a light on methods other than what they "know"...

  The responsibility must stay on the clinicians / directors / "wardens". Whether the staff members were previously in the facility or not, they will do what their bosses direct and permit them to do.
  It seems that the motive and indoctrination of enlisting former clients to join the staff is the proof of their spiritual "fruits".

  (If(!) government oversight fails these clients so misreably, maybe we need Red Cross "facility monitors", along the lines of impartial election witnesses...?!
  Count me in.)

  by Rabbithead on Thu May 01, 2008 at 12:36:21 PM PDT

  •  Oh, there's multiple warning signs

    As I noted in today's post (which has just been posted up) there's a lot more warning signs than former students being staff (which is a larger warning sign that most folks realise):

    a) people are required to be "shepherded" off campus
    b) there is evidence of deceptive recruiting (including the revelation that residents must agree to the statement of faith of the Assemblies of God as a condition of being in good stead)
    c) persons are held incommunicado for months and are subject to arrest and being taken back to Teen Challenge for attempts at escape (even to report abuse to child protective agencies)
    d) parents are required to sign over custody of children under 18 to Teen Challenge
    e) folks under 18 are forced to attend an unaccredited school (and as others in this thread have noted, use a curriculum that is extremely deficient in educational standards and whose solitary goal is indoctrination to neopente dominionism)
    f) despite claims of not running "boot camps", they do in fact run "Bible-based" boot camps in multiple states including Florida
    g) there is evidence that abuse, including sexual abuse, does occur at multiple Teen Challenge facilities (I'll be going into the sexual abuse allegations tomorrow--this includes a known sexual offender who is required to submit to lifetime registration for sexual crimes against minors, and who is likely not permitted to be around minors, being a manager of a Teen Challenge facility).

    And part of the goal of HR 5876 is essentially to set up facility monitoring on a federal and state level and to remove the "faith based loophole" that Teen Challenge and most other facilities of this type are using.

    by dogemperor on Thu May 01, 2008 at 01:52:59 PM PDT

    •  Never doubted -that-

      I was expressing doubt only about the one warning sign I addressed seemed much less obvious (or, well, coherent) than the others.

      In any case I learned more from your reply (the signing over of custody of minors? Now that's chilling!) and I hope others will too.

      (What the government has already lacked the will or the sense to do, I urgently want to see done.)

      To make amends, I just e-mailed my congresscritters (polite and assertive notes).
      It is disappointing to see no relevant topic area in their forms' pull-down lists for this Act. That sorta underscores the need for attention and action...

      by Rabbithead on Thu May 01, 2008 at 09:18:04 PM PDT