It was the summer of 2007 and I was in Tijuana, Mexico building homes on a Teen Mania mission trip with nearly 600 teens from around the country. A young girl on my team was a current intern at Teen Mania and mentioned to me that the ministry had been hunting for Ron’s new assistant. They have spent several months collecting resumes and interviewing people from around the country. Teen Mania had gone so far as to hire Rebecca Contreras, a former White House aide to President Bush, as a consultant to interview prospective applicants.
That next morning I woke up early to reach the build site where we were constructing a 350 square foot house for a family that had been living in a glorified wooden shack for many years. The wood and building materials had been delivered the night before and lay in front of their dusty dirt plot that would soon become their home. As I arrived I noticed that the wood had a large blanket laying over it that hadn’t been there the night before. As I grew closer I saw the blanket moving and realized something incredible.
This poor family had slept on the wood that night to ensure that no one took their future home. The family showed incredible gratitude for our help, and hugged each and every one of us with tears in their eyes as we handed them the keys to their new home.
That was why I made the decision to submit my resume to Teen Mania to become the next assistant for Ron Luce. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to change lives. I wanted to do things that mattered to the least of these, and most of all I wanted my life to count for more than just myself. I gave up my very successful career working for JP Morgan Chase Bank. I sold my home and virtually all of my possessions because I believed I was answering the call. Please understand, I don’t say any of that as credit to myself, but to illustrate that I meant my commitment when I chose to enter full time ministry.
It didn’t take long before I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. The first day I arrived I had a meeting with my staff of interns. Within the first thirty minutes of that meeting I noticed that several of the interns were crying. I began to probe and try to ascertain what was happening and almost immediately was told a statement that sounded like a rehearsed PR speech, “The Executive Office is a very challenging ministry placement and requires great faith and perseverance to endure.” I had heard “Christianese” lingo like that before, but this seemed like something that had been said thousands of time before my arrival. I knew something was very wrong, but I just didn’t yet know what or who was the source of the problem. Little did I know I was about to discover the truth behind the tears.
The interns were crushed and the ones responsible for the mistake were completely destroyed by his words. This was a man they loved and revered in every sense of the word, and they had let him down by a simple mistake that wasn’t even their fault. Never mind the fact that this was a personal task that he himself should have been doing on his own time. I wish I could say that this was the last time this type of behavior occurred, but even in the short time I spent at Teen Mania I witnessed this type of verbal mistreatment on countless occasions. My job eventually became spending large portions of my week trying to convince many of the interns not to quit and leave the ministry entirely. Crying in my office became a regular occurrence and no matter how hard I tried to shield them from his emotional outbursts, they continued on a regular basis.
I know this behavior continued long after my departure because a while back I called the Executive Office at random and spoke to one of the interns who happened to answer the phone. Without even knowing her name I told her that I was praying for her and that I understood the hardship that she was facing by working in that department. Not even two minutes into the conversation had passed and she was crying quietly telling me how much she couldn’t stand the hardship of the Executive Office and how much she missed home.
It is very easy to focus on the financial failures of this ministry. It is easy to poke holes through the mistakes that were made by allowing Mr. Luce to maintain his white knuckled grip on a multi-million dollar empire that it became, but the biggest tragedy are the lives that he has damaged by his words, his actions and his inability to accept fault or failure.
For me this was best illustrated at the end of my tenure with Teen Mania Ministries. Towards the end of my time at Teen Mania I had discovered that my wife had been unfaithful to our marriage and I believed I needed to take time to try and recover what remained of our relationship. I sought a private one-on-one meeting with Mr. Luce to discuss my need for time away from the office. Despite the fact that I already had one foot out the door and my ongoing reservations with his behavior I decided to bear my heart to Mr. Luce. He remained quiet as I relayed the somber and devastating news to him. When I had finished he very confidently sat up in his chair and said something that to this day completely and utterly blew me away.
I was at the office until nearly 10pm that night before I was able to go back home and spend a few fleeting moments with my wife and kids before they went to sleep.
Well I cannot speak for anyone else, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.