How did a pampered Yale grad come to work for such a place?

I visited Teen Challenge for the first time with my Christian singing group, Living Water, during my senior year's spring break tour. Seventeen well-dressed Yalies fresh from the classroom climbed out of the Clinton Avenue subway station, clothes and sleeping bags in tow, and made their way toward the chapel building two blocks away. As the tour manager, I was in charge of the group and feeling nervous. I'd heard stories about the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, and as we walked they all appeared frighteningly true. A cluster of teenagers hung around a corner deli smoking, old men sat playing cards outside a run-down apartment building and a couple ran past us shouting curses. All eyed our happily chattering group with dangerous curiosity.

What I saw inside the chapel didn't relax me at first either. A mean-looking man with muscular tattooed arms was mopping the lobby floor. As the seventeen of us entered noisily, he looked up.

"Hi," I said, trying to sound friendly. "We're Living Water, the group that's singing at the chapel service this morning." To my surprise, he smiled and said, "Praise God!" He gestured to a corner of the dining room beyond. "You can put your stuff down over there." I was doubtful. "Will it be safe?" He saw the look on my face, but kept smiling anyway. "No one's going to steal it. You're in the Lord's house now."

All of my apprehension, about the Brooklyn streets, the drug abusers in the program, my little band of naive Yalies, all of it fell off as soon as he said that. Throughout our visit to Teen Challenge, in fact, I felt that we truly had entered the Lord's house.

We sang for the chapel service, and a charismatic preacher from Holland delivered a message that sent students rushing to the front for the altar call. I sat in the back of the little room, mesmerized by the scene - former drug addicts, men and women alike, crying out to the Lord, some sobbing, others praying loudly, while an off-tune piano tinkled out mellow praise songs. I had experienced this type of service before in four years with Living Water, and I prayed then as I often did in those situations: "God, what do You want me to learn here?"

What It's All About
After the service, the executive director, Dave Batty, met with us alone in the chapel and explained what the program was all about.

An international organization with over a hundred centers in the U.S. and sixty more in foreign countries, the name "Teen Challenge" is deceptive, since the minimum age for entry is seventeen and most students are in their late twenties. The Brooklyn program has about forty students, equally divided between men and women, though the activities of each are kept rigidly separate. "They're here to establish a relationship with God, not to find a mate," said executive assistant Yolanda Planas.

"Teen Challenge is a Christian discipleship program designed for people with life-controlling problems, particularly chemical addictions," Batty said. "Some people refer to this as a Christian drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, but we think that's much too small a goal. Just to get a person off of drugs so they can go back into the world a healthier sinner doesn't help them a whole lot. What they need is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ."

Students, Batty explained, read the Bible and take classes on Christian topics - temptation, relationships with family, dealing with anger, obedience to authority, AIDS - all under the guidance of a personal spiritual counselor. Those who have trouble reading and writing are given special attention to improve their literacy. In addition, students perform manual labor and after a month participate in a music ministry to local churches. "We don't focus much on drugs here at Teen Challenge," Batty said, "but rather on teaching students how to apply Biblical principles to their daily lives."

After four to six months in the program, the men transfer to a much larger regional center in Rehrersburg, Pennsylvania called "the Farm," for another six to eight months. All told, they spend a year in the program. The Farm provides continued Bible study and counseling, but its focus is on preparing for life in the "real world" through bob training, GED classes and assistance in applying for college.

After answering our questions, Dave invited us to stay for lunch, and we had a chance to meet the students and talk with them ourselves. I made a beeline for the tattooed man who had been mopping the floor, whose name I learned was Eddie. I asked him about his background. He almost died several times from drugs, he told me, but through the power of God had completed several months in the program. Jesus Christ, he believed, had literally saved his life, and had continued to work in him through Teen Challenge. It was a story I was to hear dozens of times.

I also took the opportunity to pump Dave for information about what staff positions were available, and what working there was like. Standing in the lunch line with my roommate Todd, he asked me, "Sound like something you want to do for a summer?" I quipped, "Sounds like something I might want to do for life."

After Yale
My words were truer than I realized. Teen Challenge stuck with me - guys smoking at the deli, Eddie mopping the floor, the Dutch preacher, stale bread - and I prayed about it, but I was far from certain whether this was the direction I should take. After all, God wasn't stepping down from heaven and telling me in plain words what I should do. I had felt similar stirrings in my spirit on other Living Water outreaches- at homeless shelters and soup kitchens and inner-city ministries in general - but this was just romanticism, an emotional reaction, a noble but misguided desire to sacrifice everything and serve, right? Wouldn't a job like this be a waste of my Yale education?

I considered publishing jobs, since I was an English major. I thought about radio, since I had some experience in that field, too. I applied to the Peace Corps, a surprisingly popular option for Ivy Leaguers with little direction but an inclination to serve humanity. One night after graduation in May, I found a quiet place in a small Catholic church, not unlike the Teen Challenge chapel, except for a life-sized illuminated sculpture of the crucified Christ over the altar. In the silence, I prayed, "Lord, what do You want?" Teen Challenge came to my mind then, and as I thought about the prospect of working there, I felt peace. As always, though, I doubted. God hadn't spoken to me directly, after all - the Jesus at the front of that church was just an image, and my feelings might just be my own.

That August, after a summer of touring with the choir, I received three messages within a half-hour span of time: a phone call from the Peace Corps to tell me I had been assigned to Zimbabwe, a country in which I had little interest; an email from a publishing company to tell me there weren't any positions available; and a call from Yolanda to offer me a full-time paid staff position at Teen Challenge. "What more," I asked myself, "are you expecting God to do?"

To my surprise, most of my close friends and family were excited about my decision to move to Brooklyn. My college friends, Christian or otherwise, are all idealistic enough that a front-line public service job sounds admirable. Back home, I visited my church's high school youth group to talk about my new job, and a woman from my hometown who supports Teen Challenge financially invited my family to her home for a steak dinner. In her words, "We're just thrilled to hear about your career choice." My parents must have had reservations, if never spoken, and I suspect even now that they expect me eventually to move on to a career more in line with my expensive education. I have no plans in mind yet, though, and they remain supportive. The last thing my dad said before I boarded the plane in Omaha, thinking no doubt of the infamous Brooklyn streets, was, "Be careful."

On the Job
My first rehearsal with the men's choir, allow me to speak frankly, was a disaster. As the new guy fresh from college, and a white Midwesterner at that, most of the men didn't give me an ounce of respect, and they pushed constantly against the disciplinary boundaries I set in rehearsals. I discovered quickly that success in the music ministry would have nothing to do with my musical expertise, particularly since many choir members could not carry a tune. It would have everything to do with how I related to the men. After four years of working with self-confident and musically talented college students, I was genuinely surprised when one of the men became offended and angry after I told him point-blank that he was singing too loudly and out of tune. Subtlety and tact, I told myself then, have their place in ministry at least as often as confrontation and honesty.

One man who was in no danger of singing too loudly at his first rehearsal was Larry, a tight-lipped older man who wanted his business to remain his business. His facial expression during rehearsals looked as though he had swallowed something sour, and he performed only the bare minimum of what I required. When I approached his counselor about his poor attitude, Larry found out and snapped. "That's not Christian, man!" he shouted at me the next day in the chapel. "Why don't you stop worrying about my attitude and just let me be?"

I tried to calm him down. "Larry," I said. "I'm trying to help you out here. I want to be your friend."

"Well, you can be my friend best by leaving me the hell alone."

I got into a similar shouting match weeks later with Walter, a young man with whom I felt a connection. I had helped him move in his first day in the program and had met his parents -- they were no-nonsense middle-class people from Staten Island who had tried to raise their son right, and who were now deeply concerned about his drug problem. Where other staff may have seen "spoiled brat," I saw a reflection of myself, a person I might have become if circumstances had been slightly different. Walter was respectful and obedient enough the first few weeks, but on this particular day in rehearsal, he engaged in horseplay in the back row of the choir.

Discipline at Teen Challenge usually comes in the form of the write-up slip, a paper form given to a student's counselor detailing their infraction of the rules. The counselor then assigns the discipline he feels is appropriate, often a written Scripture project or a revocation of privileges such as free time or snacks in the evening. After rehearsal that day, I pulled Walter aside and told him that his counselor would receive a write-up form from me. And he blew his top.

"I was just doing what everybody else was!" he shouted. "How come you didn't write up anybody else? How come you're picking on me? It's not fair!" His insult got under my skin, because it was partly true -- my discipline did lack a sense of balance at times -- but I stayed firm. "It doesn't matter what anyone else was doing," I said, a line I would come to use often with students. "What matters is that you were goofing off."

"Look, man, I've been sticking up for you when guys bad-mouth the choir, but you can forget about it now! I ain't sticking up for you any more!" With that, he turned on a heel and stormed out.

I had been warned beforehand that working with reformed addicts is much like working with junior high kids, for the simple reason that when heavy drug use begins, emotional development stops. Instead of dealing with life's problems, even the pettiest everyday situations, an addict will medicate himself with his drug of choice. A man who smokes crack as a teenager, for instance, will remain a teenager emotionally until the day he quits. In this sense, the students at Teen Challenge are broken people. Daily we encounter thirty- and forty-year-old men who look, talk, hold down jobs, sustain marriages, and raise children like the grown men they are, but who handle everyday frustrations like adolescents. Character growth in such damaged individuals is painfully slow. Staff must be able to hold a long-range view of progress, at times an eternal view.

Slow Growth
My relationship with Larry improved in the weeks after our argument, but he was still less than thrilled about being in the choir. An integral part of every outreach are personal testimonies from the men, three-minute descriptions of how they came to Teen Challenge and what God has done in their lives, so an important exercise for each new choir member is to deliver a personal testimony to the group during rehearsal. Larry must have forgotten about the assignment, because when his day came around, he was completely unprepared. Standing at the chapel pulpit in front of us, he gave me his sour look and fumbled through about a minute's worth of how he couldn't remember half of his past himself. "I'm probably not the one whose testimony is going to inspire you to get off drugs or turn your life over to the Lord," he said frustrated, and sat down.

"At least he was honest," I told the group later. "And honesty is what I like to see in your testimonies."

That night when I talked to him about it, I discovered that Larry had written out his testimony, but had simply neglected to bring it with him to rehearsal. I discovered something else that night as well -- Larry possessed a promising talent as a writer.

"I've been beaten down, cut, o.d.'ed on heroin, almost killed another man I robbed for drug money, and almost got killed myself because I was with another man's wife," he wrote in the opening paragraph. "I've been to more jails than I have churches." His former life had been harrowing, but I found myself on the verge of tears for his descriptions of the new life he had found in Christ. "It's not easy being surrounded by people who care about you, and who want you to do the right thing, when you've been doing the wrong thing for so long," he wrote. "I used to struggle everyday just to get out of bed in the morning -- my roommate will verify that! But since I received eternal life, I rejoice in every day that the Lord makes and wakes me up to see."

Walter also found himself in a way through the personal testimony. I selected him at the last minute to share at an outreach to a Salvation Army rehab program, and he delivered his piece completely unrehearsed. Walter told me later that he learned much about himself that night, things he hadn't considered seriously before, particularly regarding the miracles God had worked in his life. "I've been pronounced clinically dead three times because of heroin overdose," Walter said. "Twice my father showed up at my apartment for no reason at two in the morning and rushed me to the hospital. It's a miracle of God that I'm even alive today. I know that now. And then to think of all the ways He's been working on me since I've been here, it's unbelievable."

In early February, the staff drove a group of students to Pennsylvania to visit the Farm and attend a graduation ceremony. I sat next to Walter during the ride home to Brooklyn, and for three hours he picked my brain about various topics. "What do you believe about hell?" he asked. "Do you think animals have souls? Why does God let people die in natural disasters? What do Jewish people believe about Jesus? Why do we believe the Bible is true, but not the Koran?" I couldn't answer many of his questions, but by the time we pulled into the driveway behind the men's house, I was giddy with excitement to have found a student with such an open and inquisitive mind. Walter was hungry, starving to find truth, and passionate about building a relationship with the God Who made him and saved him. I wished that more "mature" Christians could be as excited about their new life in Christ as the babies.

In March, Larry transferred to the Farm, shortly after his 49th birthday. The man who had hated choir rehearsal four months earlier sang with us the Friday before he left, not because we had to prepare for an outreach, but just because he "wanted to praise the Lord." His sour look had been replaced, slowly and almost unnoticeably, by a smile. In the latest version of his testimony, Larry wrote, "I was dead. But by the mercy and grace of God, today I'm alive." In April, Walter will join him at Rehrersburg.

Accepting the Challenge
Working for an addiction ministry is more challenging than any college course I've ever taken. At times I pull my hair in helplessness and frustration, and I cry to the Lord, "Help me!" That's a prayer I think He likes to hear, considering how often He makes me pray it. The frustrations are outweighed, however, by the reward of watching people slowly transform into disciples of Christ. Nothing dramatic happens overnight here, but gradually students come to grips with the personal issues underlying their drug addiction, let go of their anger, learn to forgive, and begin to smile and laugh like they haven't since they were children. I get to see them become the men and women God intended them to be all along.

If you are a college senior, or a younger undergrad thinking ahead to graduation, I encourage you to consider spending part of your life in a ministry such as Teen Challenge. As a senior, I watched many of my Christian classmates consider "missionary" work after graduation, but when they discovered neither an interest nor a burden for a particular foreign country, they decided that "missionary" work was not for them and proceeded directly into a private-sector job or grad school. I fell into the same line of thinking myself, as I applied to the Peace Corps. I dreamt of serving the disadvantaged in a third-world country, while nearly missing the ministry opportunity practically in my backyard.