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TOP JOBS

By PATRICK BUTLER
Religion Editor

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Tyler Paper published a series of articles on Teen Mania in early 2008. This page contains links to the entire series.

The New York Times, Time magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, ABC News, the O’Reilly factor and more — many more — have scrutinized the youth movement centered in East Texas’ Smith County known as Teen Mania. Even Rolling Stone and Spin music magazines sent writers to the 500-acre Garden Valley campus of Teen Mania to cover the music tied to God’s name.

Sometimes, founder Ron Luce said, the national media got it right as they tried to parse the purpose of its large youth-oriented events. Sometimes not.

“Most of the time they were fair,” Luce said in February. “There were times they got us all wrong, but we took what we got and kept going.”

Perhaps provocative rally names, such as “Battle Cry” held under the over-all banner of “Acquire The Fire,” did not help the outsiders of religious realms to understand Teen Mania’s motivations. One longtime staffer at the ministry admitted Teen Mania was sometimes “indefinable” because of the nature of dealing with ever-changing youth moods and methods.

Teen Mania has been on a roller coaster since “Acquire The Fire” began to criss-cross the country in the 1990s, playing small, even obscure venues. But that was then. Through its rapidly growing Center for Creative Media, the ministry is seriously multiplying the mileage of its efforts by putting sophisticated media tools — along with expert training — into the hands of teens and basically telling them to have at it. Do whatever they want to do for God; do it well and, most of all, do it without apology.