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Complete Forecast for  May 17 2008

BY PATRICK BUTLER
RELIGION EDITOR

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final segment in a three-part series on Smith County-based Teen Mania Ministries, founded by Ron Luce, and its Center for Creative Media.

At New Jersey’s Izod Arena in February, 13,000 teens packed themselves in to listen to Ron Luce, founder of Teen Mania Ministries and his friends — Dallas “super-church” pastor T.D. Jakes and well-known New York gang warlord-turned-Christian evangelist Nicki Cruz.

In Dallas, days later, Luce and his Teen Mania staff spoke to 11,000 excited teens packed into Reunion Arena.

Welcome to a “Recreate ’08” rally. The event is Teen Mania’s most recent incarnation of its “Battle Cry” campaign and “Reverse Rebellion” concept that entered the national media stage two years ago in San Francisco.

The New York Times, Time magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, ABC News, the O’Reilly factor and more — many more — have since scrutinized the youth movement centered in East Texas’ Smith County. 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, 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.

“The ‘Battle Cry’ stage was to get people’s attention,” Luce explained to the Tyler Morning Telegraph shortly after the New York Recreate event. “That led us to the next phase of what we want to accomplish, ‘Recreate ‘08.’ We want teens to go out and think critically and creatively and stand up for their generation. And we’re not just going to criticize by pointing the finger of condemnation, but we’re going to criticize creatively. We want teens to use the talent God gave them to express themselves and let them have a voice in shaping their own generation.”

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.

“We’re going to change the world,” Luce told cheering teens at a Recreate street rally in Times Square the day before the Izod Arena event. “We want to use our creativity and show the world that we love God. We’re not afraid of him and we’re going to stand up for truth. And you know what? … We don’t have to stop. We don’t have to ask permission to do that. We’ve got the power, we’ve got the creativity and we’ve got God, so we’re going to change the world.”

The jumbo-tron big screen over Times Square captured Luce live, making him larger than life. Video segments of the rally— that include stories from teens who “took a stand for truth” against pornography in the general culture — along with on-the-street performances by singing and dance groups, are shot and edited by CCM interns for distribution to cable channels. Event organizers estimated 500 young people were in attendance. The New York rally was seen in Smith County on ILifeTV, carried by Suddenlink on channel 206.

“What you’re going to see at the Izod Arena are young people who refuse to be ‘culture zombies’ just put in a trance by everything the world tells you to believe, to wear, to watch or to act like,” Luce says in the made-for-TV version of the Times Square rally. After the street performances, a 20-something man takes over the mic.
“We have a positive message to send and we won’t be silent,” said the smiling young man in a hoodie-like sweatshirt, and Luce-like rapid fire energy. More cheers. “We can make an impact on our culture through the arts, through music, through your acting, through your film-making, through your stories, your short films, your graffiti, your paintings, your drawings. All these things are part of what we can use to affect our culture. Go change your generation through your creativity. Let your voices be heard.”

Stadium events yet to be held in 2008 include venues in Sacramento, Tulsa, Nashville, Baltimore, Denver, Tacoma, Portland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and San Diego.
There appears to be little chance, if there were a desire, of easily stopping the Luce-fireball or the teens that pick up his cry. About 700 interns go through the Teen Mania Honor Academy each year. The CCM, that had only a handful of staff and a lot of vision just a few years ago, has 13 paid staff and 90 of its own “interns” producing music videos, live TV broadcasts, a TV magazine, doing documentary-style on-the-spot interviews at Recreate rallies, Webcasts, Web page building and more.

And Luce is somehow able to survive in the world of teenage attention spans, pulling in large numbers of excited Christian kids from area churches, wherever he sets up his rallies. The Dallas Recreate event last week had 11,000 registered attendees, organizers said. Considering how focused he is to engage his niche market — teens — and the powerful media tools used to “catch,” teach, train and release youth back into the general culture, Luce would have to be seriously considered in a short list of America’s most effective Christian communicators to youth. The ball is bouncing Luce’s way and it now appears the game is his to lose. Like him or don’t, believe him or not, it seems that Ron Luce is here to stay. Some of America’s greatest moral challenges to its youth are coming from Smith County.

So what really happens at a Teen Mania stadium event? Is it a mind-control session with loud bands using “hidden persuaders” to brainwash kids into some sort of religious lockstep? Does the group seize control of unwitting youth who have stepped out from under the care of their churches and local spiritual leadership?
Compared to stadium rallies by California’s Greg Laurie, a “Jesus-people” pastor-evangelist with the fast-growing Calvary Chapel movement, or the huge “Jesus rock” festivals held throughout the nation every year, or even a now-traditional Billy Graham Crusade, little seemed to happen at the Dallas Recreate that would shock or surprise “regular” churchgoers. Except perhaps the pegging-VU meter volume kids can yell at or bands crank up at well-planned moments between familiar Bible messages. The message at the March 14 meeting centered on avoiding hurt, identity crisis, bitternesses, broken relationships and depression.

“This is a biblically sound teaching and message,” said Bill Shea, 26, a youth pastor from Life Fellowship Church in Kennedale, during Recreate’s second day at Reunion Arena. Shea brought 12 kids in his youth group and has attended other Luce-inspired rallies for three years.

“My church likes that youth come back with ownership of their own faith and vision for what God is doing in their lives,” Shea said. “I’d come myself, just for the breakout session for youth pastors. You find you are not alone (working with youth). Teen Mania is here to help. They have great teaching materials.”

Shea recommends the experience for teens or just their leaders.

“Even if you send zero youth (to a rally), send your youth pastor to do the youth pastor session,” he said.

In the middle of his talk Friday night on common teen problems, Luce asked youth pastors present to “pray for the kids” they brought. In perhaps the quietest moment of the event — where only the hushed sounds of 11,000 kids laying out personal obstacles to God were heard — youth pastors passed by touching the heads of their charges while praying for them. It was a moment in mass spiritual healing, yet without violating the sanctity of relationship between teenagers and their own pastors.

That sensitivity and passing of the spiritual baton by Luce to local church leaders is typical, said Beth Powell, a 13-year staffer at Teen Mania.

“That’s pure Ron Luce,” she said at night’s end as rivers of happy kids streamed around her and out of the building at event’s close. “It’s one of the reason’s I’m still at Teen Mania. He’s always like that. Ron is the same in the stadium as he is in a board room, kicking around ideas.”

The mass exodus at Reunion Arena was strikingly similar to secular rock concert crowds in style, but in substance the crowd was clearly missing the “strung-out” look so often seen at other events. It’s difficult to imagine parents being concerned by the obvious contrast.

“This is fantastic,” said the Rev. Kevin Martin, 44, senior pastor of Church of the Hills of Lometa. “The kids are really fired up. If I would go to only one event a year, I would pick this one. There’s great music and great fellowship.”

It’s the third year Martin’s church has attended.

“These three days are as powerful as two to three normal months,” he said. “I came with the youth group to show support and to see how the church could do more to invest in youth.”

Ms. Powell, 38, is the director of operations and second in charge at Teen Mania’s Creative Media Center. She was “saved,” she said, at Tyler’s Sylvania Baptist Church, when she was 7 years old. Graduating from Tyler Junior College, she went on to LeTourneau University and graduated with a degree in business administration.

She’s heard some harsh and hard criticism of Teen Mania during her tenure, including accusations that the organization uses modern media methods to somehow “brainwash” kids. Teen Mania is not a cult, she said.

“A cult is inclusive, but Teen Mania is training people to go out and do it themselves,” she said. “The Honor Academy stresses that teens think for themselves. We’re laying a foundation of biblical teaching, yes, but then encouraging teens to go realize their own dream. We don’t keep them here.”
At the Times Square Recreate rally, counter-protesters held their own signs. One read “Away With All Gods.”

“These are hard-core Christian fundamentalists leading youth — high school students — on the moral equivalent of a crusade,” one counter-protester said, according the Associated Press.

Those types of signs and comments seem to reveal a deeper problem, said Ms. Powell. She slowly shakes her head as she recalls the stiff resistance she and the TM Teens encountered in the streets prior to the San Francisco “Battle Cry” rally.
“Some of the things I saw in San Francisco made me wonder if it was “anti-Battle Cry” or “anti-Christian,” she said. “What a lot of them (Battle Cry protesters) were saying is that they had been hurt by Christians. For me, the lesson is to be more Christ-like, living and letting them see the standard instead of just hitting them over the head with it.”

The San Francisco experience made her more determined to work with teens, she said.

“It broke my heart,” she said, “because I could look in the faces of those who had been hurt by well-meaning Christians who didn’t share the hope and love of Jesus Christ in the right way. We want young people to be the representation of the love of Christ to the world. Most people opposed to Teen Mania have somehow misunderstood Teen Mania.”

Criticism has been leveled that the use of flashy videos, rock music and emphasis on the arts is manipulative, unfair or even un-Christian.

“That’s what you have to do to keep (youth’s) attention,” she said. “We’re talking about a video game generation. Our aim is to empower teenagers to reach their own generation, using their own gifts — art, writing, or speaking — to share the Gospel in their own way, with a voice that other teenagers understand.”
In the end, she understands the quandary some people have of grasping what Teen Mania is about.

“It’s hard to define us, I think,” she said. Then, “we’re not definable. That automatically puts us in a place where some adults say ‘what?’ But Teen Mania is trying to get to the places where teens are today to reach them for Christ. That’s our goal.”

For more information, visit the Web at www.recreate08.com or www.centerforcreativemedia.com.