PUBLISHED TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18, 1997
Copyright 1997 The Pensacola News Journal. All rights
reserved
Teen Challenge is Hill's longtime favorite
By John W. Allman
News Journal staff writer
PENSACOLA - Teen Challenge depends on alumni like
evangelist Steve Hill to raise money for more buildings, materials and
staff.
The Christian nonprofit rehabilitation program, which
has 130 centers in the United States and 155 centers in about 50 other
countries, has helped people like Hill graduate since being founded in
1958.
Few graduates have Hill's power to spread the message.
He has used his platform at Pensacola's Brownsville Revival
to promote the program. He assures revival audiences that a portion of
their contributions every Friday night will go to build more Teen Challenge
centers worldwide.
Hill's ministry, Together in the Harvest Ministries, gave
$93,202 to Teen Challenge between August 1996 and August 1997, according
to a financial statement provided through Hill's attorney, Walter Chandler.
Those donations included $5,000 to the new Pensacola Teen Challenge Center,
$3,260 to Teen Challenge Florida and $10,000 to West Florida Teen Challenge.
His ministry's IRS return specifies none of those.
Brownsville Assembly of God also is giving money to Teen
Challenge, according to the church's financial statement for 1996. It lists
$3,100
to Teen Challenge and $11,059 to Teen Challenge International.
Don Wilkerson, executive director of Teen Challenge International,
headquartered in Locust Grove, Va., said he prefers to downplay Hill's
generosity to the organization because if people think Hill is giving,
they might think Teen Challenge doesn't need any more contributions.
Hill did not attend the Teen Challenge fund-raiser banquet
Oct. 17 at New World Landing.
For the fund-raising dinner, Pensacola Teen Challenge
director Greg Priest asked churches, civic clubs and businesses to sponsor
tables at $130 per table of eight people. The event had 24 tables sponsored,
for a total of $3,120.
Eleven area churches acted as sponsors, including six
Assemblies of God churches. Neither Brownsville Assembly of God nor Hill's
ministry sponsored a table.
The only apparent Brownsville connection came through
Robert Lowell, who moved to Pensacola after he and his wife attended the
revival. Lowell's business Florida Credit and Collections Bureau Inc. sponsored
one table.
"Because of the high visibility of Brownsville, it's better
they're not visible," said Wilkerson, who started Teen Challenge with his
brother, David, in 1958 in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Back in Pensacola
The new center off Nine Mile Road represents Teen Challenge's
second try in Pensacola.
In 1977, Pastor Bennie Stokes left Philadelphia to become
executive director of a Pensacola Teen Challenge center that served young
men at a home at the corner of Cervantes and Spring streets and young women
in a home on Cervantes, a block from Brownsville Assembly of God Church.
The two centers moved in 1982 to Walnut Hill, in northern
Escambia County.
Wilkerson said the program died out in Pensacola in the
1970s because people back then did not did comprehend its value.
"The drug problem is much more pervasive these days,"
he said. "Back then, people may not have been as supportive. The problem
may not have been as bad."
Today, however, Teen Challenge is more important than
ever, he said.
It helps people in such countries as Belarus part of the
former Soviet Republic where both Christianity and drug rehabilitation
have been in short supply.
The Teen Challenge program lasts one year and has four
phases: crisis intervention, induction, training and re-entry.
Those who enter follow a rigorous schedule that begins
with four months of preparation and ends with the six-month re-entry phase.
In between, students are expected to study the Bible and memorize Scripture.
There is a $500 fee to enter the program, but "if they
don't have the money, we don't turn them away," Priest said.
Florida now has eight Teen Challenge centers, with a ninth
being built in Tarpon Springs.
'Not a cult'
At the October banquet, three people gave testimony on
how Teen Challenge changed their lives.
Kim Gilbreath, a member of Pine Forest Assembly of God,
said she was an alcoholic who sometimes "attended church drunk."
Keith Tobias, who completed his re-entry phase in Pensacola,
said he was an ex-convict and a drug addict before he sought shelter in
the program.
"You get a covering," Tobias said, "where the world can't
come at you in a red dress or as a beer or drugs."
Not everyone supports Teen Challenge's message of salvation
from addiction through Jesus Christ, Wilkerson said.
"We are not a cult," he told the banquet crowd of about
220 people. "We are not trying to get young people hooked on Teen Challenge."
The program, despite its name, is not exclusively for
teens. It accepts men and women 17 to over 40. The median age is 22, Wilkerson
said.
Teen Challenge is not like Alcoholics Anonymous, which
encourages people to discover a higher power but allows each individual
to define that higher power, Wilkerson said.
"We define who that higher power is," he said. "Jesus
Christ wants you to be clean in an unclean world."
Most substance abuse treatment programs have a spiritual
aspect, said George Crisco, director of the Lakeview Center's Drug and
Alcohol Adolescent Residential Treatment program.
But most take a holistic approach to treating addiction,
instead of focusing on one thing such as God as the sole solution, Crisco
said.
Teen Challenge officials say their program has an 86 percent
"cured rate" among graduates, which means most graduates are free of alcohol
and drugs seven years after they leave.
Crisco said his program stays away from the term "cured."
Lakeview's program in Pensacola instead says it has a 79 percent "graduation"
rate.
"You don't cure addiction," Crisco said. "Basically what
you're saying is that 10 years from now a person is not going to have a
problem with addiction, and I don't know that that's the case.
"Unless these people follow these clients until death,
I don't know that they can boast that."