Teen Challange ?

Dave Wilkerson, a pastor in Pennsylvania,saw a Life magazine article on gangs in New York City. He started driving out there to help. He got judges to release youths into his custody. Eventually he stated Teen Challenge, which spun off World Challenge.

I have never been to one. I agree taking your phone is probably normal at rehabs. Maybe you need to overcome phone addiction.

Teen Challenge early on had incredibly high success rates, as I recall a ll 90 something percent. The approach is to get attendees saved, baptized with the Holy Ghost, learning the word and loving Jesus, from what I have heard. The founder was Pentecostal.

Pat Boone played David Wilkerson and Eric Estrada played Nicky Cruz in The Cross and the Switchblade, a movie based a book on the origins of this ministry.

A guy I knew went to World Challenge, I think, for anger management. It sounds like the guys in the program put a lot of pressure on him to stay. He looked like someone who might manage an office, but if you talked to him he seemed kind of naive and low IQ. My guess is his soon to be ex wife persuaded him he was the problem and that he had an anger problem. He left to earn money to support his family. But they did not hold him prisoner. He was an adult.

Just to clear things up a little, World Challenge is the name of the Ministry that David Wilkerson used for his ministry of evangelism, pastor conferences, his world wide mail distribution of his messages. It is not the same as the Teen Challenge organization. World Challenge is now run by Gary Wilkerson and is not connected to Teen Challenge.