Fields of Grace by Luce Hannah

Author:Luce, Hannah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

17

Back to

Teen Mania

Extending from Biblical analogies and characters used as role models, the campaign has used narratives, metaphor and scripted staged presentations including images of weapons, pervasive use of a red pennant, and terms from a war lexicon such as “God’s Army,” “enemy” and “battle.” It has used current and former members of the U.S. armed forces prominently in the Battle Cry stadium events, encouraging young people to become “the warriors in this battle.” In “Battle Cry for a Generation,” a book released at the start of the campaign, Ron Luce wrote, “This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent—the ‘forceful’ ones—will lay hold of the kingdom.

—CHRIS HEDGES, AMERICAN FASCISTS: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE WAR ON AMERICA

I had nine tan metal file cabinets in my office at Teen Mania. The kind people used in the eighties, before computers ran businesses. They’d been there as long as Papa, and so had some of the contents. Drawers were packed with random sheets of paper and manila folders that had obviously been recycled as many times as they had subjects crossed off them. Nothing was in order. I quickly learned that those file drawers were a snapshot of the way the whole office was run.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Papa had some great people on his staff, but the focus wasn’t and had never been business, it was saving souls. In fact, the qualifications he looked for in job applicants didn’t necessarily include college or even any business experience. Even on the ministry’s website, it says employees are chosen first and foremost for their strong character and leadership. “They are individuals who have a passion for teenagers and missions and are committed to investing their lives into moving forward the Great Commission through ministering to this young generation,” it says. Those traits didn’t always translate into good business practices, and Teen Mania was proof of it.

Papa had ministered to millions of teens and their families during his twenty-five years in the business, and I swear he had at least some information on every one of them that was all stuffed into those metal file drawers. And that was just the file cabinets in my office. Every office looked the same way. The database was in worse shape than the files. A lot of our program enrollments depended on phone solicitations by staffers using call lists that hadn’t been updated. Ever. The lists were supposed to be separated by category, but oftentimes the same person would get five or six calls from us, each pushing a different program. There were lots of times when someone would call a name on the list, only to be told that the person they were trying to reach had died years before. Phones were disconnected. People had moved away. We spent hours dialing up people who weren’t even there. What a waste of time.

Everywhere I looked I saw disorganization and confusion. Part of the problem was that the teenage interns did so much of the yeoman’s work, and there were always turnovers and new people to train.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.