Teen Challenge celebrates 50 years of service
Apr. 10—MIDLAND The Teen Challenge Adult Center of Texas south of here at 6901 S. County Rd. 1200 is observing a half-century of turning young people away from drug and alcohol addictions and putting them on the road to social and spiritual redemption.
Executive Director David Day reports that 5,000 have been through the year-long program since the organization began as American Teen Challenge with six students in the fall of 1971.
It moved in 1980 from the Cowden Home at Texas Avenue and C Street, which is still used as a re-entry center for those about to graduate, to the 70-acre farm where 25 men and 17 women, all over 18, were studying and doing chores in mid-February.
"It's our anniversary all year long," Day said. "We'll have our golf tournament May 3 at Greentree Country Club and our banquet Oct. 9 at The Horseshoe with 1,500 people."
He said the program has an annual budget of $1.3 million, getting averages of $70,000 from the tournament and $100,000 from the banquet and the rest from private donations. It has 20 staff members, a number of whom are graduates, and a capacity of 60 students.
"The first nine months are on the farm and the last three at the re-entry house," said Day, a former Teen Challenge board member who has run the program since 2008. "We use Biblical teachings and disciple them to get them into a close relationship with God.
"Thirty-five percent graduate and of those, 75 percent stay successful Christians."
Asked how those results are achieved, the former regional manager of Exxon-Mobil said, "It's just a credit to God that he changes lives.
Finding a solution to drugs and other things that are life-controlling can only be done as a miracle through a daily walk with the Lord. We preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and his salvation and then walk in his teachings and discipleship every day.
We have a curriculum that they have to pass through and we counsel with them daily."
Then after the final three months, the center watches "as they go out and get a job and slowly begin to get back into society," Day said.
"We try to keep up with them and track them as well as possible."
He said the program is part of a national organization that also has centers at Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and El Paso. Along with drug and alcohol problems, students may also struggle with depression, anger, addiction to Internet pornography and other issues and some are sent here by judges as a condition of probation.
They arise at 5:30 a.m. to do chores, pray, study the Bible, attend chapel services and classes and make crosses to be sold online and to churches; then they go out to clean churches, help people move, mow lawns and do other contracted work for which they earn $12 an hour to help finance the center.
The students or their families are asked for $2,500 when they enroll, but fewer than a third pay the full amount. They're admitted anyway and get free food and lodging in comfortable dormitories divided according to what phase they are in, "lower," "middle" or "upper."
The program was started in 1971 by Ed Gimmell, Jerry Jones, the Rev. Dick Spencer, Fred Gist, the Rev. Jimmy Dennis, Joe Gilmer and J.D. and Dorothy Crawford.
Board Chairman Bobby Watson said Day and the board members and donors "like to see people's lives change as they come in and take this whole new step in life.
"David really has a heart for Teen Challenge and the people," Watson said. "Everything he does, he has those students in mind. I can tell you story after story. One guy was as bad as there was and he went back to his hometown and was voted the chamber of commerce's outstanding citizen of the year. Another was in a motorcycle gang and now he is a successful businessman.
"It doesn't matter what you were before. What matters is what you do from this day forward. A lot of good people go through Teen Challenge and every one of them just needed a break."
