‘There are three stages of every great work of God,” Hudson Taylor, the well-known British missionary to China, once said. “First it’s impossible, then it’s difficult, then it’s done.”
Teen Mania founder Ron Luce quoted Taylor when explaining to CT why the nearly 30-year-old ministry announced today that it would cease operations.
“Honestly, the hardest part about our closure is for people to misinterpret what the closing of a chapter means,” Luce said in an hour-long, exclusive interview. “Scripture talks about old and new wineskins. Sometimes old wineskins don’t need to be used anymore."
It’s not necessarily a bad thing, he said. "There are plenty of Christian organizations that become institutions, that are dead and dry, and they’re old wineskins.
"We don’t want to become that," he said. "Teen Mania has completed this assignment."
An Army of Young People
Luce became a Christian at the age of 16 and immediately devoted his life to youth ministry. An Oral Roberts University graduate, Luce participated in Young Life and Youth for Christ. But at age 25, Luce was hungry for something larger. So he consulted with God about his next move.
“I felt God whisper in my heart, ‘Build an army of young people who will change the world,’” Luce said.
In its nearly three decades of ministry, Teen Mania used an array of strategies to reach millions of young people.
Its most popular event began in 1991: Acquire the Fire, a 27-hour youth gathering filled with music and teaching. Over two decades, more than 500 Acquire the Fire events were held in 33 cities nationwide, drawing more than 3 million attendees. Earlier this year, Teen Mania organized its first international Acquire the Fire in Yangon, Myanmar. More than 13,000 attended.
The men accused this summer in two of America’s worst mass murders came from remarkably different environments.Charles Joseph Whitman, 25, was a regular church-goer and altar boy, trained in Roman Catholic schools in Florida, an honor student in architecture at the University of Texas, Austin, and scoutmaster at First Methodist Church there.On August 1, he murdered thirteen persons and wounded thirty-one during a furious, eighty-minute shooting spree from atop a thirty-story tower on the Austin campus. Hours before, he had stabbed and shot his wife and his mother to death.Richard Franklin Speck, 24, was an ex-convict, hardened drifter, and heavy drinker acquainted with flophouses and prostitutes. He was unchurched and never responded when a Methodist minister next door invited him and his family to church. But in a Chicago prison hospital, he asked to see his sister’s Lutheran minister.Speck was tagged by police as the man who methodically strangled and stabbed to death eight student nurses, one by one, in their Chicago apartment July 14. After an intensive manhunt, he was identified by a doctor treating Speck after a suicide attempt who saw his telltale tattoo, “Born to Raise Hell.”Less than two months before, Speck had listened politely during one of many calls by his next-door neighbor in Dallas, the Rev. A. E. O’Connor of East Dallas Congregational Methodist Church. Speck, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter stayed with his mother and his sister’s family.O’Connor, though a neighbor and friend of Speck’s sister, said his meetings with Speck weren’t chance encounters: “I went for the specific purpose of talking to him about his soul and inviting him to come to church.” Mrs. O’Connor also spoke to Speck and once pressed him at length about his daughter’s need for Christian training.Speck was vague and somewhat evasive about his beliefs and religious background. “If you asked him if he were a Christian, he would mention the name of some denomination.” O’Connor regrets that “I didn’t press harder.” “I know if he had been committed to Jesus, his life would have been different.”After his Chicago arrest, Speck’s sister asked her minister at Irving Park Lutheran Church (LCA) to be one of his first visitors. Since the Rev. Kenneth Farb was on vacation, the task fell to his 30-year-old assistant, David Peterson, who had never been in the city jail.As a doctor stood by, Peterson talked to Speck fifteen minutes, not mentioning the murder case. Later, the clergyman declined to give any details on the talk because of pastor-client confidences, stating simply that he went “to minister to him as a Christian pastor, in concern for his total well-being.” After the initial visit, Speck sent word from jail he wanted to see Peterson again, and the clergyman planned to return later this month when “things have died down.”The puzzling Whitman case will receive intensive analysis. The youth’s father is a self-described “fanatic about guns,” was proud of his son’s marksmanship, and says his boy always drove himself hard. In a remarkable note left near his wife’s body, Whitman said he hated his father “with a mortal passion.” A month after his parents had separated this year, Whitman told a university psychiatrist he was “thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people.” An autopsy found a large tumor on Whitman’s brain that produced severe headaches, but experts doubt it would cause such violence.Whatever psychological lessons were to be learned, President Johnson urged immediate passage of gun-control bills that have been bandied about in Congress since the Dallas death of President Kennedy. But hopes for passage seemed slim.Other Mass MurdersPrior to the Austin shootings (story above), the worst U. S. mass murder on record was the 1949 rampage of Howard Unruh, 28, of Camden, New Jersey, an avid Bible-reader and gunman. In twenty minutes he shot dead thirteen neighbors for “derogatory remarks.” Earlier this year, Unruh dropped efforts to obtain release from a Trenton mental hospital.One of history’s most unrepentent murderers was Charles Starkweather, who, at age 19, killed eleven persons during a winding 1958 trip across Nebraska and Wyoming. Despite an insanity plea, he was sent to the electric chair. His companion, Caril Ann Fugate, now 22, is serving a life prison term.In 1956, William Bauer, a 48-year-old tithing, teetotaling Methodist trustee in Troy Hills, New Jersey, went berserk and shot six relatives, then himself.Crime En MasseIn the days between this summer’s two sensational mass murders (story above), the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its annual “Uniform Crime Reports,” which give a broad national context to American violence. Although there are many possibilities of distortion in tabulating crime, the report was sobering, as it has been for years.Since 1960, serious crimes have risen 46 per cent, while population has risen only 8 per cent. Despite the lawless image of major cities, crime is growing fastest in suburbs and cities under 50,000.The full statistics for calendar 1965 showed 2,780,000 serious crimes, with murder, robbery, aggravated assault and burglary each up 6 per cent, forcible rape up 9 per cent, and larceny over up 8 per cent. The value of stolen goods was more than billion; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the more important loss of 9,850 human lives and damage to victims is incalculable.Global Expeditions, Teen Mania’s short-term missions program, sent more than 75,000 young people abroad to 67 countries. According to the ministry, more than 1.3 million people made professions of faith as a result.
But Teen Mania’s most intensive offering was the Honor Academy, a full-time internship program for high school graduates; more than 7,000 young people passed through since 1994. For years, the academy took place at a 472-acre campus in Garden Valley, Texas, purchased when the land was a “great deal.”
It also may have been the program that ran the organization into the ground.
Explosive Growth
In the beginning, Acquire the Fire was meant to be a “new and edgy” event with affordable ticket prices. (Luce himself played in the worship team.) “The question was, how do we fund that passion? How do we make it work financially?” said Luce.
Teen Mania relied on donors to make up the difference. But as the event outgrew typical church sanctuaries, then later megachurches, auditoriums, arenas, and even stadiums, “costs exploded.” To keep their events popular with teenagers, Teen Mania threw money into production costs, including lights, sound, technology, state-of-the-art facilities such as AT&T Park, and booking popular Christian speakers and bands.
“We didn’t buy ostentatious things for our ministry,” said Luce. “Our money was usually going back to reaching more kids.”
The men accused this summer in two of America’s worst mass murders came from remarkably different environments.Charles Joseph Whitman, 25, was a regular church-goer and altar boy, trained in Roman Catholic schools in Florida, an honor student in architecture at the University of Texas, Austin, and scoutmaster at First Methodist Church there.On August 1, he murdered thirteen persons and wounded thirty-one during a furious, eighty-minute shooting spree from atop a thirty-story tower on the Austin campus. Hours before, he had stabbed and shot his wife and his mother to death.Richard Franklin Speck, 24, was an ex-convict, hardened drifter, and heavy drinker acquainted with flophouses and prostitutes. He was unchurched and never responded when a Methodist minister next door invited him and his family to church. But in a Chicago prison hospital, he asked to see his sister’s Lutheran minister.Speck was tagged by police as the man who methodically strangled and stabbed to death eight student nurses, one by one, in their Chicago apartment July 14. After an intensive manhunt, he was identified by a doctor treating Speck after a suicide attempt who saw his telltale tattoo, “Born to Raise Hell.”Less than two months before, Speck had listened politely during one of many calls by his next-door neighbor in Dallas, the Rev. A. E. O’Connor of East Dallas Congregational Methodist Church. Speck, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter stayed with his mother and his sister’s family.O’Connor, though a neighbor and friend of Speck’s sister, said his meetings with Speck weren’t chance encounters: “I went for the specific purpose of talking to him about his soul and inviting him to come to church.” Mrs. O’Connor also spoke to Speck and once pressed him at length about his daughter’s need for Christian training.Speck was vague and somewhat evasive about his beliefs and religious background. “If you asked him if he were a Christian, he would mention the name of some denomination.” O’Connor regrets that “I didn’t press harder.” “I know if he had been committed to Jesus, his life would have been different.”After his Chicago arrest, Speck’s sister asked her minister at Irving Park Lutheran Church (LCA) to be one of his first visitors. Since the Rev. Kenneth Farb was on vacation, the task fell to his 30-year-old assistant, David Peterson, who had never been in the city jail.As a doctor stood by, Peterson talked to Speck fifteen minutes, not mentioning the murder case. Later, the clergyman declined to give any details on the talk because of pastor-client confidences, stating simply that he went “to minister to him as a Christian pastor, in concern for his total well-being.” After the initial visit, Speck sent word from jail he wanted to see Peterson again, and the clergyman planned to return later this month when “things have died down.”The puzzling Whitman case will receive intensive analysis. The youth’s father is a self-described “fanatic about guns,” was proud of his son’s marksmanship, and says his boy always drove himself hard. In a remarkable note left near his wife’s body, Whitman said he hated his father “with a mortal passion.” A month after his parents had separated this year, Whitman told a university psychiatrist he was “thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people.” An autopsy found a large tumor on Whitman’s brain that produced severe headaches, but experts doubt it would cause such violence.Whatever psychological lessons were to be learned, President Johnson urged immediate passage of gun-control bills that have been bandied about in Congress since the Dallas death of President Kennedy. But hopes for passage seemed slim.Other Mass MurdersPrior to the Austin shootings (story above), the worst U. S. mass murder on record was the 1949 rampage of Howard Unruh, 28, of Camden, New Jersey, an avid Bible-reader and gunman. In twenty minutes he shot dead thirteen neighbors for “derogatory remarks.” Earlier this year, Unruh dropped efforts to obtain release from a Trenton mental hospital.One of history’s most unrepentent murderers was Charles Starkweather, who, at age 19, killed eleven persons during a winding 1958 trip across Nebraska and Wyoming. Despite an insanity plea, he was sent to the electric chair. His companion, Caril Ann Fugate, now 22, is serving a life prison term.In 1956, William Bauer, a 48-year-old tithing, teetotaling Methodist trustee in Troy Hills, New Jersey, went berserk and shot six relatives, then himself.Crime En MasseIn the days between this summer’s two sensational mass murders (story above), the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its annual “Uniform Crime Reports,” which give a broad national context to American violence. Although there are many possibilities of distortion in tabulating crime, the report was sobering, as it has been for years.Since 1960, serious crimes have risen 46 per cent, while population has risen only 8 per cent. Despite the lawless image of major cities, crime is growing fastest in suburbs and cities under 50,000.The full statistics for calendar 1965 showed 2,780,000 serious crimes, with murder, robbery, aggravated assault and burglary each up 6 per cent, forcible rape up 9 per cent, and larceny over up 8 per cent. The value of stolen goods was more than billion; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the more important loss of 9,850 human lives and damage to victims is incalculable.One of Luce’s highlights came in 1999 when 71,000 young people attended an Acquire the Fire event in the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. Jack Hayward and John Maxwell were among the speakers for Teen Mania’s first stadium event.
“From that point on we did a lot of stadiums,” said Luce. “We were in Indianapolis, Tampa, and San Francisco.”
Teen Mania employees studied and shadowed Promise Keepers and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
“We tried not just to have a great event each weekend,” said Luce. “We wanted to train and empower youth pastors, so that we might leave a city, but there might be 300 churches that had vibrant youth ministries.” To that end, Teen Mania developed curriculum and leadership training to support the local church.
In 1988, Teen Mania began offering internships to college graduates, meant to be an intense year of spiritual growth, “like Red Bull for your spiritual life.” In 1998, the program was renamed the Honor Academy.
Financial Ups and Downs
At first, the money rolled in. In the 2001 fiscal year, Teen Mania recorded $23.1 million in total revenue. By 2007, revenue shot up to $35.6 million.
“I don’t think people realize the difficulty and complexity of running a multimillion-dollar organization,” said Luce. “All they know is that they brought their group to this event, and it changed their lives and it was awesome.”
But the organization’s finances began to sour in 2008. Revenue was just $20.1 million after a dissatisfied donor canceled a $6 million pledge. Teen Mania's IRS Form 990 also revealed that the ministry had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Creation Festival, an annual Christian music festival it had purchased a 50-percent interest in a few years earlier. A 2014 audit reported that the $4.5 million investment resulted in a $2.5 million write down in 2008.
Teen Mania’s total revenue decreased every year since then. Its 2013 Form 990—the most recent available to the public—lists total revenue as $13.8 million.
Teen Mania was also losing money on the Honor Academy—or more specifically, on the physical campus needed to house the program. Their bookkeeping system prevented the organization from seeing that, Luce said.
“The Honor Academy was losing a significant amount of money every single year,” said Luce, “and it was eating into the whole rest of the organization.” Teen Mania was a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) and had some of the “brightest business people on its board,” said Luce. But he said the organization’s accounting practices—while "perfectly legal"—did them in.
“Anytime a ministry gets into financial trouble, people conclude that there’s someone who did something financially wrong,” Luce said. “Well, I guess we’re guilty of reaching as many kids as we could, thinking that our business model was sound. And it was for 30 years. My heart is so full of gratitude to the Lord.”
In addition, some alumni accused the program of spiritual abuse. “The Honor Academy was built to produce character and … ‘put fight’ in a younger generation. That never changed,” said Luce. “What changed was what was deemed acceptable by the younger generation.”
Luce said coaches and military leadership used to be able to motivate young people by verbally threatening them. “Don’t you dare demand something hard out of me,” gets construed as “you’re abusing me,” he said.
“These things happened in culture without us fully appreciating and understanding that maybe we should change our programs,” he admitted. For all the alumni that loved their Honor Academy experience, he said, social media over-amplified the voices of the “few dozen that complained.”
The Unraveling
Things began to unravel publically in 2014. When World magazine reported on Teen Mania’s financial difficulties, Luce publicly refuted the charges. Then Teen Mania shut down its Honor Academy. And Compassion International sued Teen Mania for more than $160,000, saying it didn’t receive a refund after paying for child sponsorship promotion at canceled Acquire the Fire events. Luce said that he was “reluctant to comment” on the lawsuit, as the situation was still pending.
“We are still doing our best to resolve everything with them,” he said. “We worked with Compassion for more than 10 years. We think they are a fine organization. We’re very saddened that the turn of events became what it is, and we hope that we can resolve that amicably.”
Earlier this fall, Teen Mania canceled many of its events for the rest of this year, leaving many frustrated about the difficulties in obtaining a refund.
“We are working with churches to make [a refund] happen,” said Luce. “We have refunded or partially refunded hundreds of them. We’re doing everything we can to make it right with youth groups and churches.”
Teen Mania, which was founded in Oklahoma, will proceed with liquidation through the state’s bankruptcy court.
"After receiving counsel from pastoral leaders, Teen Mania board and legal counsel, it has been determined the best way to draw a close to this season is by liquidating all assets of the ministry in an attempt to satisfy vendors,” it stated on its website.
The climate at Senate subcommittee hearings this month on the proposed Dirksen Amendment to allow “voluntary prayer” in public schools was as cool as the overly air-conditioned Caucus Room. One observer said that, in contrast to the 1964 debate on the similar Becker Amendment, participants seemed to be “just going through the motions.”Subcommittee Chairman Birch Bayh, Democratic Senator from Indiana, and two colleagues listened as a series of church spokesmen opposed the proposal with logical, eloquent, and usually long-winded testimony. These witnesses contended that the business of teaching children spiritual truths belongs to the homes and churches, not the public schools.Organizations opposing the amendment included the National Council of Churches, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., Unitarian Universalist Association, and the National Lutheran Council.Favoring the amendment were the National Association of Evangelicals, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, Protestant Ministers for School Prayers and Bible Readings, and Liberty Lobby.Dr. David R. Hunter, deputy general secretary of the NCC, said representative assemblies of most major Protestant groups have accepted the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment and seek no revision.Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, executive director of the Baptist Committee, agreed that “the First Amendment is a uniquely effective formulation of the rights necessary for protection of religious liberty and needs no amendment.”Dr. C. Stanley Lowell, associate director of Americans United, implied that the Supreme Court decisions have not been properly interpreted by many. “No decision … has destroyed or outlawed anyone’s freedom to pray.…”S. B. Sissel of the United Presbyterians said that if the amendment were to become part of the Constitution, a majority of children or the aggressive religious leadership in a community would determine what kind of prayers all children would “voluntarily” participate in. “Children are not these days noted for their spirit of non-conformity and their capacity to violate the customs and fads of their peers,” Sissel said.Dr. William R. Moors of the UUA agreed: “Voluntary prayer cannot really be voluntary, since it must be directed by someone.”Several witnesses said public school prayers are mediocre and meaningless. “Those who direct … would have the impossible task of trying to offend no one and satisfy all. This would dilute every participant’s faith,” Moors said.The most convincing testimony in favor of Dirksen’s proposal was given by Dr. Leonidas C. Contos of the Greek Orthodox Church: “To declare all religious education, any reference to religious principles, as outside the broad … responsibility of education is to declare … a false boundary, a mythical wall of separation, that divides, and deprives, the growing child,” Contos said.Senate Ok’S Judicial ReviewThe Senate passed a new bill for judicial review July 29 and referred it to the House Judiciary Committee. The bill calls for constitutional tests of laws that provided federal aid to religious organizations. Many Protestants contend several recent laws clash with the First Amendment.The new bill, sponsored by Senators Wayne Morse, Joseph S. Clark, and Ralph Yarborough, incorporated ideas of organizations criticizing a previous judicial-review bill during March hearings.Contos said that, although his church champions the principle of church-state separation, it could see no violation of this principle in the Dirksen Amendment.Dirksen, Senate Republican leader and author of the proposed amendment, attended some of the hearings. He rarely questioned witnesses opposing his amendment and spent much of his time bounding across the room on crutches to answer telephone calls.There were signs that grass-roots opinion disagrees with church spokesmen. Dirksen said of 100,000 letters he had received, only a half-dozen opposed the amendment. Clifford Morehouse, ranking layman in the Episcopal Church, was among those charging testimony by Hunter and others does not represent the ideas of most churchgoers.The three senators on the committee who questioned witnesses at great length were Bayh, Joseph B. Tydings, Jr., of Maryland, and Roman Hruska, of Nebraska.Tydings, an Episcopalian, made his position clear in almost unmerciful cross-examination of witnesses favoring the amendment, while Hruska spared few words in publicly supporting Dirksen. Bayh, a Methodist, tried unsuccessfully to be neutral, often letting his line of questioning give him away as opposing the amendment. On one of these occasions, Unitarian Hruska asked that Bayh give “prayerful consideration” to becoming a Dirksen supporter.Dr. Gary Cohen, representing Protestant Ministers for School Prayers and Bible Reading, had the roughest time of all the witnesses as he appealed to the committee for removal of the “national prohibition on school prayers.”Tydings grilled Cohen for over two hours after he presented a list of 4,000 signatures of Protestant ministers supporting the amendment and was unable to produce background information or addresses for the ministers. Tydings questioned the validity of the list after checking the Baltimore yellow pages under “ministers” and not finding names on Cohen’s Baltimore list.Cohen and Carl Thomas McIntire, son of Dr. Carl McIntire, head of the fundamentalist American Council of Christian Churches said the 4,000 ministers had been contacted by mail and asked to sign and return a post card indicating their approval.After the first day of testimony all the arguments for and against had been presented, but the questioning continued. Though the proposal has support of forty-eight of the one hundred Senators, there was some question whether it would ever get out of the subcommittee and onto the Senate and House floors for the necessary two-thirds vote. Most witnesses seemed to think the subcommittee was where the Dirksen Amendment belonged.Church-State Panorama:Divorce. After a two-year study ordered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, top churchmen and lawyers recommend that England allow one basis—“breakdown of marriage”—for divorce. Legal grounds at present are adultery, cruelty, and desertion. The twelve-member committee was headed by Bishop Robert Mortimer of Exeter.The report drew a strict church-state line: “How the doctrine of Christ concerning marriage should be interpreted and applied within the Christian Church is one question; what the Church ought to say and do about secular laws … is another question altogether.”In America, a particular case of divorce drew condemnation from seven speakers on the floor of Congress and many churchmen. The target was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, 67, who married a 23-year-old coed a month after he was divorced by his third wife, who is 26.Birth control. Responding to an Italian newspaper report, the Vatican denied that Pope Paul is on the verge of making his long-anticipated statement on birth control, which will affect population planning by many governments. Religious News Service reported that the Pope has given no clues on his ideas, even to insiders; that the special commission of experts that adjourned in June gave the Pope both majority and minority reports; and that the Pope is expected to announce his decision in September.A member of the Pope’s study commission, psychiatrist John R. Cavanagh of Washington, D. C., writes in this month’s Marriage magazine that the rhythm method produces “serious psychological harm” for couples.In London, the Archbishop of Canterbury said his “guess” is that Rome will modify its ban on all birth-conrtol methods except rhythm.In Pennsylvania, Roman Catholics sought to limit state birth control aid to women living with their husbands. A new compromise policy excludes unwed mothers but includes married women not living with their husbands.The government of India, meanwhile, plans to provide intra-uterine “loops” for distribution in the 81 of the nation’s 200 Protestant hospitals now cooperating in the contraception program of the Christian Medical Association.Hospital aid. Trustees of Arkansas Baptist Medical Center in Little Rock want the state Baptist convention either to relinquish control or let the institution take federal aid.The trustees say income from patients is down 0,000 a year because the Medicare formula fails to make enough provision for charity cases and bad debts, equipment, remodeling, and new construction.The state convention will decide in November on various alternatives, including permission for federal loans and grants, or establishment of a new entity to control the hospital.Profanity. Nashville became the focus for churchmen upset with new bounds of profanity established in the movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, based on the Edward Albee play. Police Sergeant Fred Cobb, a Baptist Sunday school teacher, tried to close down the Nashville showing under an anti-profanity statute, but city Judge Andrew Doyle dismissed the charges. Theater manager Lawrence Kerrigan then sued Cobb for ,000 in damages.An “interdenominational rally” headed mostly by Baptists drew 300 persons to picket the performance. Local pastor Dr. H. Franklin Paschall, new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, stated that “profanity is blasphemous and degrading—nothing good can come from it.”But C. B. Anderson, a Methodist film official in Nashville, was quoted as saying the film is “most moral,” and “Virginia Woolf” also drew praise from reviewers in the Christian Century and Commonweal.Christmas stamp. The American Jewish Congress and the American Civil Liberties Union oppose the Post Office Department’s plan to issue a 1966 Christmas stamp reproducing a Hans Memling painting of the Madonna and Child. Responding to the Jewish protest, Special Assistant Ira Kapenstein said that nobody is forced to use the stamp and that the design is a “work of art.” The ACLU retorted that a choice of religious art amounts to “government sponsorship of or participation in” a religious event.College subsidy. Michigan Governor George Romney signed into law a plan for state subsidies to students at private and church-related colleges. Awards will be based on family income and will range from to 0 a semester. Theology and religion students are ineligible. Church opposition to the measure was formidable, including the state and Detroit church councils and Baptist, Episcopal, and Methodist bodies. Opponents might force a court test on constitutional grounds.Tax deductions. The U. S. Treasury Department has ordered a re-study of proposed curbs of income tax deductions for deferred donations to church and other charities. Churchmen were prominent in the heavy protest to the plan, which might now be dropped altogether.At present, a donor may deduct up to 30 per cent of his adjusted gross income if it is contributed to charities. If the amount is over 30 per cent, he can write off the excess over five years, which provides a considerable incentive for wealthy taxpayers to make donations.Housing law. Dr. Benjamin Payton of the National Council of Churches was among religious spokesmen urging Congress to include real estate agencies in “compulsion” sections of the proposed national fair housing law. Payton said some churchmen may oppose the bill without such a provision. Senate Subcommittee Chairman Sam Ervin of North Carolina quoted 1 Samuel 16:7 in opposing the measure, contending it requires “some divine power” to tell whether a person refuses to sell a house for bias or another reason.Apartheid. The 31 Roman Catholic bishops of southern Africa, a five-nation jurisdiction including the Union of South Africa, denounced that nation’s apartheid or racial segregation policies. Their pastoral letter, which quoted at length from documents of the Vatican Council, was the group’s first pronouncement on race since 1962.Russian Orthodox OutpostThe “sacred peninsula” of Athos in Greece, site of twenty Orthodox monasteries, is as involved in East-West currents today as it has been during eleven centuries of history.Athos made news recently when the Greek government decided to admit five new monks from the Soviet Union to the Russian Orthodox monastery of Saint Panteleimon. The decision broke an absolute ban enforced for half a century by Greece, which feared monks would import Communism. Now the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate hopes eight additional monks will be admitted.Athos may remain in the limelight for another reason. Pressure reportedly is increasing on the Ecumenical Patriarchate to leave its historic base in Istanbul and establish new headquarters on Athos.The Greek ban on Russian monks, imposed after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, has turned the Saint Panteleimon monastery from a thriving community of 2,000 to a virtual retirement village for a remnant of forty-five men, all over seventy. But the monastery has prospered financially as the population has declined, because it has been the beneficiary of wills all over Greece.The Peninsula of Athos is an unusual political entity. It is a self-administered part of the Greek state, and entering monks must automatically assume Greek citizenship. Greece appoints a governor as political authority, but the actual administration is exercised by a group of twenty monks, representing the various monasteries. They are all under spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.The monasteries and autonomy of Athos date to the year 875 and the reign of Byzantine Emperor Basil. There was a period of Roman Catholic rule during the Crusades. The peninsula then fell under Turkish control for five centuries, but, surprisingly, the traditions of the monks were undisturbed. Athos became a part of Greece in 1912.Limits on entry of Russian monks are not just a Greek policy. Similar situations exist even in Communist lands. The Serbian monastery at Hiliandari and the Zographou monastery in Bulgaria have just a few monks left from the old days, with little prospect of new ones coming soon.And at Athos, restrictions exist on more than Russians. Since the year 1060, all women have been forbidden to approach the Athos monasteries.Biltmore: Under New ManagementA brave experiment in Christian witnessing along Miami Beach’s flamboyant hotel strip begins its most severe test this month. The ten-story Biltmore Terrace Hotel, whose “family” atmosphere is set by a chapel where daily devotional services are held, will be leased to and run by the Holiday Inn chain.Holiday conducted an aggressive campaign to get the Biltmore as its first high-rise in the area following the death of its manager, Dr. Ralph Mitchell, in March. Vernon Kane, business consultant for the hotel’s Chicago owners, said “it was impossible to replace the man who had given the hotel its identity.” Mitchell was a Scottish Baptist preacher and former associate evangelist with Billy Graham.Holiday was aided by financial conditions. The swank, 300-room ocean-front hotel was built for .2 million in 1952, then went through a series of owners and bankruptcies. Kane said that during the past four years under the present owners the Biltmore had overcome its bad reputation and had begun to break even when Mitchell died.The new contract guarantees that no alcoholic beverages will be served for at least one year, but Kane reports Wallace Johnson and other Holiday Inn executives in Memphis hope to continue the policy throughout the twenty-five-year lease. He said Holiday may also continue the type of program Mitchell developed, “on a modified basis.” Besides chapel, that included cultural offerings in the auditorium (once a night club) ranging from recitals by Metropolitan Opera star Jerome Hines to concerts by local church choirs.ADON TAFTWhat’s Next?
Luce did not discount plans to return to ministry, and said that he and his wife would like to serve young people overseas.
But he plans to devote his immediate future to spending time with his wife. “When we started Teen Mania, Katie and I realized that if we don’t have a strong marriage, we have no center of strength to give from,” said Luce. “If you want to have a high impact ministry, you’ve got to have a family that is strong and together as well.”
Luce said he always took Mondays off and cleared everything on his trip schedule with his wife, who homeschooled their children. He also regularly traveled with his wife or one of their children on weekend trips and tried to “sneak away” from events to take them out to do something fun.
“I didn’t want ministry to ‘take Dad away.’ Rather, we were doing ministry together,” said Luce. “I can honestly say that ministry didn’t take a toll on our family.”
Luce acknowledges that his schedule did affect him personally. He enrolled in Harvard Business School, read dozens of leadership books, and attended business seminars. But they only increased his stress level because they highlighted everything he wasn’t doing, he said.
“In the last 10 years of the organization, I found myself getting increasingly tired, and tiredness takes a toll on you in a strange way,” said Luce. “When you’re tired, you don’t give as much, you don’t love as much or as deeply, you don’t listen as carefully. All of those things start to add up.”
Teen Mania’s shutdown comes with few regrets for Luce, who pointed to the organization’s move to Texas and decision to do stadium events as the “zest of life and zest of ministry.” He hopes that when those who interacted with Teen Mania think of the ministry, they “remember a highlight of when they really encountered God.”
“The problem is that we get nostalgic,” said Luce. “But nostalgia doesn’t help us unless it points us to a moment where God really intersected our life. Don’t let the sadness of an organization overshadow the moment that God intersected your life.”
The question he asks: “Am I in love with the memory or I am in love with Jesus who created a lot of great moments for me?”
