Don Wilkerson - Keeping the Cross Central: The Faith-Based Legacy of Teen Challenge

Teen Challenge radically changed my life. I arrived in the program off the streets with an addiction to hard drugs. I had been through many different rehab programs, but what separated this ministry was the emphasis on the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit. In 2009 I was delivered from addiction because of the message of Jesus Christ and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Today, I lead an evangelistic ministry that helps to reach the lost. Our ministry is deeply inspired by the founding accounts of Teen Challenge as recorded in the book The Cross and the Switchblade. Pastor Don Wilkersons message is essential to ensure that Teen Challenge does not fall into the tragic trap of mission drift that many organizations fall into after being in existence for an extended period of time. May this book challenge you and encourage you to keep Christ as the focus.

Andrew Chalmers
Take the City Inc., Founder and Director

A bold, passionate, and powerful plea to the ministry Don Wilkerson co-founded, to keep the cross central to the story of The Cross and the Switchblade. This book exposes the subtle and dangerous ways many once vibrant and gospel-centered ministries have drifted away from the original intent and purpose they were founded on and succumbed to the venom of secularization to raise money and achieve worldly credibility. In this insightful and well-written book, Pastor Don is fighting for the vision he and his brother David Wilkerson had for Teen Challenge over 60 years ago, not to be a rehab but to be a church for the least and the lost of society. I stand with him in his effort to preserve the gospel integrity of this ministry. This book is a must-read for anyone who loves and supports Teen Challenge or is involved in Christian ministry of any kind.

Joshua West
Pastor of Sonrise Adult & Teen Challenge and author of Hard Sayings: Reconciling the Cost of Discipleship and the American Dream

I have worked alongside Don Wilkerson in two different seasons of my life. The first was when I was the Prayer Pastor at Times Square Church, and Pastor Don was one of the three leading pastors. The second has been the blessing of serving at Brooklyn Teen Challenge as the Campus Pastor. So I can speak as one who has had the blessing of hearing him preach once a week for six years and then daily working with him at Brooklyn Teen Challenge. Its been said that working in a drug rehab program is so intense that each year is like five years of working in a regular church. For Pastor Don working for decades at Teen Challenge, does this mean hes as experienced as Methuselah? I would rather say that he has the wisdom of Solomon when it comes to Teen Challenge issues. Will Teen Challenge as a whole heed his loving and wise and weather-worn warnings? I certainly hope so. This book deserves a place at conference table discussions in all Teen Challenge centers and faith-based ministries.

Pastor Charles Simpson
Brooklyn Teen Challenge and The Oasis Center, Queens

Bridge-Logos
Newberry, FL 32669

Keeping the Cross Central:
The Faith-Based Legacy of Teen Challenge
by Don Wilkerson

Copyright 2021 by Bridge-Logos, Inc.

All rights reserved. Under International Copyright Law, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopy), recording, or otherwisewithout written permission from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2021930260

International Standard Book Number: 978-1-61036-259-7
eBook International Standard Book Number: 978-0-7684-5978-4
Hardcover International Standard Book Number: 978-0-7684-6002-5
Large Print International Standard Book Number: 978-0-768-46003-2

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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Edited by Lynn Copeland

To my wife, Cindy,
and my children, Kristy, Todd, and Julie: You never wavered in encouraging me to stay mission true to the original vision of Teen Challenge.

FOREWORD

When I think of Don Wilkerson, I think of an unflappable man of God, always steady, always full of wisdom, always with a smile. But in this book, I see a different side to my dear old friend. He is burdened and concerned. He carries real grief and brings a heavy warning, sounding the alarm. He is jealous for a holy legacy. He does not want to see the cross removed from its central place in the Teen Challenge ministry. Without that central focus, the whole ministry collapses from within.

I remember watching The Cross and the Switchblade for the first time while still a teenager, freshly delivered from heavy drug use (including heroin) at the age of sixteen in 1971. We actually showed the movie one night in our little Pentecostal congregation in Queens, New York, and I was deeply stirred after watching it, as if confronted afresh with the amazing grace of the Lord. What an amazing story and what an incredible witness.

About twenty years later, while preaching regularly at Times Square Church for David and Don Wilkerson, I read The Cross and the Switchblade book for the first time. Once again, I was stirred and challenged. What faith. What obedience. What courage. What divine backing. What a Savior!

It was that same divine backing that seemed to accompany David and Don in the ministry work they continued to do, from the powerful conversions that took place every week at Times Square Church to the worldwide spread of Teen Challenge centers. It was the work of the Spirit, and no one could deny that.

A few years later, in 1996, I began working side by side with Evangelist Steve Hill in the Brownsville Revival, where the crowds would form daily at 6:00 a.m. outside the doors of an Assembly of God church building. They were waiting for the service to start at 7:00 p.m., thirteen hours later. God used Steve to win countless thousands of souls to Jesus, and he would often share his personal testimony, which included being a graduate of Teen Challenge himself.

Over the years, leading different ministry schools, we had quite a few Teen Challenge graduates enroll as students, and they often stood out for their depth of devotion to the Lord. They were truly delivered, they were deeply grateful, and they were serious disciples. They knew the sin and darkness in which they once walked, and they now wanted to give their lives to Jesus as deeply as they once gave their lives to the devil.