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I am always amazed at how God plans out our steps even when we don’t understand where He is taking us or why. But when He reveals Himself, we have that light bulb moment, and we see clearly.

Let me explain…

Over three years ago, I was approached by my father, Don Wilkerson, about writing a book about the legacy and founding of Teen Challenge. Immediately, I felt called to write it even though none of it made sense. There were several reasons why I questioned it:

    1. What about the bestselling book, The Cross and the Switchblade that catapulted the ministry? That book has reached millions with its powerful story of my uncle’s calling to New York City and the establishing of the ministry of Teen Challenge. Why would I want to compete or even take away from that in any way?
    2. Was it relevant? Adult and Teen Challenge just celebrated its 60th Anniversary with over 1400 programs in 125 countries. Why go back to the beginning days? God has given each program its unique calling and thousands upon thousands have found freedom from addiction.
    3. Would people think I am writing this book for personal gain? I struggled with even using my maiden name on the cover of the book, which is not my legal name. I have never been a name dropper but how do I tell this story without acknowledging my family connection?
    4. Did I have the knowledge to write about a ministry that I only knew through my upbringing? I grew up in Teen Challenge, but I have never worked in the ministry.
    5. Could I write a book? The fear of accomplishing a task of writing a book was daunting.

 

Even with all my questions, I knew God wanted me to write this story but why?

I cried every time I talked about it. It was as if there was this well of emotion inside of me that I couldn’t explain, but the Holy Spirit kept nudging me—Write It!

Several months after the release of Giving Hope An Address, I still doubted. I received wonderful reviews and comments about the book, but I still questioned the book’s purpose. After struggling through promoting the book, I complained to God, “Why did I devote all that time to write the legacy story of Teen Challenge? What was the purpose?”

I kept coming back to that undeniable Holy Spirit nudge not to question but write. Despite the whispers of doubt and all my fears, I knew God wanted the founding story to be told again.

I now understand why I felt that nudge.

A Story For A New Generation

Recently, there have been decisions made that are compromising the original purpose and mission of Teen Challenge. There is a shift that is veering away from the ministry’s founding.

I am not here to write about the details of those compromises; I am simply sharing why God wanted me to write Giving Hope An Address.

There’s a new generation God is using at Adult and Teen Challenge programs worldwide. They have the same burden—as previous generations— to reach those bound by addiction.

But this new generation needs to understand the beginning days of the ministry to point, once again, to the source of the success of Teen Challenge.

The book is a reminder of what God did through David and Don Wilkerson— and countless others— in establishing Teen Challenge in the heart of New York City.

It’s a reminder of the power of prayer and how prayer brought my uncle to New York City. How prayer established Teen Challenge and how prayer built and sustained thousands of programs worldwide for over 60 years!

The story tells the humble beginnings, the financial struggles, and the way God provided for every need of the ministry.

Giving Hope An Address is a Holy Spirit nudge to a new generation that Teen Challenge was not founded on a man-made method of drug rehabilitation but by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

With over 1400 programs in 125 countries and countless testimonies of those who found freedom from their addictions, God has done the miraculous!

And at the center of that miracle is the saving power of the Cross—the foundation of the ministry of Teen Challenge!

The success of the ministry—to spiritually and physically heal those trapped by addiction— was what David Wilkerson coined as the “Jesus factor.”

There are 60 years of miracle stories of freedom from addiction and the “Jesus factor” is at the center of each one of them.

Don’t compromise God’s calling and purpose for Adult and Teen Challenge. The message of the gospel has to be the driving force of the method in treating addiction. If that is compromised in any way, then it is no longer the Teen Challenge method.

As long as the Cross remains at the center of the continual Cross and Switchblade story, God will keep blessing what He ordained!

Keep the Cross Central!

Know the history of Teen Challenge.

Read The Cross and the Switchblade.

Read Giving Hope An Address.

Be a generation that holds tightly to the founding mission.

Don’t let a ministry drift away from the purpose God miraculously set in place sixty years ago!

 

 

“I am confident of this: He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it and more till the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6

 

 

 

 

 

Giving Hope An Address is available at these retailers:

   

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As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t the best way to promote my book.

I was being interviewed about my recent book, Giving Hope An Address and I was asked the question, “What do you hope is the most important message readers will takeaway from your story?”

I answered, “That in the greater scheme of things my story is not that important.” I back peddled my words quickly because even the interviewer looked a little perplexed.

I tried to restate with more clarity, “What I mean to say is what I have written is just a small fraction of the story of the ministry of Teen Challenge. But God has written a greater story that no writer will ever be able to capture about what Jesus Christ has done in the lives of people who have found hope through the doors of every Teen Challenge program.”

Phew! That was better and cleared up a few things for the interviewer.

My answer to that question was a lesson God had recently taught me about what it means to be followers of Christ and to serve in ministry.

You know that saying, “There is no I in the word TEAM.” Well, here is the thing. When God calls you into ministry: be it a church ministry, non-profit organization, or the mission field. There is no “I” in the word gospel. In other words, it is not about you!

When God calls you to reach others with the gospel message, you have to leave your pride at the door. You have to lay down the world’s ambition of success, popularity, loyalty, and recognition.

In other words, it’s God’s story. You are not the author.

Let me use my own family’s story as an example. Through my family, God used individuals to start a faith-based rehabilitation ministry to reach those addicted to drugs, alcohol, and people broken with life-controlling problems. Then God called others to build onto that ministry. He used the faithfulness of not only my family but many others who were called to reach those lost in addiction with the message of hope.

That single ministry grew exponentially for sixty years through thousands of people, each with their individual stories. The Adult and Teen Challenge ministry is now in 125 countries and directed and led by leaders all around the world. And guess what? Today if you ask many staff and residents of a Teen Challenge program, they have no idea where, how, or even who began the ministry of Teen Challenge.

Why?

Because the author and sustainer of Teen Challenge is God, it is not my family, it is not any director or leader of any program, but through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ who transforms lives and sustains the message that brings hope.

Now as a family member connected to the founding of Teen Challenge, I take great pride in knowing my family was used by God to begin a ministry that is now throughout the world.  It is why I wrote my book so that I could tell a new generation the founding story.

But here’s the lesson; we are not called by God to write a ministry story that we take credit for. We are called to give him the authorship of all of it.

Now, this is easier said than done. We are all human. We work hard in the kingdom of God just like in the business world. And we like recognition for our efforts even on behalf of God. But our objective as followers of Christ is to always point to a bigger story. The gospel story. The “author and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews12:2)

In my book, I quoted my uncle David Wilkerson who founded Teen Challenge. He said simply, “Give the ministry away.” He didn’t mean to let go of the calling on your life that brought you to your particular church or ministry. What he was implying was not to hold your ministry vision so tightly. If you release control and allow people to feed into your ministry with their gifts and talents, God will grow your ministry exponentially.  

So if you are feeling rejected, tired, overwhelmed, or unrecognized in your particular calling, remember that you don’t own the rights to the gospel message. It’s not up to you to write your ministry story. You will never properly serve people with the message of Jesus Christ if you are continually looking for self-recognition or feel it is all up to you.

To keep using the writing analogy: stop self-publishing!

The story has already been written. You are called to bear witness to that story of who the Author is. It’s only by God’s grace that He will sustain and grow your ministry through the people you serve and who serve along with you. The pressure is off. Your only responsibility is to promote God’s message faithfully. Let Him write the bigger story through you and beyond you.   

Don’t ever fall into the trap of taking credit for a ministry that was never yours to begin with. Then maybe one day, you’ll have the privilege of writing a book where you realize your name is on the cover, but God is the true author of that ministry story.

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Photo from Brooklyn Teen Challenge archives

I love this photo!

This is my Grandma Wilkerson. She is my father’s mother, and this photo captures her familiar smile and an expression that I remember fondly.

I smile when I think about her. She was such a unique woman.

I was blessed with two very different grandmothers. I unfortunately never knew my grandfathers, so my grandmothers were what I knew of both sides of my family heritage.

I had the privilege of experiencing the typical “cookie grandma” on my mother’s side. Oh, how I still recall the smell of warm pies and homemade donuts in Grammie Hudson’s house. (I wrote about her here.)  She was kind of like your storybook grandmother. Her delicious home cooked meals, her crocheted handmade gifts, the rocking chair that rocked countless babies, and her long arthritic fingers that would cup my chin in her hands and offer up kisses. I am fighting back the tears remembering her. I miss Grammie Hudson!

But Grandma Wilkerson was a different sort of grandmother, and I learned to appreciate her for being atypical. I laugh remembering how she would offer up whatever I could find in her refrigerator to eat; which was usually an overripe slice of watermelon and a 2-liter bottle of flat Dr. Pepper. I don’t recall a rocking chair in her house. But I do recall her tattered and overused Bible on the coffee table. I remember staying with her as a young teenager and waking up to hear her humming church hymns in her room as she was getting ready for the day. My Grandma Wilkerson was a woman of deep faith and anyone who had the privilege of knowing her, found this out very quickly.

She was also a stubborn woman and would offer up her opinions regularly even when uncalled for. But any family member would tell you, that what Grandma Wilkerson lacked in motherly affection she made up for on her knees in prayer. She fought many family battles through her worn Bible and her private time with God.

When I was writing my book, Giving Hope an Address, about my family and the founding of the Teen Challenge ministry, Grandma came to mind often. I wrote about her in my story, but my book chronicles her in a time before I was born. I was the youngest of the grandchildren, so I knew an older Ann Wilkerson than I had written in my book.

But let me back up a little in my thoughts to get you to the point of this blog post…

Before I wrote my book, that shares the legacy of the Teen Challenge ministry and the legacy of the Wilkerson family, I had to come to terms with that dreaded word called legacy. I hated that word and everything I thought it represented.

To me, legacy carried every painful family experience, every character flaw I saw in family members, every expectation that family did not live up to in my mind, and I let it all root in my heart.  And it grew into bitterness and resentment. I let walls build up inside me, and each wall cast a shadow against the words family, legacy, and even ministry.

But praise God, the walls are gone! How?—By God showing me in His mercy my true family story.

He graciously and lovingly reminded me that the story I was to write was not about me. It was about God and how He uses all of us—despite our flaws—to write a bigger story as followers of Christ. A gospel story.

If you call yourself a follower of Christ, you immediately join a much bigger family. Legacy is your day-to-day interactions with those around you: family, friends, church members, those you work with… the list goes on. Legacy is how we live out the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is not pride in our heritage or anger from a dysfunctional upbringing. Legacy is the grace of God that reminds me; it’s not about me.  There is a much bigger picture to legacy, and it is rooted in our faithful obedience and love for God. And yes, even in the obedience through our painful family circumstances.

I was recently reminded of this bigger picture through this beautiful example.

In the late 1960’s, Grandma Wilkerson had a coffee-house ministry in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. (I know, cool right?!) She told a man named Kurt Haas about the saving power of Jesus Christ, and his life was forever changed. He recently left this Facebook post next to Mom Wilkerson’s (as she was called) photo:

Photo taken from Kurt Haas.

“Wherever we go in life we leave footprints, whether they be good or bad, and 49 years ago on September 14, 1969, Mom Wilkerson left not only her footprints in my life but lovingly, after many months of sharing the love of Christ with me, she led me to the Master’s feet. Yes, Mom believed in me and never gave up on me. Thanks, Mom for sharing the light with me. Now I am sharing it with others.”   

 

 

Kurt has served the Lord faithfully for many years as a prison chaplain. He recently told me that when my grandmother was alive, he would often send her flowers to commemorate the day she brought him to the knowledge of the saving power of Jesus Christ.

That, my friends, is legacy!

I’ll continue to recall all the fond memories of Grandma Wilkerson. They’ll probably be mixed in with her quirks and stubborn ways, but the most important thing she’ll remind me of is the real definition of the word legacy. She lived that out in her life.

This quote reminded me of Grandma:

“The central ingredient to a divine legacy is godliness: to know God, to walk in His ways, and to teach future generations who He is.” (Kelly Minter)

And the most significant thing about that word legacy is that you don’t need to have children to offer that to the world.

Our stories, our family legacies, they are all linked by the cord of the gospel. God will continue to use imperfect people for His will and His glory. And I am so thankful that He does despite my often limited God view.

 

 

To read more about my family’s “bigger picture legacy story,” you can buy my book

on Amazon

or at Barnes & Noble.

 

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Let me set the scene for you regarding this photo.

I was sixteen years old on a mission’s trip to Germany. It was a bike tour from Bingen to Bonn where we stopped along the way at different towns and ministered in the streets through pantomimes. Our faces painted, no words just gestures, and sharing our faith through action. A crowd would gather around us, and after our pantomime act someone would speak and share their faith testimony.

I have never enjoyed being in front of a crowd. My fair skin will often reveal my nervousness with red blotchy patches of embarrassment. However, this time there was a sense of comfort hiding behind that white face paint and only having to express actions and not words.

But then one day on our mission tour, I was approached with the most interesting question by one of the leaders. He asked me, “Would you share your testimony today after our street scene?”

I honestly answered him, “I don’t have a testimony!”

He looked a bit puzzled and questioned me, “Julie, are you a follower of Christ?”

I nervously laughed, “Um, yes but I don’t have a story. I have never done drugs, been involved in a crime, and I made a decision to follow Christ when I was about five years old. My life is pretty boring. I don’t have a testimony!”

You have to understand my frame of reference here. I was raised in a ministry called Teen Challenge. It’s a faith-based drug rehabilitation program that has ministered to many men and women with life-controlling problems. It’s a ministry that I have recently written about in my book titled Giving Hope An Address.

At sixteen years old, all I understood about sharing a testimony was that it somehow had to include a former life of drugs, abuse, crime, prostitution, and maybe even a prison sentence. That was all I knew about sharing what Jesus Christ had done in a person’s life.

When you grow up listening to residents in a Teen Challenge program tell their testimonies of amazing transformations of God’s saving power from addiction, your own somewhat sheltered life looks a little dull in comparison.

But I’ll never forget the words the youth leader said to me after my naïve proclamation. He looked into my eyes and pointedly said, “Julie, you have one of the most powerful testimonies. You have been caught in the grasp of God’s hands at an early age, and by God’s grace YOU ARE KEPT.”

I still choke back tears remembering his words to me. I will never forget them.

Even when I feel like I don’t live up to the life I am supposed to live as a follower of Christ, I still remember— I am kept.

When life is hard—I am kept.

When I experience pain—I am kept.

When I feel unloved—I am kept.

When obedience is difficult— I am kept.

God’s promises are true whether we fall in the grasp of His hands at five years old or fifty years old.

One of the reasons I wrote my recent book was to express my gratitude for all those who walked through the doors of Teen Challenge and were willing to let God transform their lives as testimonies of His grace and mercy. Their life transformations and their willingness to share their stories, sealed in my heart a devotion to Christ that has kept me. I am always learning and growing in the knowledge of who Christ is in my life, but I can STILL say with confidence that I AM KEPT.

 

Never underestimate the power of your testimony, friends!

Share what God has done in your life no matter how boring or how tragic you think your testimony is. Never let embarrassment or shame keep you from sharing your story with others. We are called as Christians to share the light of Christ to the world.

It would certainly be easy just to share my faith through actions and not words. To hide behind a painted face and not reveal who I really am. But I can’t do that no matter how difficult it is to express myself with spoken words and with blotchy skin.  Because when you experience the powerful testimony of being kept by the hands of God, it’s a place you want others to experience with you.

Share the hope of being KEPT. It’s a testimony that never gets old.

 

 

Note:

My blog is changing. I want to use this platform to share other people’s stories and testimonies. Today I started with my own.  From time to time, I might share another person’s story with you through a blog or interview format. So stay tuned by subscribing to this blog.

And in case you missed it, here’s another powerful testimony by my friend Kelly that I shared last year.

http://www.theradiancefoundation.org/eva/

 

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In two weeks, my book will be officially released! I had the opportunity to share my story with a few people before its release date on September 1, 2018.  I am so thankful for their reviews and words of encouragement.

 

Here are what friends and Christian leaders are saying about Giving Hope An Address:

 

“As a new believer in the early 1970’s, freed from drugs myself, I was deeply impacted by the Cross and the Switchblade movie. Then, twenty years later, while preaching regularly for David and Don Wilkerson at Times Square Church, I read the book and was powerfully impacted again. Buy now, I feel as if I have gone behind the scenes into the lives of these wonderful men of God and gained a new glimpse into their courage and faith and compassion. What an inspiring, encouraging read! Today’s generation needs to hear this amazing story afresh.”

– Dr. Michael L. Brown, Host of The Line of Fire Radio Show, Author of Playing With Holy Fire

 

“I just finished reading Giving Hope An Address. Julie Wilkerson Klose wrote the Teen Challenge story focusing on the relationship between her Uncle David and her father and the founding of Teen Challenge. The story of TC has been shared, but not from this perspective. It is expertly written and is relevant to this generation. I highly recommend this book to all my friends!”

– Jesse Owens, Founder of Global Renewal, Retired A/G Missionary

 

“It was particularly mind-blowing to me that before I was ever a thought on this earth, in 1960, that God was preparing an Address of Hope for even me…a safe haven from the lifestyle of drugs, violence and promiscuity… a place for me to seek and find Him. My appreciation for the Teen Challenge pioneers just grew so much more. Reading about their struggles and trials really gave me continued inspiration to believe that God is FOR us and that He truly is working ALL things out for our good.”

– Mariah Noelle Freeman, Walter Hoving Home Graduate and Brooklyn TC School of Ministry

 

 

“Giving Hope An Address is the most authentic, inspiring account of the extraordinary Teen Challenge story. Thank you, Julie!”

-Laurie Owens, Executive Assistant to the President at Shippensburg University

 

 

“I am so blessed and honored to be one of the featured testimonies in this book. It’s a terrific read! I encourage all that know of Teen Challenge or graduated Teen Challenge to get a copy. I promise you will not put it down!”

– Frank Livoti, Business Owner and Teen Challenge Graduate (1997)

 

Order your copy today at Bridge Logos Publishing or Amazon.