Andy’s Story, pt. 4

I made my way up the Teen Mania leadership ladder and was finally being treated like a staff member. TMM would pay for my schooling at the University of Texas at Tyler and then give me a pretty small salary, around $600 a month (approximately $4.28 per hour before taxes). That $600 would have to pay for rent, food, transportation, clothes, health care, you name it. So let’s just say that I finally found my way to a credit card. Gauntlet week and my new job responsibilities started simultaneously. I was now a Producer on the atf.tv show assigned to creating a segment of the show and organizing the necessary production requirements to get the job done. Our department was going to get one August intern so I thought we would sit around as a department all day praying in tongues to ask God to show us who he wanted us to have out of the group of 500 kids on campus. Remember – after all – I’d sat through many a commitment talk at TMM and I was assured that every selection made was God’s will. Well word on the street was that our department got a protected pick – this was a wild card in the intern selection process – it meant that the few select protected picks were chosen first by those various departments before the Wall Street style intern draft frenzy would begin. This is how the whole thing worked. The day interns walk on campus they are being evaluated. They take tests, the fill out forms, results are constantly being added to a master spread sheet. After all this information about each person is ready then everyone gets a copy and then each department can look through the results to find the skilled workers they want working for them. Well folks supply and demand is an issue since witchcraft was forbidden on campus and we couldn’t magically duplicate people – so of course each department would make their list of who they wanted God to put in their department. Right before the draft were all the live interviews and each department was able to then make a list of all the people they wanted to visually inspect and maybe ask some questions before making their final selections. Well thankfully the girl who was our protected pick was awesome and we were just all thrilled to have “won” her before the massive draft took place. I didn’t personally witness the draft but it was explained to me that each department got to send a representative and then like a sports draft each person would take a turn grabbing an intern for their department and then they would communicate back to their respective departments to find out who they should pick next. Something tells me the Honor Academy department didn’t fill maintenance and K-Crew positions first. I was somewhat surprised to learn that this was “God’s will” of putting people in a job at the ministry. It just all depended on your number drawn and was essentially a lottery of luck. I thought it was wrong to strong arm kids into staying for a year at an organization paying money to do so and then lay it on them after the fact where they would be working. My views on Teen Mania Ministries began to evolve.

After gauntlet week, work and school started to consume my life. I got a room in a place in Lindale and was driving to and from Garden Valley as well as down to UT Tyler for school. It was my first time in college and I had to adjust to the demands of a more rigorous work schedule as well as being a college freshman. My classes weren’t easy and my work life wasn’t easy as well. I was producing a segment of the show that required a little bit of travel so as a team we went to New Orleans, Austin, Shreveport, and at one point I got to fly up on TMM money to Minneapolis to go do some shooting. I was doing fine at my job but it was boring and mundane. The show was dumb and it wasn’t something I was proud of after it being completed. We tried to do a little bit of a format change, but in the end Ron would never let us try something completely new. At the end of every episode Ron would do the impassioned prayer on camera and he would always say that maybe someone was watching the show in a bar. We laughed at him every time. This may be one small example of how out of touch he is. Granted God could in his infinite power have TBN on in some bar in the midwest in the middle of the night and some dude could have an encounter with God. It’s possible – not by much but not probable. Sorry Ron, you need a new line – desperately.

As a Global Strategies department we all started to meet to discuss this idea of having a media school on campus. They were going to call it the Center for Creative Media and that they were going to have it be something extraordinary. We met around to talk about specifics and gave our opinions. When they said the price tag – I couldn’t believe it and said how on earth can you charge this much for a program with zero credibility? They wanted to charge thousands of dollars a month to have kids come in and essentially be work horses in a media school – getting a few classes but essentially doing work that would cost thousands to hire professionals to do. Eventually I guess Teen Mania started using the program to actually charge people to do work for them with these upscale deluxe media workhorses. I didn’t like the initial plan. Make a good program first – then charge the big bucks – but my opinion was ignored since this was just yet again another avenue to pull in money from willing children.

The real problem of my year started in the second semester. You see, since I was such a bad ass academic in high school the state of Texas was mighty proud and excited to have me as a student so they gave me a pretty nice scholarship. I think I even had some grants as well – so in reality I didn’t need Teen Mania to pay for school since I was doing well in the financial aid front of things, but since my salary was a fraction of a fair salary that money was handy to help fund my life – it sure would have been nice to not begin bad financial habits with credit cards and what not – but what choice did I have? So for the first semester the university removed my money from my account – and then Teen Mania paid the bill, then that extra cash was cut to me in a check. Well second semester the university wouldn’t do it the same way – so when it came down for Teen Mania to pay for my schooling – they were unable to. Now can I fault Teen Mania for the university’s policy? No – but I can fault them for not having a plan of action to deal with this kind of scenario. I made a request to be reimbursed for the scholarship money and was told the leadership team would have to discuss it. While I waited for the Leadership team to treat me like a valuable member of the Teen Mania family and come to a quick and speedy solution, my boss was fired or pushed out or who knows what happened since I never heard the story – but I imagine he ruffled too many Ron and Rick Brenner feathers and they didn’t like it – so off he went. I was saddened since he was the guy at bat for me and now he was just gone. My job was somewhat changing and became not what I wanted when I signed up for this deal in the first place. My motives for staying for this third program were not to serve the ministry but to finally have something at the ministry serve me. Obviously had this come up prior to signing the contract I’m sure we would have mutually agreed it was a poor choice for me to stay. I was mesmerized by the possibility that TMM could help jump start me into a film career of sorts. I saw what happened with Melissa Tawlks and her recording album and several others so I had this misguided thought that maybe TMM could actually help me start a professional life in my pathway towards a Jesus-centric career. So when the house of cards of hopes and expectations about my job began to fall around me – so did my desire to stay.

With Cody gone, I had to go to his boss who was now my boss Rod A. I never spent much time with Rod – but like most men on staff at Teen Mania I was intimidated as hell. Rod was helpful and genuine and to this day my biggest regret is that I didn’t take the time to get to know him better. He seemed to be ripe with experience and knowledge and I was too intimated to speak up reach out. Men in my life in general have never really been positive relationship experiences – so I don’t easily latch on to the notion that a man is going to be there for me when I need him. I hadn’t been trained in the Teen Mania culture to stand up for myself with confidence and get what I needed or wanted, I had been trained to take what was given to me as God’s will and not complain and obey authority or get sent home. Unfortunately I spent a lot of that year internalizing my anger and frustrations with the job and never really getting resolution. My friendships with co-workers were so-so and most of my friends who stayed as GIs I never got to see anymore so you could say that my support system dried up. Then on top of everything I began to think that what the hell was I doing on staff at Teen Mania if I wasn’t having quiet times, and being this amazing spiritual monster on top of everything I was doing. These intense expectations of where I should have been – since staff were supposed to be better than interns – to where I was at the time was somewhat destructive. One of my good staff associate friends left and my feeling of support there diminished. The snow ball effect was adding up and every day that went by it was harder for me to focus at school and work.

Since the Leadership team in my eyes was not treating me with respect by getting me a decision quickly by the time spring rolled around the frustrations were overwhelming and I came to a boiling point. I decided that I was going to give my two week notice to Rod. I had had enough waiting. I must say that Rod was open to being creative to paying me the money owed me – but by that time I was beyond saving. The feeling of not being seriously cared for after all those months of hard work there was really damaging. I wrote Rod a note and turned it in. He later asked me why I was doing this and so since I usually make “great” decisions when under emotional duress – one of my biggest weaknesses – I sat down at my laptop and wrote out a very long response. I touched on many different things but the most important thing to note was that I had such a prideful response and even told Rod in the message that I don’t think they could convince me to stay, and I honestly was thinking that they would. I wrote that document and just sent it. I didn’t proofread it – nor let it sit overnight to think about it. So when Rod called me into his office I was taken off guard to be presented with paperwork the ministry wanted me to sign in a Brown envelope marked Confidential essentially asking me to sign and be on my way. My two weeks were not needed I was being asked to grab my things and leave the property immediately.

As much as I realized that my actions were in poor taste, I wasn’t quite prepared for that consequence. When one of my friends left the internship after coming under some unfortunate circumstances they offered her counseling – and I got no such care with my exit. I walked back to the atf.tv studio and cried and got my things and walked out to the car and sobbed my way back to my apartment in Lindale. This all went down on March 20th and by April 1st I had a job in Tyler at Cheddars Casual Cafe as a server and had a new apartment in Tyler living with my first CA John who was now in a similar situation after leaving the ministry under not so great circumstances. We shared a one bedroom and life got back to normal – as much as that was possible. Summer approached and John decided he was going to go home to see his family for the summer and leave me with the apartment. I thought we had decided that he was still going to send me money to help cover the rent – but I guess I was wrong and that money never came. Eventually he came back to grab his stuff and well lets just say that we haven’t been poking each other on Facebook. So I needed a roommate – so one of my co-workers was a gay guy who had struggled with drugs and what not and needed a place to stay. Taking one from the Teen Mania handbook I asked him to come and live with me – but he had to sign this morality contract. I kid you not – I wrote up a 3 page document outlining the rules of living with me – essentially a mini Saber of his own – and the Saber being the internship manual of behavior standards. To my current disbelief – he signed it and moved in. He was a good roommate and to this day I wish I could go back and apologize for treating him with such disrespect. I know its one thing to make requests of your roommates but I treated him like such a dirty heathen since he had been in rehab and god forbid a homosexual. I worked at Cheddars for the summer and then got a job at the TV station in town and wondered if I would stay in Tyler and continue school or if I would return home. My life seemed to be in Texas at the time so I decided to stay. An opportunity came up to move into a house with a bunch of guys who had ties to Teen Mania but most were not actively working or enslaved there. I decided to share a room with a guy for a very low rent and the only rule I agreed to when moving in was no alcohol in the house. On my 21st birthday since I was still a TMM staff member I couldn’t even have a drink at the Olive Garden on my birthday – so up until that time I survived – I wasn’t a drunk. I moved in and went to school and worked on campus and did well that semester. Then one Thursday night during my weekly Survivor ritual I was enjoying my Taco Bell dinner and the TV show and a civilian female friend from town came by to watch the show with me. We got situated and then my landlord Joel Johnson came into the room as he was leaving the apartment. Joel had been with TMM for years and studied directly under Ron Luce for a bit and is actually still involved with TMM today as an ATF speaker. Joel pulled me aside and told me that my friend should go since he was leaving and his absence would leave us alone in the house. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was somewhat in shock I wasn’t able to respond with the things I wish I would have said. I never opened myself up to accountability with him about anything in my life – and further more I never announced to anyone that I was romantically involved nor interested in this girl – so why on earth did I have a “please police me” sign on my forehead. I told Joel that she wasn’t going anywhere and that we would be fine. He then told me to call him when she left – to which I probably said ok. After he left I sat there stupefied as to what had just happened and decided that I needed to get the hell out of Texas. I couldn’t handle Teen Mania people anymore and the likes of people like Joel who live in a fantasy world created by Ron Luce and his most devout followers. Within a few weeks I made arrangements, packed up my things, grabbed some transcripts and drove to my freedom in the sunset.