I was assigned to the International Operations department, (moderator note: this dept. is now Global Expeditions) as a recruiter for Team Leaders. Apparently this was one of the higher level work assignments, in the informal ranking system of jobs, where grounds and kitchen are on the bottom, Acquire the Fire calling somewhere in the middle, and the smaller departments and executive assistants are on the top. I suppose this sort of unofficial ranking of worth is unavoidable when you have to figure out how to put 500 new interns into jobs, but I think if the assignments weren’t part and parcel of Gauntlet week, when it is clear you are being judged, perhaps it wouldn’t be so damaging. I don’t think anyone realized that joining the internship might mean working in the kitchen or mowing the lawns for a year. But I did not find myself in that position, so I will leave those stories to another.
My job involved a lot of travelling, which meant school bus trips across the country. I was very happy to be traveling so much, but the conditions were difficult. We were on the road for days to weeks at a time, which kept me off campus quite a bit for the first half of the year. I think this provided a buffer for a lot of the pressure and some of the craziness that my friends experienced. For instance, I missed the End Times Simulation, which from the stories I heard sounded like it descended into complete anarchy, but of which I have no first-hand experience to recount. I did, however, get to participate in the Crosswalk, which involved us being dropped off 150 miles from campus in groups of five, carrying a 14 foot wooden cross, and told to make our way back to campus within 2 days, without asking anyone any questions or getting a ride with the same person for more than 20 miles. My year was the last year to do the Crosswalk. Teen Mania cancelled it after one of the groups got held up at gunpoint for walking through the wrong Texas neighborhood with a big cross. There were other complaints as well. My experience was rather tame in comparison. We got taken in by a kind and merciful Catholic family who gave us a place to sleep, took us to church with them, and drove us part of the way back. We walked a lot and got a few other rides, and made it back okay.
I must say, this activity strained my credulity. If I had to struggle to respect authority at Teen Mania, it was because I was made to do things like the Crosswalk. I bonded with other interns who felt similarly. I had a close group of friends there, and I guess it was fair to say that we shared some sense of skepticism over what we perceived as the rather ridiculous things we were being told to do in order to be elite Christians. At the age of 18 I felt a lot guiltier over feeling like I was rebelling against leadership by thinking that some of the things they told us to do were silly, or wrong. Now I rather appreciate the faculty in people that prevents them from being completely and arbitrarily led astray by anyone who says they are in authority over you.
I wish I could communicate to you how wonderful and precious these friends were that I made there, and how hurt they were by Teen Mania. I think the confusion and pain that I felt was nothing compared to my friends who were expelled from the Honor Academy. And there were a few. One was sent home for confessing to kissing an ex-boyfriend over Christmas break. Another packed everything into his car one day during the summer and just drove away, because he couldn’t take it anymore. Another was put on probation, again for something that he confessed to over Christmas break. Two of them, a guy and a girl, were sent home for sleeping out in the back forty alone, which gave the appearance of evil.
When someone is kicked out of the Honor Academy it is very abrupt and traumatic. My roommate was given a day to leave, and was kept in one of the staff houses until she could be taken to the bus station. There is a huge amount of shame and guilt associated with being dismissed, as you’ve failed to keep your commitment to Teen Mania and proven that you aren’t a good enough Christian to stay.
After my roommate was dismissed there was a round-up of myself and my friends. We were called into Dave Hasz’s office, about twenty of us, and told that we were a bad influence on each other. Dave told us that from that time forward, each of us was only allowed to talk to one other person who was in that room. One of the boys tearfully pointed out that that was impossible, his closest friends from even years prior were in that room, and he couldn’t just stop speaking to them. Not to mention that I either shared a room, core group, or worked with numerous of the people with whom I was no longer supposed to associate. I don’t remember exactly what we agreed to at the time; we may have just left with a stern talking too. But from then on it was clear that we were viewed as ‘bad interns’ and branded as rebellious black sheep. That sort of stigma is hard to shake. It made me feel pretty defeated, and confused as to why I couldn’t just be spiritual and good like the other interns.
29 comments:
I remember that meeting. Being told to pick a single person and relate to them, when the 20 or so people in that room were not only my closest friends in the internship, but at that time the world. The feeling that we were failures not because of something we had done or because of some issue, but that we were unfit to be there because we were weak and bad people was crushing.
Up to that point, I thought that surely everything was just misunderstanding, miscommunication about our attitude and goals. After that meeting it was so much more difficult to stay. All of the changes in what we’d been told was what we were supposed to do, all of the beaurocracy of trying to get a straight answer about so many things, and the constant feeling that whatever changes made were suddenly the revealed will of God got to be too much.
My tears in that meeting were realizing that there was simply no way to make sense of it. The demands being put on us weren’t an honor code, and they weren’t remotely biblical. This was a group of leaders who were sincere, but they were in deep error. There was no way to fix it. I finished my year in that crushing sense of failure. It was with that wound that I held onto mistrust and anger toward leaders for years to come. Thank God for his grace.
Thanks for posting Katie.
February 24, 2010 7:21 AM
Lisa said…
Katie,
I think I know who you are and if so I owe you an apology. I had a judgemental attitude toward you and your group of friends because by the ridiculous standards of being a “good intern” so pounded into us by TM staff, I too saw you as difficult and maybe rebelious. Shame on me! I didn’t even know you very well! Over my time of sorting though my experience there I thought of you often and realized that you and some of your friends were the lucky ones. The ones that were good critical thinkers to begin with and didn’t fall into the trap of unconditional, unquestioning obedience when you felt something just wasn’t right. I sincerely apologize and am so thankful to have the chance to do so.
February 24, 2010 9:03 AM
z said…
WTF?! Elite Warrior Christians can be bad influences on each other?! Is Dave on crack? . . . he’s on a power trip high for sure!
February 24, 2010 12:37 PM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
z, your most made me chuckle.
That’s a pretty consistent thing, though… there were two girls in my core that were REALLY good friends, but since they were “bad influences” to each other, they weren’t allowed to talk to each other till after Christmas.
Of course, they completely disregarded that rule, and little legalistic me enjoyed every minute of asking them if they had CA approval to talk.
Kind of horrible in hindsight… I mean, yeah, they were both SUPER snobby and rude to others who didn’t fit in their clique, but still, I don’t see that as means to separate them.
At the HA, I’ve noticed that you aren’t allowed to get close with people. I know that if I felt like I had ANY friendship (male, female, regardless of age difference) start to grow, I would shut off and back up off of it, for fear of “getting too close” and “putting them before God”.
February 24, 2010 12:43 PM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
* your post, even
February 24, 2010 12:47 PM
Teen Mania is funny said…
End Times Simulation
Haha. What is that?!
February 24, 2010 1:02 PM
Recovering Alumni said…
Nunquam – you really felt like you weren’t allowed to get close to people? That one is new to me.
How stupid – relationships are the places that we grow. And usually the only valuable thing we can take with us from the HA that makes the experience at least somewhat redeemable.
February 24, 2010 1:56 PM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
RA- that could have just been me and my faulty perception, of course. What I should have said, is “from what I understood, getting close with people is frowned upon”.
I know that some people get GREAT friendships from the HA, but in the environment (at least my year), there were SEVERAL cases of two people (regardless of gender) being good friends, and getting confronted for getting “too close” and told that they aren’t allowed to speak to each other for a certain length of time.
GRANTED, that may have died down a bit, because right before my class showed up, there were two interns who got dismissed for homosexual behavior. Therefore, they cracked down on relationships a LOT (a prime example is the “no sharing a bed” rule).
February 24, 2010 2:13 PM
Anonymous said…
There were alot of “sleepovers” going on my year (98-99) where someone from another room or dorm would come slumber party with us in our room and then share a bed with someone in our room. At one point they called us to a meeting where they talked about people struggling with homosexual feelings and I remember after that being “suspicious” when I saw girls having those sleepovers that I had previously not had a second thought about.
Now I’m thinking DUH! As 18, 19, 20 year olds that are becoming highly sexual beings and then being severely discouraged from thinking or acting in very natural ways even heterosexually, I can imagine there were some who were driven to give into overwhelming sexual urges in that way. For me I dealt with it with masterbation which was also very highly shamed.
I was a “good christian girl” and I know I for one had been sexually active previous to coming to the HA and though Im sure there were those who were not, I would guess I was not in a huge minority. Just another example of an unhealthy environment oppressing and warping natural human development.
February 24, 2010 3:08 PM
Anonymous said…
i had many close friends at the HA, but it was impossible to have much time with anyone due to work restraints. i was there the same year as katie, and she is completely correct. there were some interns that were considered “bad seeds”, and there was just this understanding that they were, in fact, unworthy of being there. it is actually heartbreaking to remember that. i was also approached more than once with “challenges” to stop communicating with particular people for, say, a week. i never did, mostly b/c i thought it was ridiculous. my heart was pure. and even if it wasn’t, my actions were “above reproach”.
i also remember the girls’ session where they addressed sleeping in the same bed, and forbade it after that. however, they never forbade doubling up in the shower during gauntlet week (3 min showers, anyone?), which girls in my dorm did frequently b/c there was not enough time to get everything done in the morning if you had to wait for the shower. now, it makes me laugh to think about how concerned leadership was about sleepovers when interns were sharing a shower! hahahahhahaha!
February 24, 2010 5:40 PM
Anonymous said…
Anonymous – great point….I can’t imagine that TM would take up such great issue with the idea of same sex “sleep overs” and not have anything to say about same sex “showers.” WOW. that is all I can say – wow.
February 24, 2010 6:29 PM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
Well, that’s the thing. Being all dolled up and pretty and on-time for work affects the flow of the ministry. Where and how we sleep, doesn’t.
Therefore, double standards.
February 24, 2010 6:40 PM
Ex-Intern Aug 07 said…
I can honestly say that I don’t know of the guys doubling up in the showers. Because then you would have been hounded for homosexual activity! But then those same CAs who would have hounded you were the ones that thought it was funny to run around the dorms naked. Hmm…
OH and shower accountability? What the heck was that! Where people would randomly pull your shower door open to make sure you weren’t masturbating!
February 25, 2010 5:35 AM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
007……. really?
That’s the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard of. I think it’s safe to say that there was no love in that “accountability”; I’m sure CAs must have been overjoyed if they ever busted anyone.
… Isn’t that some form of sexual harassment?!
WHAT THE HELL WEEK.
Sorry. To veer back to topic, I would like to know, too: what is “end times simulation”? Is it anything like the modern World Awareness?
February 25, 2010 8:31 AM
z said…
Shower accountability? Isn’t that an invasion of privacy? Haha! Imagine if someone moaned and groaned from the shower just for fun to trip up the accountability system!
Seriously, isn’t it kind of gay to check up on someone in the shower? I see a much bigger problem with shower accountability than with masturbation. For example, the former could potentially have legal consequences, the later. . . not so much.
What is Teen Mania’s obsession with trying to figure out the sexual lives/thoughts/orientation of interns. It’s fair if TM wants to set rules like no dating, no sex, no kissing. . . but sexuality is so personal, they have to trust interns with these issues and realise it is unacceptable to encourage interns to spy on each other.
February 25, 2010 12:51 PM
Recovering Alumni said…
Ok, wait, where is the original reference to shower accountability? Am I blind – I don’t see it?
February 25, 2010 12:56 PM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
RA- allow me to illustrate.
I think it spindled from the “don’t share a bed or you’ll get gay cooties” rule.
That was a springboard to the “don’t share a bed or you’ll get gay cooties but we don’t care if you double up in the shower so you can work a full eight-hour day and not be late” rule.
Which was a springboard to “guys never doubled up in the shower because guys are perpetually horny and more liable to homosexual acts BUT since they are perpetually horny they must be doing naughty things in the shower anyway so let’s randomly check on them because that’s totally not sexual harassment/humiliation” rule.
So, slightly off-topic, but still alarming. Something the Board of Directors should hear about FOR SURE.
February 25, 2010 1:43 PM
Ex-Intern Aug 07 said…
Haha thanks Nunquam for the clarification 🙂 but yeah RA she’s right in what I was talking about and how I got onto that subject.
February 25, 2010 8:50 PM
Recovering Alumni said…
So is “shower accountability” something that actually happened…or are we joking around? Sorry, color me confused!
February 25, 2010 8:55 PM
Ex-Intern Aug 07 said…
No problem! Yeah, shower accountability did happen during my intern year. Whilst a guy was showering (especially if there was nobody else in the bathroom at the time, or their towel was covering the glass door) you would go up to his cubicle and pull open the door to make sure he wasn’t masturbating.
February 25, 2010 9:25 PM
Cesna said…
D:
…
D8
…
DB
That could/should be illegal. That is sexual harassment, and NOT. OKAY. At all! AT ALL. GAAAAAAAH.
February 25, 2010 9:28 PM
Recovering Alumni said…
Ok, wow. Were you allowed to poop in private?
February 25, 2010 9:29 PM
Nunquam Honorablus said…
Especially considering the fact that not all the guys that go to the internship are 18 or older (a guy in my brother core was sixteen, in fact).
Regardless, how many parents would support the internship if they knew that any random guy could be peeking in on their son in all his glory? Mom, what do you have to say about this?? As a parent, maybe you can give some sort of perspective that most of us are missing.
RA- lol poop
February 25, 2010 9:35 PM
Ex-Intern Aug 07 said…
Well I don’t know…..would you be smuggling porn or drugs up your butt? Hahahaha!
I don’t know of any “poop-accountability” i’m afraid, otherwise that would be the cherry on top! Lol!
February 25, 2010 9:36 PM
Anonymous said…
So, how does “shower accountability” work for the leadership?
Does Heath go over to Dave’s house after corporate and suprise him in the shower?
I mean, if its good for the goose…
February 25, 2010 10:10 PM
Cesna said…
Oh God I hope so
February 25, 2010 11:43 PM
mom of ex-intern said…
Nunquam—‘mom’ here
….I don’t even know how to respond here. This whole day of postings and comments has been so draining..that this subject is almost surreal…
Actually, not much can surprise me any more…The revelation of policies and practices that are being told are unbelievable….Thank goodness there has also been a smattering of humor injected here to lighten the heaviness of abusive harassment here…
Speaking as the ‘mom’ here…I’d like to see this whole subject of the ‘m’ word, nakedness and poop dropped for now… 😉 –pu-lease!
…”somebody could put an eye out here…” LOL
February 26, 2010 12:13 AM
Marc Houston said…
I wish I had been part of that ‘rebellious’ group! I remember feeling like an outcast from day one and it would have been nice to be around those of like mind. I pretty much stuck to myself and the ‘black kids’ that were always seen hanging around campus en masse. I totally remember the homo-countability Core meeting we had. What a friggin joke. I can’t believe it’ll be 11 years this fall!
February 26, 2010 10:14 AM
Anonymous said…
I was an intern during this period, and am just reading through all of the pages and posts. Sexual issues were a major thing that year it seemed. We had quite a few separated guy and girl meetings about masturbation, homosexuality, sexual abuse…and other stuff I can’t remember right off now. I remember the sleep overs – it happened with both guys and girls. I don’t think there was an overt sexual element involved, at least with the people I knew. I never really understood it at the time, or even now really – but I have thought about it off and on since then. I wondered if things like that usually happened when young people were so far away from home for the first time.
Does anyone else remember “the womb?” ha ha – that is a story in itself!
March 15, 2010 5:20 AM