Genesis

I was working for our local school district which includes the little town my family lives in as well as the city of Eagle where the teen center is located. It's about a 10 minute drive from Star (where I live) and Eagle.I was working at a program that was called the Interim Alternative Placement Program where we would get Middle School and High School students that got kicked out of school for fighting, drug deals and things like that. I loved it.
Mark (founder of Allelon) and I had talked several times about starting a teen center simply because there was a need for it. There were wonderful youth groups in town but not a place for teens outside of church.
At first it made no sense to us because I was already working with teens and I loved what I did. Long story short, one summer day two years ago, I found out that the program I was working for had shut down so it seemed like the timing was right to build the teen center we’d been talking and dreaming about.
It was tempting to just throw a bunch of cool programs together and make it a happening place but we chose to start really slow and basically just put some couches and some pool tables in an old fire station. We opened the doors and waited for teens to stop by, we put a few flyers out but that was it, I think there might have been a press release but I can’t remember.
We prayed for God to bring us the teens that needed to be at the teen center. Then we formed and shaped the teen center around the teens that walked through the door.We quickly became home for some skateboarders, a few goths, an occasional punk rocker, some Emo teens, an occasional self proclaimed geek, some very socially awkward teens and a handful of “normal” teens. They were mainly middle school teens, just a few from high school.
I had my moments of thinking we were completely mad and insane to try to create a place for that diverse of a group.
Conflict, drama, bad language, fights, gossip, hostility, bad attitude became our daily context for missional living. Here was where we got to inspire a new way of being human, to translate and interpret the things of God as He was drawing these teens towards Himself.
Our couches became sacred spaces where life stories where poured out, where secrets were shared without judgment or shame, where painful memories saw the light for the first time, where horrible life choices were examined without scorn and rejection.
Fights became opportunities to teach peace, chaos became an opportunity to model order, hatred was challenged with love. Day in and day out, we loved, we listened, and we cared.
We became the ones, who bandaged the wounds of the skateboarders as they had wiped out on the street somewhere, who comforted the secret tears of the tough guys, who listened to the wishes of things being different from the extremely promiscuous girls, who shared the pain of teens frustrated and angry trying to deal with mom and dad’s divorce, who brought simple words of encouragement to teens tormented by abusive parents. Things haven’t changed much except we have mainly High School teens now, This has become our program. ( I could go on forever...)