Teen Challenge is a global ministry that helps young people struggling with addiction and crime. Teen Challenge was started by David Wilkerson in New York City, with a vision to reach troubled youth and help them find transformation through the power of the gospel. Bernie Gillott is the Global Evangelism Coordinator for Teen Challenge. The focus of Teen Challenge is not just rehabilitation, but true transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. They disciple the men and women in their care to become evangelists themselves. Today on the Evangelism Podcast, we talk about David Wilkerson’s legacy and about what God is doing through Teen Challenge.
Learn more about Bernie Gillott: https://www.bgillott.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, brother Bernie Gillott.
Bernie Gillott (00:10):
I’m the Global Evangelism Coordinator for Teen Challenge. We serve the 1,200 Teen Challenge centers in 132 nations that are not the United States.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:25):
And it is such a delight to meet you. We’re here in Seoul, Korea at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, and last night we were sitting on the bus and I was just so happy to meet you and to hear about what you’re doing for evangelism. Teen Challenge does such a great job of taking people who are dealing with addictions, with problems, with alcohol, with drugs, taking them off the streets and then developing them into disciples of Christ. Tell me a little bit about what Teen Challenge does.
Bernie Gillott (00:58):
Well, while so many people see Teen Challenge as a drug program, it was never David’s Wilkerson’s vision for it to be a drug program. It started as a ministry called Teen Evangelism. He wanted to go to New York City and reach seven boys in the Michael Farmer case that had brutally murdered a handicapped boy. He never got to see them, but when he went into the courtroom, many of you have seen the cross and the switchblade. They threw him out of the courtroom in disgrace. They had his Bible. They said, hold that up, don’t be ashamed. He was on the front page of the Daily News, crazy Bible waving, preacher interrupts trial. He went home in absolute disgrace and he told me, he said, Bernie, I prayed because I knew God had told me to go, and everything went so horribly bad. And he talked to his grandfather and he said, Davy, maybe God didn’t send you for those boys, but boys like those boys.
(01:52):
And so we went back to New York City only this time he didn’t go to a courtroom. He went to the Fort Lee projects. First miracle was he slept in his car overnight and lived when he woke up, they’d stolen the tires off of his car. They were stealing the hood. When he got out of the car, one of the boys grabbed a knife to cut his throat and one of the boys bottle cap said, Hey, aren’t you the preacher from the Egyptian Kings trial? The cops hate you and the cops hate us, so you must be one of us. And God opened the doors to the most violent gangs of the New York City through his disgrace on the front page became his opportunity, and that’s how Teen Challenge was born, began working with gangs. Then in the sixties as we began to see the gangs broken up by heroin addiction and drugs, they began to intervene there. And that’s how we kind of got our reputation. We worked with men and women with life controlling problems with drugs, alcohol, crime, and victims of human trafficking. Now around the world
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:53):
And as the leader of Evangelism for Teen Challenge, tell me about how you get these people that have had so many issues then turning them into evangelists. You told me that last night that you were just recently in Congo, DRC
Bernie Gillott (03:12):
In
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:12):
Lumas. You took a team there from Teen Challenges all over Africa. Tell me about what God did there. Sure. It was
Bernie Gillott (03:21):
In Lu Bai. We had 192,000 people. Over the course of four days, we ministered to over 5,000 in the schools. We had men from Zambia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and from the Congo. And what we do is we disciple the men. The key to Teen Challenge is not psychology, it’s not about rehabilitation, it’s about transformation. It’s not about recovery. It’s about resurrection. And we want them to take that power and then apply that. It’s interesting, I have one guy who was praying, prayed for someone that was deaf and they were healed. I looked at him and I said, how long have you been in the program? He said, three months. He said, all I know is I prayed. And they heard. I think sometimes we want people to get so, so good enough to be ready to witness. But if you love Jesus, he’s ready to use you right where you are today. He’s ready to use you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:21):
Amen. So Teen Challenge was started by David Wilkerson. Yes. Great man of God,
Bernie Gillott (04:29):
My team
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:29):
And a prophet, a pastor right in Times Square in New York City and then doing Teen Challenge all over the world. Tell me some of what you learned from David Wilkerson and some of your favorite stories about him.
Bernie Gillott (04:43):
Well, probably one of the things that had the most profound impact on my life was one time we were in South Philly and that was my job to get him from his bus, which was like 10 blocks north down to the outreach and two of my choir guys, and we were trying to get him. But every few feet, somebody would stop him and say, brother Dave, pray for me. Pray for my son, pray for this. And I kind of grabbed him and I said, brother Dave, I said, man, we got to get you to the stage. It’s time for you to minister. You’re going to get me in trouble. And he looked at me, he kind of pushed me. He said, brother, be the stage is where I preach. Ministry is what happens on the way to the stage. And he understood the heart of evangelism. The heart for the lost the heart that it’s not about the big stage that he would have in the thousands, but every individual walking down Broad Street, that was his heart.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:34):
I’m reminded of Matthew chapter eight where it says, as you go preach saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It doesn’t say when you get there. And so sometimes I think as evangelists we make the mistake thinking the evangelism is what’s going to happen on the platform, but he was evangelizing everywhere he went. That’s right. Usually the greatest fruit in our ministry happens just as you’re going. As you’re going to someplace to go evangelize. You get to evangelize on the way and impacts people’s lives.
Bernie Gillott (06:08):
That’s right. You can’t get so focused on the destination that you miss the fact that God works in the journey. Jesus was on his way to heal J IRA’s daughter, the woman with the issue of blood. He had time for her. It seemed like most of his most incredible miracles happened on his way to do something else. And God met him there and led him to someone in need. And there’s people all around us. We can’t miss the fact that God’s got an opportunity because you’re a great evangelist. I mean, I was so excited when we met on the bus and you said, listen, we’re going out on the street witnessing on Wednesday. It would take somebody like you to say, at the Lason World Congress on evangelization, we ought to do some evangelization, and we’re so excited to go out with you and to see what God’s going to do here in Seoul, Korea.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:53):
Yeah. That’ll be with Greg Steer from Dare to Share and Desmond Henry from the Global Network of Evangelists. There’s so many different evangelists that have come together here, and we can’t have so many evangelists for a conference without doing some evangelism. That’s right. It’s important. There’s still people here in South Korea that need Jesus. Oh, that’s so
Bernie Gillott (07:12):
True.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:13):
So I think it’s so neat how God uses every different gift that people have to bring people to Jesus. And so one of your gifts is wrapping.
Bernie Gillott (07:25):
That’s right.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:25):
So you can wrap in English, you can wrap in Spanish,
Bernie Gillott (07:30):
Russian, Swahili.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:31):
Okay. Give us just a little bit of rap and give us some English and then give us something in another language. Okay. Word up.
Bernie Gillott (07:38):
All this is my story. It’s not about me. I got to give that the glory. I was lost. I was bound in sin boxing it down. I took it straight in the chin in Swahili it Mabo VP in Spanish. It’s, you know what? I’m a as slick as the peel of a ripe banana, and I got more juice than crop. Can I come on the scene? I could turn it out. I even brought the president out the White House to listen to me, de Mayor Heavy. Be a rap for Jesus because he set me free and he’ll set you free too.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:21):
Let’s talk a little bit more about Teen Challenge. What are some of the elements of the program of Teen Challenge that really help people?
Bernie Gillott (08:30):
Well, the key to Teen Challenge is the word of God going in their lives, in their hearts. They memorize 125 verses in the first three months at Teen Challenge, and it gets it down into their minds and begins to work healing over. I had a guy one time, he was getting ready to graduate because the program’s 12 months, and he said So many of those verses I learned at the beginning, I can’t remember anymore, and said, I remember the verse, but I don’t remember the numbers. And I said, yeah, but you know what? Psychologists tell us that 90% of what we do come, the 10% that we do comes from the 90% in our subconscious. The more of scripture we can get in their subconscious, even if they don’t remember it, it’s working Just like all those bad memories. The teacher that said, you’ll never amount to anything.
(09:21):
I mean, my dad told me every day of my life, you were a loser. You’re born a loser. You live the loser and you’ll die a loser. Well, I may have been born a loser, but hallelujah. I was born again a winner and I’m not built. And the power of the Holy Spirit, the baptism, and the Holy Spirit is, I mean, teen Challenge is not just an evangelical ministry. It’s an evangelical ministry with a Pentecostal distinctive because these guys need the baptism in the Holy Spirit and a prayer language to overcome those temptations as they face them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:53):
Amen. Well, that’s the only way I can wrap is with my prayer language. Amen.
Bernie Gillott (10:05):
It was just three months before Brother Wilkerson went home to be with the Lord in the car accident. I was with him in Dominican Republic and he laid his hands on my head and he said, brother Bernie, don’t let the flame of evangelism go out in Teen Challenge. Keep the fire of the Holy Ghost burning. Amen. And that’s what keeps my wife and I going over a hundred thousand miles every year on five continents, training teen challenged men, those that were once hopeless to be givers of hope in the name of Jesus Christ. That’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:43):
Evangelism. For someone who’s listening, who’s a young evangelist, what advice would you give them? You’ve done evangelism for many years. What advice would you give to those called to be evangelists?
Bernie Gillott (10:57):
Don’t trust your own strength. Recognize that when you can’t, he can’t and when you don’t want to. He wants to. He’ll open doors if you’ll just watch for him. Number two, trust the word of God. It’s really challenging. I remember back in the seventies when we’d be on the street with David Wilkerson, the most important thing was knowing your scriptures. Nowadays, when you’re ministering on the street, if you share scripture, people just want to argue on whether scripture’s real because they don’t really believe the word. And for that reason, some people don’t use scripture on the street. I still do because I believe the word of God is the only thing that guarantees it will bring a harvest. So even though it may not seem like they receive it, the word of God has power in its own right to bring forth the seed because he never sends on his word without bringing forth the harvest. And number three, obey the Holy Spirit. Believe God, this is an hour evangelists where we need the power of Jesus Christ. We need the gifts of the prophetic word of knowledge and word of faith, because that’s just going to change this world.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:03):
Amen. Well, it’s such a delight to meet you. Thank you for sharing with us, and I pray that God gives teen challenge even greater fruit in the years to come. If someone wants to find out more about Teen Challenge, what’s a good website for them to go to?
Bernie Gillott (12:19):
You can go to my website, which is B gilot. That’s G-I-L-L-O-T-T-B gilot.org. I’ve got evangelism training. I’ve got music videos, rap videos, or you can go to global tc.org, global tc.org. That’ll tell you about Teen Challenges, work around the world, or teen challenge usa.org. If you need someone to get in the program that’s here in the United States, those are all available resources.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:48):
Well, I encourage you to go to my brother’s website, support him in his ministry. I’m sure you need help as you go around the world preaching the gospel.
Bernie Gillott (12:56):
But the thing we need most is prayer. And I am so blessed that I got to meet you, Daniel. Man, you have made this conference for
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:01):
Me. Hallelujah. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, and God bless you.
Bernie Gillott (13:05):
Amen. God bless you, man of God. Lord, we thank you that you are raising up a voice of hope. Amen to the hopeless Lord, that even a teen challenge you just take the hopeless and make them givers of hope. Lord, those that are struggling, you’ll feel your strength to say that next word, that next step because you called them God and you’ll enable them. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:28):
Amen.
Bernie Gillott (13:28):
Thanks Daniel.