Original subtitles

Looking at this honor ring now,

I think about how excited I was

when I was being told that I was going to get a piece of "honor".

And I remember thinking,

"This is probably going to be the best decision that I've made in my life."

We had a saying, "It was the ring, the line, the plan."

So this is the ring.

And the line was the individuals that were in this group.

And the plan, which is to go out into the world

and make disciples and lead a generation to Christ.

But I actually wore it for like ten years

because it really did mean something significant to me.

It's like my entire life is just encapsulated in this little thing.

Here it is, my precious.

Right after you go to the Honor Academy, you receive your honor ring.

When you receive your honor ring, you pledge loyalty for life.

I received the privilege of wearing the ring. The ring!

The line, the plan, always honorable for life!

Congratulations...

I took the pledge.

One of the commitments was, "I will never portray or allow Teen Mania

to be portrayed in a negative light, past, present, or future."

Which... I have definitely violated.

The Honor Academy,

a one year internship for committed young adults who are driven

to find their purpose and make a difference with their lives.

What this means is taking young people who are serious about God

and helping them to grow up as leaders.

Then the spark that they've received, their passion for God,

their heart for the world, doesn't just stay with them,

but it ends up affecting their whole generation.

"Take a year of your life and major in God."

And I will never forget that as long as I live.

That was the phrase that hooked me.

I really started to just learn who I was here,

at the Honor Academy, like who I'm meant to be.

You're a piece of coal in that fire, just being kindled consistently.

I wanted to go somewhere before college, just get grounded in my faith.

That's when my journey started.

The Honor Academy is the engine of Teen Mania.

Every intern who worked for Teen Mania, had to go to the Honor Academy.

Here, we're going to utterly transform you into this kind of soldier,

in this army of God.

When we come to Christ, it's like joining a new family.

You're joining a new kingdom, Jesus talked about, you're a warrior for Christ.

Ron would use this phrase, "the mark of the warrior."

Going to the Honor Academy was considered the ultimate mark of a warrior.

It was a mark of being chosen.

You were the elite.

An army of leaders, a generation of world changers.

There's always the overarching idea that we're in a war between good and evil.

So we were always told that we're going to take the victory over the line.

We're going to take Christianity to where it hasn't been before.

Media, politics, education.

And so it just seemed like the natural next step to me

to go to the Honor Academy.

Going to a place where everybody else was like me and was just as obsessed

with being bold for Jesus and being on fire and changing the world.

Okay, I'm a high achiever. Let's do it. Let's go, baby.

You're going to have classes in how you become a leader.

Classes in how you influence America, how you influence the world.

You would also do huge, dynamic spiritual training experiences.

And I was like, "That's awesome."

There was just something in me that said that I should go.

I'm sure I said, like, "Yes, God told me I should."

I'm sure that's what I said.

You gonna argue with God?

I had a full scholarship to a community college,

but I dropped out and joined Teen Mania, for the internship.

I was driven. I took it seriously.

You know, I argued for my parents.

I want to go to Teen Mania. I want to go to the internship.

I want to commit my life. I was like, "That sounds like an adventure."

Teen Mania was located in Garden Valley, Texas.

Very remote location.

You went by a guard station, where a teenager would wave for you in.

The dorms were all named for martyrs, like Elliot Hall, named for Jim Elliot.

The modern day martyr.

You're with all of these people from all over the country.

The relationships that you form in that kind of an environment

are so intense and so intimate, and there's such a feeling of belonging.

I was an artsy, go thy-looking teen.

I got very lucky to make a lot of great friends.

Phil Boltz.

Carrie Saum.

I know that the leaders called us the Rat Pack,

and it was a really fun group. We were very sincere kids.

We were believers, but we knew something was weird.

When we first got there, we have to purge the outside world.

Those were the nights where you've got the big bonfire

and people are throwing their CDs into the fire.

You brought Twilight in with you?

That was getting thrown out as soon as you arrived.

Ron very much emphasized that your parents will not understand this.

They're not going to understand your passion.

God is the one you have to truly respect.

When I went to the Honor Academy, I was writing for Rolling Stone Magazine.

The long time story of Rolling Stone is, "What are the kids into?"

But also always looking at suspicion with like, "Who's trying to fool the kids?"

Welcome, all of you guys who just got here.

Congratulations. You made it. You are here in the Honor Academy.

Obviously, Ron was really a big deal.

He was "the" Ron Luce, right?

We all wanted to be there because of Ron.

-Coming to the Honor Academy? -Yes, I am.

But once we got there, he wasn't coming down to slum with us.

Sometimes you'd hear a motorcycle, and be like, "Oh, here comes Ron."

Ron was the president,

but Dave Hasz, as executive director, was the man in charge on campus.

Dave was Ron's right hand man.

Ron cast the vision, and Dave is the one that carried it out.

Who made me the director of the Honor Academy?

Yes, God did. I understand that. Excellent. Well done.

But God used who to put me in this position?

-Ron Luce. -Ron Luce.

Dave was an intern in the early days,

and then he was hired on by Ron Luce to run the internship.

He had a very authoritative presence.

Feet!

Dave was like the very cool older brother that everybody wanted to impress.

Exactly right. Seats.

He would say things like, "When I was at school, my friends would run.

We would run from everywhere we went, to save time."

So my friends and I started running.

We'd go from the dorm to the cafeteria, and we would... "Let's run."

We would run as fast as we can. Big Jordan Peterson vibes.

He was supposed to be the spiritual advisor.

He loved the movie Braveheart.

A lot of comparing spiritual warfare to Braveheart.

I think he had a Braveheart sword in his office.

We need to be remembering the fact that we are people of honor.

Down! Down!

With Dave Hasz, everything was army oriented.

You should know better by now!

Essentially, we were like the Marines for Team Christ.

You have to be regimented, and you have to listen to the hierarchy.

I mean, it makes sense because we are here to change the world.

Every morning, we would wake up at four o'clock.

-Count! -Nine!

We would do jumping jacks. We would work out until we threw up.

What they would say when we were doing our morning exercises was,

"You beat your body, and you make it your slave."

How many got to beat your body a little bit? Make it your slave?

As a black man...

And you have a campus full of white people coming up to me going,

"Beat your body. Make it your slave." Not appropriate.

We'd all get back, have two minutes to shower

before we would get dressed and go eat and start our jobs for the day.

What we were told about job assignments

was that you were being observed, and then they were very seriously praying

about where you should go in the ministry,

where God would most be able to use you effectively.

But what I realized way after the fact...

Was that the divine inspiration for where you end up

is a lot more like a draft.

Leaders sit in a room, and they say, "I want so-and-so. I want this person."

If you were placed in exec, in Ron's purview,

that was the very best placement you could hope for.

I was placed as one of Ron Luce's executive assistants,

which is not even something I had on my radar as a possibility.

As an 18 year old, like, that's pretty cool.

My job was a dancer and an actor for the ministry team.

And what the ministry team does is they travel around

to the Acquire the Fires, and they put on the performances.

I was on the ministry team as well.

We were the ones that were running almost everything that you saw at these events.

I ended up being the worship leader for Acquire the Fire.

My first show that I ever sang was in front of 10,000 people.

But I had friends that did not like their job.

Teen Mania was very much of its name.

Every role that you can think of was being filled by teenagers.

There were almost 1000 interns on campus at any given time.

This was a huge operation.

You could be put on grounds crew, janitorial crew, cafeteria crew.

After you've been told you're going to go out there

and make this difference for Christ,

you're going to go make tater tots for a year.

These kids were like, "God called me to the internship,

and now I have to scrub the toilet."

There was definitely a hierarchy at play.

International operations. That's where I wanted to be.

That's where trips were planned. That's where global work was worked out.

And there was one place I didn't want to be.

That was the one... the whole ministry.

I was like, "You want me to mow lawns, dig holes? I'll do...

Just don't put me on this one task."

So I thought, "I will trust God. God is going to take care of me in this."

And I was assigned to the call center.

The one place I didn't want to be.

I was a teenage telemarketer for Jesus.

They were selling blocks of tickets to Acquire the Fire,

or harassing people to go on missions.

That's where the bulk of us worked day to day.

You were a telemarketer that was paying them to telemarket.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. We paid to be there.

Nobody paid us to do this work.

As an intern, we all paid a monthly sum.

I would raise funds to attend.

It was really expensive.

At the end of Acquire the Fire,

you would fill out a card with all of your information,

all in the name of keeping up with you,

making sure you were getting connected with the right resources.

We would have entire pallets full of cards.

They became our lead cards.

Hello?

Hey, this is Morgan calling from Acquire the Fire. How are you today?

Hey, Morgan. I'm doing really good.

I worked A shift. I would call youth pastors during the day.

B shift would call kids getting home from school to be like,

"Come on the trip. Come on the trip. Come on the trip."

And it's like, there's a bell that you ring

when you get a commit for a summer trip.

It was, "Can I get 120 or so calls a day?"

Working in the call center was tallying how many calls you made

and how many commits you made.

I was calling synagogues.

"Don't you want to come to this evangelical youth conference?

You really should come."

And they're like, "We're Jews." They were like...

"You've misunderstood."

But we're like, "Let's get them called numbers up."

-I wasn't bad at it. I was good at sales. -Yeah.

But it was kind of soul killing.

I was in this to learn how to do better international missions,

but they wanted me to move those fingers to dial.

They wanted me to get those commits.

Meanwhile...

I worked my entire year to get off that team.

Started going to people and being like, "Hey, a mistake's been made."

"No, no, you need to be faithful with little.

You need to not complain. You need to not be bitter."

You might say, I didn't want this task. I wanted that task.

Well, you're not going to get that task until you're faithful with this task.

You'd hear the phrase "die to self". Dying to self is putting yourself last.

Shut down any selfishness, any thoughts of your own self, your own needs.

-Don't listen to your body, your mind. -Yeah.

Your life means nothing compared to the purpose.

And they're like, "That's what you don't want to do?

That's what God wants you to do."

31 hours was the official amount of time you're supposed to work,

but many were working 80, 100 hours.

Because you wanted to show how intense for God you were.

I almost wish it was just a grift because that's pretty easy to undo.

But this was more than that. This was meant to transform them.

Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone,

to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey,

whether you're slaves to sin, which leads to death,

or to obedience, which leads to righteousness.

Ron taught the weekly character development class.

He was very good with words, very good with framing things in a way

that made you go, "Oh, yeah, you're right."

Without you getting a chance to think about it.

Jesus learned to be obedient, he wasn't naturally obedient.

They might call it growth, or they might call it character development.

But it was the same lesson plan every class, obedience.

What's character development about? Obedience.

Well, how do you grow? Obedience.

When you go to Honor Academy, you commit to this set of rules.

They are all designed to separate you from all the pieces that made you, you.

That's what we're experiencing now.

A lot of rules were based on purity culture.

I remember in high school being told things like, "Oh, you're the hot one.

She's the marriable one."

Right? Things like that that would really mess with my brain.

At the Honor Academy, I wanted to reinvent myself.

During your year at the Honor Academy, you're not allowed to date anyone.

And if you were in a relationship when you got there,

you needed to break that off immediately, which I did.

Purity culture was really big.

And at the Honor Academy,

we subscribed to a strict version of Joshua Harris's book,

I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

He's a Christian activist and the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye,

Joshua Harris, Joshua!

Joshua Harris jumped onto the scene

and took purity culture to a more extreme level.

It's not just about saving sex.

And the point is is that a lot of us get into rela...

I did this. I'm writing the book from the mistakes that I've made in the past,

that we get emotionally involved, we lead someone on, and then we break it off.

And we get into a pattern in our lives of doing that for the rest of our lives.

-And that's a... -But wait a minute.

But look, Bill, I mean, you kind of say that,

and yet the picture you threw on your book is kind of a pimp photograph.

You know what I mean?

It's a little like... Right?

I was like, "Oh, he's hot. He's so cute." And all of us had a crush on him.

Oh, how the heartthrob has fallen. I'm just now an old, bald guy.

So I'll take the past compliment for sure.

In my book, I was like, "We shouldn't date.

We should save ourselves, and you should prioritize a godly marriage."

Basically, your thesis is that the best way to find

the person of your dreams is to stop dating.

Right.

Teen Mania really embraced the message of I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

And it became the purity culture handbook at Teen Mania.

I bought it, I read it, I followed it. I believed in it 100%.

In the past, I have kissed many different girls.

And you know, the reason that I so regret that today

is because in each of those relationships,

I was kissing someone else's future wife.

The definition of purity became more and more extreme,

even to the point of your thoughts and your emotions.

Like you not only need to keep your body pure,

but you need to keep your mind pure. What are you thinking about?

Everyone was assigned an accountability partner.

We would have to tell accountability partner

every sinful thought we had, any time we had broken the rules.

We were self enforcers. We policed each other.

We were encouraged to confront each other.

They gave us lessons. There was a whole session.

It was the system of control.

Positive reinforcement and reward for telling your peers

if they were doing something wrong.

I got confronted one time for singing too good.

He told me that it was too distracting,

and it was like leading people away from worship.

If you did something wrong,

but then you immediately went to somebody and said, "I did something wrong,"

they would, in theory, be more lenient on you.

They called it running for forgiveness.

During winter break, I did something that a lot of teenagers did.

I watched a couple of minutes of scrambled porn on HBO,

and in my mind, I'm going, "I shouldn't have done that.

I shouldn't have done that. Well, I'm not going to do it again."

And the guilt, the hot coal of guilt, is just burning down into my stomach.

And I tell them what I did, and they gave me three months of probation.

I didn't leave my room. I had to tell my parents about it.

My mom immediately says,

"If you want to come home, that is fine with us."

And I almost left.

However, since the day I got there,

I could tell that the leadership there thought I was not going to make it.

I was like, "I am going to stick this out, and I'm going to show them."

Teen Mania definitely used the message of purity

to create these rules and to exert control.

And that is a pressure cooker.

This idea of a regime with total control.

Well, human beings being human beings, we know that that never really happened.

It's not so much about the rules never being broken.

It's about people always, always thinking about the rules.

The rules were designed to remove the appearance of evil.

The appearance of evil was being in a situation

or behaving in a way that could give off the idea

that you're doing something wrong. It didn't matter the intention behind it.

A guy and a girl sitting next to each other in the dark.

That was the appearance of evil.

I wanted to get my hair braided.

I had to present to them the idea that it was culturally a part of who I am.

So they need to find somebody to braid my hair.

Well, there was a girl on campus,

but the thing was there was like maybe seven,

five to seven black people on campus with me.

And whenever we were sitting by ourselves,

we were confronted about segregating ourselves

from the rest of this all-white academy.

So to avoid the appearance of evil, that we weren't segregating ourselves,

she braided my hair in one of the offices,

but a staff member walks by, and she's like,

"Guys, this doesn't look right.

This doesn't look right. This is... This is... No. You're playing in his hair.

No. You have to... No, we can't do this. Not here. No."

We had taken the steps to do what we thought was right.

And here we're being told, "Hey, what you thought was right is wrong."

When she said that, I felt tiny.

Like I didn't have the ability to think for myself.

In that particular place...

there was no questioning of authority.

We had, for the Acquire the Fires,

a group of tribal dancers, me, three white girls.

Brown paint.

And it was Ron's idea.

And we thought nothing of it.

Because it came from people that we were taught not to question,

and to question would be rebellion. And rebellion is not of God.

There was no space for racial identity, human identity,

just Christian identity.

And again, obedience, obedience to authority.

Even if you think authority is wrong, even if you know authority is wrong,

the fact of authority is right.

Ron always sort of looking to blur those lines between fantasy and reality.

He understood good theater had a ritual element to it,

and he wanted to create collaborative theater.

LTE's were "life transforming events", and each one was different.

And they were all multiple days,

and they were supposed to teach you through some sort of an experiential way.

We're going to drive people to get out of their stinking little baby comfort zone

and get out there and change the world.

We're going to find a way to get the gospel

to the people that have never heard. The unreached people groups of the world.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you're going to go do?

Well, what we're going to be able to do

is we're going to be able to go preach the gospel to people.

We're gonna go tell them about Jesus.

The Unreached People Group. Oh, boy.

They split the campus in half.

Half into missionaries and half into tribal people.

In what we call "the back 40", so there's about 460 acres.

You have to figure out their language, what God they serve,

and if you've converted them by the end of the weekend,

you're a good Christian.

And in the descriptions in the handbook, they say very vague...

"Your child will learn how to go deeper in their faith."

Christian LARPing is what it is.

But the goal is to kind of blur those lines between fantasy and reality.

We were always told that in third world countries,

they're seeking us out to eliminate us.

We had to go through "customs",

to give you a "real experience" of what it's like to be a missionary.

-Hello. What's your name? -Jessica.

-May I see your papers? -Yes, ma'am.

And I remember lying and saying, "No, I'm not preaching the gospel."

We're agriculturalists for the Peace Corps.

I am a journalist doing an article on the Peace Corps.

Doing a documentary with the University of Phoenix.

We are with National Geographic.

So what are you guys really going to do?

We're gonna go minister to people.

Other cultures were seen as these objects to be saved.

Cultural competency within that space was almost nonexistent.

You have to go come into a culture sensitive to the culture,

but you're invading it. You aren't...

You're not totally becoming like the tribe you're going to.

You're going to change some things.

You might make some waves, and that's okay.

When you look at other cultures,

and you find all of the things that make them in need of saving,

you break the ability to truly be in communion with them.

And that can be very dangerous.

There were more and more things that I was telling myself,

"Well, this doesn't totally make sense,

but I'm sure it makes sense in a way that I don't even realize."

Rest assured, if it seems like it's going in a bad direction, it'll get worse.

Another life transforming event was much worse.

The staff would literally come out at like 3 o'clock in the morning

with pots and pans in the dorm and wake you up out of a dead sleep.

Oh, boy. Oh, goody.

I wonder what we're going to get to do next.

You were blindfolded, put in a van,

and driven out to an undisclosed location.

This was crosswalk.

Every so often they would go and tap you on the shoulder if it was your turn,

and they would drop six, seven, eight kids off.

My group was dropped off in Oklahoma.

You didn't have any money. You didn't have any cell phone.

And they give you two days and a six foot tall wooden cross,

and they say, "Get back to campus."

You are depending "on God" for your food,

for where you're going to sleep that night.

You couldn't ask for anything.

And because everyone is so eager to obey the rules,

"Don't ask for things" becomes "don't ask questions".

You can't ask anything.

"Where are we?"

Becomes "That's a cool map. I wish I knew more about it."

After a couple of hours of walking,

one of the girls goes, "Why aren't people stopping and talking to us?"

And I go, "We're a bunch of white kids in the middle of Texas with a wooden cross.

We probably look like we're looking for the sheet store."

My group got picked up by a pickup truck

whose driver may or may not have been intoxicated.

Other groups had guns pulled on them.

One night, we are in the middle of nowhere.

Finally, we see some headlights in the distance,

and then the car turned its flashers on, it was a cop.

And that cop was not happy to see us.

We go, "Okay, well, can you help us out?"

He goes, "Okay, I can drive you back."

And then he points to the cross. He goes, "I'm not taking that."

And then one of the girls starts crying

because we are going to leave the cross behind,

and we are going to fail our mission.

And this cop, who looked completely overwhelmed by this teenage girl,

He goes like, "Okay, okay, okay, Just put it on the top."

So we drove back in this cop car.

We are holding on to the cross on top of this cop car, holding it in place.

Because to get rid of that cross, I mean, this is the message they want.

"You carry that cross even if it kills you."

This isn't funny. If you don't get back there,

it's not like you're not going to get invited to the cool kids party.

If you don't get back there,

if you don't pass this test, you're going to have betrayed God.

You're going to betray your parents. You're going to betray Ron.

That's a real thing.

That's our martyr.

Did you assume as a kid that you would die a martyr?

And that you would have a short life?

Hmm.

When I look back in time,

I never thought there would be another option.

Ron Luce invited Dad to go on a global expeditions trip with Teen Mania,

and Dad was affected by this.

On the plane ride back, there's Dad and Ron Luce.

And Dad is penning the lyrics to this song called "Allegiance".

Dad, has it always been this way?

Well, even from the beginning, men hated Jesus.

Ray Boltz' "I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb" music video

where basically the dad's being persecuted for being a Christian,

and he's like talking to his kid.

But Dad, did they want to die?

No, but they were forced to make a choice.

I remember watching that. I'm traumatized from that

because the dad gets drug away, and the kid's still in the prison cell.

So, you know, he's probably going to die next.

But there was just this understanding that we were willing to die for our faith.

That was a huge song for Dad.

Christians, long ago ♪

♪ Were brought before ♪

♪ A tyrant's throne ♪

"I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb" is such a clear depiction

of what was the cultural understanding.

♪ But one by one They chose to die ♪

We were told that eventually Christians are going to be martyred again.

In April 1999, we were driving to Pontiac, Michigan,

with Teen Mania for this huge stadium event.

Practically the entire internship of 500, 600 kids went to Pontiac.

We were all working up to an event

that was being called "Day One".

That was going to be at the Silverdome in Detroit, a huge arena.

It was going to be the big daddy of them all.

Day One is a national gathering of young people

that are on fire from all over the country.

Coming together at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.

It seats almost 90,000 people.

To make a statement to the world there is a generation who do love God.

So we're driving up,

and we start hearing rumors of some kind of a school crisis.

Something happened at a school. It involved guns.

This tragedy is about an hour and a half old now.

Apparently, the SWAT team has mobilized outside of the school.

It was the Columbine massacre.

Columbine High School looks like a battle scene

after the worst school shooting in US history.

Possibly as many as 25 students dead.

For us, who were teenagers, school shootings were not common.

The idea that you could be murdered in your school

was shocking and horrifying and visceral.

So we get to Day One, and we're trying to go on with the event.

But we started hearing the stories of students who died.

These gunmen were going into the school to single out individuals.

And one of the students

who was in the library reportedly says that one of the gunmen

went up to a young girl, asked her if she believed in God.

She said, "Yes, I do." And they shot her.

The story of Cassie Bernall, one of the students killed at Columbine.

Quickly becoming a national symbol to people of faith.

That did not turn out to be true,

but everyone thought, "What would I have done?"

Darrell Scott, his daughter Rachel, was killed outside Columbine High.

We always felt that the Lord was going to use her in a mighty way,

and I think none of us would have believed it would be in this manner.

When I heard the whole story of...

that her dream was to be a missionary, and she was just on fire for the Lord.

And then she gets cut down.

And in her youth, I thought of some of the great martyrs

of Henry Martin Livingston, Borden, Jim Elliot.

Rachel was signed up to go with Teen Mania on a mission trip,

but before she could go, she was murdered in the Columbine shooting.

A few days later, at Day One, Ron talked about Columbine.

And it was the moment the room turned upside down.

Rachel Scott died that day.

One of the several martyrs that stood up for her faith.

Now, the thing that is unique about Rachel,

if you look around this room right now, she was a normal person.

She'd been to concerts like this, just like you.

There was something in her heart that said,

"I've got to make my life count this summer."

Ron looks at that, and he sees an opportunity.

So he claims ownership of her.

And just like a myth says, "This could be you."

Someone who cared about the kids would say,

"This could be you, you could be killed in school.

We've got to do something to stop that."

He says, "Wouldn't that be awesome?

This could be you. Your name will be remembered."

And he was willing to teach a generation of kids, you're expendable.

And maybe the most valuable thing you could ever do is die.

Send me, Lord, where no one ever wanted to go to.

Use me, Lord, to finish the job, taking this world for you.

You're imagining yourself as the subject of violence.

That the glory is the martyrdom.

These are the things I'm thinking about as a teenager.

"I have to die. I have to get ready to die.

You can do it, Mica. You can do it."

You got to gin yourself up because you don't wanna go to hell.

You can do it.

We're not just screaming it with our voice,

but with our very lives. We're shouting.

We are those with a relentless pursuit of God.

A relentless pursuit of the people He loves.

Now, shout! For the Lord has given you this generation.

I don't think we would be talking about Teen Mania now,

were it not for the Columbine massacre in 1999.

After Day One, the tension and the atmosphere at the Honor Academy

went from like a six to a 12 overnight.

There was this big push for everyone to know

where they stand in their faith, to just push you to your limits,

to see if you would stand up for your faith.

Nobody was playing anything anymore. Everything was very real.

The Honor Academy became more intense.

It became scarier and harder.

This is one of the most demanding

and challenging training opportunities that I know of,

and you are going to be challenged more than you can possibly imagine.

You are going full right now. You are going full right now.

Move it, move it, move it!

We are not going to feel sorry for you.

Please do not feel sorry for yourself.

ESOAL, which was the "Emotional Stretching Opportunity of a Lifetime".

It's a simulated Navy SEAL hell week,

outside in the mud for 90 hours straight.

We've got crosses, platoons.

We all have helmets with numbers on them.

We are no longer our names. We are numbers.

353, do you feel

that you are in tension with someone -

out there, by the way that you pushed yourself?

I don't know.

Well, you're gonna wanna be gentle, laying those crosses down.

If your belt breaks off your cross,

-it's not going to be pretty. -Eight...

Crawling through tunnels ten feet underground and 30 feet long.

We need you in that hole now.

Head first.

You just need some help here.

Once you get in, you can take him off of you, but you need get in first.

Keep going, keep going. Keep going.

This event is designed to make you look inside of yourself

and depend upon God for your strength and go beyond what you thought you could do.

God, the father, be with us for this day and throughout the rest of the days.

-Father... -I am a strong man of God.

I'm a strong man of God. I'm a strong man of God.

What's your number down there, orange shirt?

-243. -243, why are you crying?

-I'm scared, sir. -What are you scared of?

Pay attention! You are a loser!

This is my favorite part of ESOAL.

I'm going to go be the strong one now.

Come on, now.

This is the Mensa challenge, okay?

It is a whole bunch of eighth grade math problems, right?

We're going to give each team the paper and a pen

and a certain amount of time, and then we're going to see how well they do.

Then we're going to run down and grade them,

and then we're going to line them up by their intelligence.

No matter how hard you push yourself,

there's always a little bit more you can push.

Do it as if your pursuing the thing that God put you on this planet for.

Go.

-All the way down to your shoulders. -Let's go!

-All the way down here. -Just keep walking.

-412, come all the way down here. -Don't let go of the rope!

All the way down.

That pain and that hurt and inappropriateness

of creating a spiritual climate

with this pretend military training

was to get you to come to the very, very end of yourself.

That was the moment I knew

that whatever it was before, now they were raising martyrs,

and they were recruiting children.

The rough beast now comes plainly into view.

One time, they called us into the auditorium.

Suddenly, some people in military garb come in

and tell us we need to bow to their flag.

Get on the ground!

That was the End Times, it felt to me.

It wasn't even in the handbook.

The end times, a lot of Christians believe

there will be a one world government that will execute Christians.

Our leaders play act, they were the evil one world government.

I don't even know how many, people stormed in everywhere and like...

-The reception! -Quiet, quiet!

It was an attack on Christians,

and it was an attack on us.

And yourself! Sit down, sit down.

They are life transforming events.

If you think it's life or death, and they're being taught that it is,

now we've gone into the area, which I think can fairly be called torture.

Those people were traumatized. They were terrorized.

Heightened sense of over stimulation, over awareness.

Fear, and it's a means of control.

Teen Mania was the most militant fundamentalist Christian youth movement

the United States had seen in at least a century, if not more.

And that's how Ron caught the attention of the Arlington Group.

The Arlington Group was founded in part by James Dobson,

and other Christian right leaders with powerful fiefdoms.

They were trying to align the organization,

so that instead of having one fiefdom here and one fiefdom there,

they could build the kingdom of God, and in Washington, DC.

Their goal is retaking America for a certain vision of Christianity.

The Arlington Group was really designed to be behind the scenes. Secretive.

These were really the big, big, heavy hitters.

And then Ron, probably even to his own surprise, got a seat at that table.

Teen Mania became part of the Arlington Group.

That's how Ron and a man named Charles Colson get together.

Colson's organization was also a part of the group.

Colson was Nixon's hatchet man, and he went to prison for it.

In prison, he was born again.

And he's working on this big project. He wants to undo secularism.

Everything is a war against the very conditions that made democracy possible.

Everything was the enemy.

He thinks the Enlightenment was a bad idea.

All I care about is advancing the kingdom of God.

And it's a perfect marriage.

Well, we're on the same page here.

If we don't start looking to kids, what's going on with these young people?

Everything we're doing now is going to be moot.

And together, they just decide

we can make the whole country an Honor Academy,

take their worldview and make it go viral.

So they come up with this idea called Rewired.

Their plan had the scope of Acquire the Fire

and the deep indoctrination of Honor Academy.

They produce videos.

It was 12 sessions, each about an hour long on DVD.

All the tools you would need to recruit and indoctrinate these followers

without needing them to even attend Teen Mania events.

They were exciting, highly produced lessons,

telling the teenagers of America a war is being waged against them.

You've got to become a real soldier before you become another casualty.

Amy!

The curriculum was the greatest hits

of all their most harmful teachings, but intensified.

It could go farther than any Acquire the Fire.

It could go into every corner of the country.

He's sending them out through youth pastors.

Ron's thinking in terms of cells, right?

Youth group here, youth group here, youth group here.

And indoctrination.

They borrow all these motifs from The Matrix movies.

You can take the blue pill and keep being a sucker

and see what the establishment wants you to see.

Or you can take the red pill and see the reality.

You can see the truth, and the truth is much grittier.

It's the battlefield.

-You are breaking through the matrix. -We've got to wake up everyone else.

Rewired was designed to get kids to see every single thing

through this lens of "us versus them".

It's a matter of life or death. This is war.

Which side are you on?

From Teen Mania to Acquire the Fire to Rewired,

it's all preparation for the coming battle. The ultimate fight.

Battlecry.

Let me hear your battle cry tonight!

I didn't hear you! Let me hear your battle cry tonight!

Battlecry was Acquire the Fire on steroids.

We want to shape the culture instead of being shaped by the culture.

Ron's coming out as political.

The Pied Piper led the kids from the stadium into the streets.

We were at war. We were an army for God.

The army of God. You guys don't see anything wrong with the army of God?

I'm a little nervous because I think you might want

a theocracy in this country.

It's like Sarajevo.

This was fascism,

in front of me, on a massive scale.

And you could say it's divisive. Well, maybe it needs to be divisive.

You create a soldier who will follow orders in an unquestioning way.

Mica was public enemy number one.

This whole Teen Mania thing has had me way down.

I just can't live like this anymore. That's where I'm at right now.

They have to be stopped.