First, a simple beating. If he still refused, his thumbs or an arm was broken. If he refused again, his life was threatened. Most boys join up. Israel was actually fired at a number of times before he went back to the gang.
“My boy, he so scared,” said Israel’s mother. “One night there was a big fight. One of the other boys got killed. Israel did not shoot him, but he was with those killers, so they put him in jail.”
Israel’s mother showed me a letter from him, much handled and spotted with tears. He said he was sorry for her sake. He didn’t seem bitter. He talked about the day when he would be getting out. He even spoke about me, saying that he would be “sad for the preacher, when he finds out. Tell Davie I’d like to hear from him.”
How could we have kept Israel out of jail? Would it have helped to have me nearer, to give advice and friendship? Would it have helped to take him away from this neighborhood, away from the gang that drafted him and the life that poisoned him?
I asked Israel’s mother this, and she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “My boy wanted to be good, Mr. Wilkerson.”
Night and day he was on my mind. I talked to Gwen about him. I found myself asking people at the church what they would have done for him where I failed. I wrote him, but found that he could not write back. He could write only to his immediate family. Every day I went up to my mountain to pray for Israel. I could do nothing else for him.
In the meantime, I told his story to others, asking them what might have been done differently. Time and again the same answer came back: follow up.
But to follow up meant to be on the scene.
A turning point in my life was at hand. And then it happened.
It was a hot August night, a year and a half after my first trip to New York. I was standing in the pulpit at the Wednesday evening prayer service, when suddenly my hands began to tremble. The thermometer read 85 degrees, but I was shaking as if I had a chill. Instead of feeling troubled or sick, however, I felt exhilaration. It was as if the Spirit of the Lord was drawing near, in that room.
I still don’t know how I managed to get through the service. But before I knew it the congregation was filing out to go home. At ten thirty I closed up the church and left by the rear door. What happened next was one of those vivid moments that I shall never forget as long as I live.
The moon was shining with an unusual brilliance. It bathed the sleeping town in its cold and mysterious light; but there was one spot in particular that seemed illuminated. In back of the church there was a four-acre field that had been planted in grain. The wheat now stood about a foot and a half high. I found myself propelled into the very center of this field of grain, swaying in the night breeze. I found myself quoting the biblical figure of the harvest: “Look, I tell you, look round on the fields; they are already white, ripe for harvest” (John 4:35 NEB).
In my mind’s eye I saw each of the blades of wheat as a youngster on the streets of the city, hungry for a new beginning. Then I turned and looked at the church and the parsonage where Gwen and the three children were, safe, happy, secure. But a quiet inner voice spoke to me as clearly as if a friend had been standing nearby. The church is no longer yours, I was told. You are to leave.
I looked at the parsonage, and the same inner voice said, This home is no longer yours. You are to leave.
I answered, “Yes, Lord. I shall go.”
I walked over to the parsonage, and there was Gwen, waiting up. I could tell something had happened to her, too.
“What is it, Gwen?”
“David,” Gwen said, “you don’t have to tell me. I know already. You’re going to leave the church, aren’t you?”
I looked at Gwen and said nothing.
“I heard it, too, David,” she continued. “We’re going, aren’t we?”
In the darkness I put my arms around her. “Yes, my dear. We’re going.”
———
The following Sunday I stood in the pulpit and looked out at the faces of the people we knew so well.
“My friends,” I said, “as you know, these have been five extraordinarily happy and wonderful years for me, for my wife and for our children.
“But an unusual thing happened last Wednesday night—something that can have but one explanation.”
I told the congregation of my experience in the grain field, and of Gwen’s amazing parallel experience inside the parsonage. I told them that I did not doubt this to be the voice of the Lord, and that we would have to obey. I couldn’t answer their questions about where we would go. I suspected it would be New York, but I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that we were to leave Philipsburg now, without delay.
That very afternoon when I returned to the parsonage, the telephone began to ring. One call was from Florida, from a pastor who said that he couldn’t shake the urging to invite me to come and conduct a series of retreat meetings for him immediately. Another call came, then another, and before the day was over I found myself booked for twelve weeks of speaking engagements around the country. Within three weeks we had stored our furniture and moved from the parsonage into four rooms in my wife’s parents’ house.
For the next several months, I held meetings all across the nation. Whenever possible I chose engagements that would take me near New York City, that huge, congested, anguish-filled city I so loved.
In 1960, one of these engagements took me to Irvington, New Jersey, where I met Pastor Reginald Yake. I told him, as I told everyone, about some of the experiences I had had in New York. He listened intently and asked questions for an hour.
“Dave,” he said at last, “it seems to me that the churches need a full-time worker among the gangs in New York. I’d like to make a few telephone calls to some friends in the city.”
One of the men he called was Stanley Berg, co-pastor of Glad Tidings Tabernacle near Penn Station. A meeting of interested clergymen was scheduled in the basement of Mr. Berg’s church, and I was invited to come.
At the meeting, someone read a letter from the police commissioner urging the churches to take a stronger stand in matters affecting young people. Mr. Berg stood and spoke about the work I had already been doing. Then I got up and talked about the direction in which I thought work among teenagers might now go.
That day, a new ministry was born, with a main purpose of reaching young boys and girls with the message of God’s love. We called the new ministry Teen-Age Evangelism. I had already been involved in this work, so I was voted director of the organization. A police captain named Paul DiLena was voted secretary-treasurer. Poor Paul: He wasn’t at the meeting to defend himself.
Next came the question of money. We figured that for office space, printing, salaries and so forth, we gave ourselves a budget of $20,000. Of course, there was no actual cash represented, as our secretary-treasurer discovered a few moments later when Stanley Berg called him to inform him of his victory at the polls.
“Paul,” said Pastor Berg, “there’s good news. You have just been elected treasurer of Teen-Age Evangelism. David Wilkerson is your director in this fight for young people. And you’ll be glad to hear that you’ve got a budget of $20,000 for the first year.”
Captain DiLena said, “Who is David Wilkerson, who’s got the books, and where is the money?”
“Paul,” said Pastor Berg, “we have no books, we have no money, and Dave Wilkerson is a preacher from the hills of Pennsylvania who believes he belongs in New York.”
Paul laughed. “You make it sound naïve,” he said.
“We are naïve, Paul,” said Pastor Berg. “About as naïve as David was when he stepped up to Goliath with nothing but a sling, a pebble, and the conviction that he was on God’s side.”
13
It was a blustering February morning two years from that other February when I sold the television set and found myself launched on this strange adventure.
I was standing on the Staten Island Ferry, hardly realizing myself what a giant stride we had just made toward my dream.
Spume splashed up on the deck from a choppy sea. Off to starboard was the Statue of Liberty, and I found myself thinking how appropriate it was that I would pass her each morning. Because I was going to Staten Island on a specific and hopeful mission: to rent offices for our new program aimed at setting youngsters free.
I had an address in my pocket that sounded appropriate as the site for our headquarters suite: 1865 Victory Boulevard. But when I got to this “headquarters suite,” I had to smile. It consisted of a grubby outer office, an inner office, and a shipping room in a less-than-chic neighborhood.
Teen-Age Evangelism started in these three rooms. We had one paid employee: myself. And I didn’t receive enough salary to afford even a room in the cheapest boardinghouse. I set up a couch next to my desk. I ate what I could cook on a hot plate or, on occasions, with friends around New York who would look at my slender frame and ask me to share a meal with them.
But the part of the arrangement that was hardest was having the family divided. Gwen remained in Pittsburgh with her folks, and she longed to join me at the earliest moment.
“I know what you’re doing is right, Dave,” she said on one of our visits-by-telephone. “But I’m lonesome. Gary’s growing up without even knowing what you look like.” We agreed that we would move the family to New York as soon as the school year was over.
In the meantime, I found my new home was a perfect place for prayer. There was nothing to offer distraction. Furniture consisted of a desk, a hard straight-backed chair and my couch. I found it was a pleasure to pray in this setting of austerity, and each night I looked forward to my old television-viewing time—midnight to two in the morning—as a time of renewal. Never did I get up without being refreshed, encouraged and filled with new enthusiasm.
Those early days were exciting. The Spanish- and English-speaking Assemblies churches in the New York area had supplied me with $1,000 to launch our work. I used most of this money conducting two experiments. The first we called “Operation Saturation.” This was a literature program aimed at reaching every high school student in the city’s trouble areas and tackling the problems they faced on the street by offering help from the Bible. We worked hard on this program, bringing hundreds of young people from local churches into the operation to distribute our booklets. At the end of three months, however, we could point to only a handful of teenagers who had been truly changed as a result.
So we turned to our second experiment: television. I gathered together one hundred boys and girls who had been in trouble and had found the way out. We formed an all-teenage choir and every week for thirteen weeks we put on a television show. The format was simple. The kids sang, then one of them told his or her story.
We were encouraged by the ratings this show received: We were apparently very popular among the teenagers of the city. But television was expensive. Kids all over the metropolitan area sent in their nickels and dimes to help support the show, but even so, at the end of our first thirteen weeks we were $4,500 in debt.
“It looks like we’re going to have to cancel the series before we can really measure results,” I said to our committee, in a special meeting called to consider the crisis. We wanted to continue the experiment for another thirteen weeks, but there didn’t seem to be a way.
Suddenly a man I had never seen before stood up in the rear of the meeting.
“I would like to make a suggestion,” this gentleman said. He introduced himself to us: He was the Reverend Harald Bredesen, a Dutch Reformed minister from Mount Vernon, New York. “I’ve seen your shows, and they have a fresh quality about them that I like. Before you decide definitely to cancel, I wonder if you’d come talk to a friend of mine.”
I agreed.
The next day Harald and I went to visit Chase Walker, a magazine editor in Manhattan. Mr. Walker listened attentively to the story of our work and how it got started. He seemed interested, but at the end of the conversation, he also seemed puzzled.
“Just what is it you want me to do?” he said.
“I’ll be honest with you,” said Harald. “We want $10,000.”
Mr. Walker blanched. So did I.
Then Mr. Walker began to laugh. “Well, I appreciate the compliment, but I certainly don’t have $10,000. How did you happen to think of me in connection with this need?”
“I can’t really answer that question,” said Harald. “I’ve had the most remarkable feeling, ever since I learned that this program might have to be canceled, that somehow you held the key. Every time I’d think about it I’d think, Chase Walker! Nothing more specific than that.” Harald paused hopefully. Mr. Walker said nothing. “Well,” said Harald, “I was wrong. But these hunches, when they come so strong, usually mean something.”
Mr. Walker rose from his chair, bringing the interview to a close. “I’ll let you know if I get any ideas. In the meantime, thanks for sharing the story with me.”
We were out the door of his office, when suddenly Mr. Walker called us back. “Wait a moment.”
We turned around and went back into Walker’s office. “Something just occurred to me. I got a telegram today I don’t understand at all.” He fished around among the papers on his desk and came up with it. It was from W. Clement Stone, president of the Combined Insurance Company of Chicago, a friend of Walker’s. “Disregard previous telegram,” it said. “I will be at the Savoy Hilton Wednesday.”
“That’s today,” said Mr. Walker. “But I never got any previous telegram. We had no plans to get together. I wondered whether his secretary got my name confused with someone else’s.”
Walker looked at Harald for a moment, then picked up a pen and scribbled a note. “Go up to the Savoy,” he said, handing us the note in an unsealed envelope. “Ask for Mr. Clement Stone. If he’s in, you can use this as an introduction, and see what develops. Read it if you want to.”
We did, waiting for the elevator out in the hall. “Dear Clem,” it said. “This is to introduce David Wilkerson, who is doing a remarkable job with teenagers in this city. David needs $10,000 for his work. You might listen to his story carefully, and, if it interests you, help him out. Chase.”
Twenty minutes later we were knocking on the door of a suite in the Savoy. A gentleman came to the door tying a large bow tie. He was obviously dressing for dinner.
“Mr. Stone?”
The man nodded.
“Excuse us, we have a note for you from Chase Walker.”
Mr. Stone stood in the doorway and read the note, then asked us in. He seemed as puzzled as we were about the situation. He said he was due downstairs in a few moments, but that if we wanted to talk while he finished dressing, he’d be glad to listen.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Stone was ready to leave, and I had barely launched into a description of Teen-Age Evangelism.
“I have to go now,” said Mr. Stone gently. “But if Chase Walker recommends you, that’s good enough for me. I like the sound of your work. Send me your bills. I’ll pay them up to ten thousand.”
Harald and I looked at each other, stunned.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, please.” Mr. Stone edged toward the door. “I’ll pay you a visit next time I’m in New York, and we’ll work out details . . .” and he was gone.
The $10,000 went toward our debt, and it also paid for the second thirteen weeks, and for a film, Vulture on My Veins, about drug addiction among teenagers in New York. But this money purchased more than just film and television time. It bought us new respect for this ministry. It was becoming increasingly clear to us that the hand of the Lord was in our work.
14
In spite of the success of our television show, after about six months I began to feel strongly that we were missing one vital ingredient: personal contact.
I started going out on the streets and talking to teenagers face-to-face. As soon as I did, I knew that I had touched the key to effective work with people. Jesus did not have television or the printed word to help Him. His was a face-to-face ministry. I knew as so
on as I returned to going out into the streets that this was the method meant for me, too.
Each morning I closed the door at my headquarters on Victory Boulevard, stepped onto the ferry and then onto the subway, and as soon as I arrived in Brooklyn, I simply started talking with the boys I met. Time and again, they responded. I could once again watch the change taking place before my eyes.
More and more I realized we had to act on the problem of follow-up. With most of the youngsters I was satisfied if I got them established in a good local church. But with boys who were in serious trouble, or who had no home, some closer form of follow-up was needed.
One morning after I’d stepped off the ferryboat in Manhattan, I walked downstairs to the subway that would take me over to Brooklyn. The subway at this point makes a great loop, and in the turn its wheels scream. This place will always have a special meaning for me. Because there, among the screams of the subway, I suddenly saw my old dream take on substance.
It sprang, full-grown, to mind. The house I had dreamed of—we might call it the Teen Challenge Center—would be located in the heart of the roughest part of the city. It would be headquarters for a dozen or more full-time workers who shared my hopes for the young people around us, who saw their wonderful potential and their tragic waste. Each worker would be a specialist: one would work with boys from the gangs, another with boys who were addicted to drugs, another would work with parents. There would be women workers who would specialize in girl gang members, girls with addictions, and other problems.
We could bring in boys and girls who needed special help. They would live in an atmosphere of discipline and affection. They would participate in our worship. They would watch Christians living together, working together; and they would be put to work themselves. It would be a center where they were prepared for the life of the Spirit.
In the summer of 1960, after I’d been working full-time in the city for close to a year, I began to talk about my dream aloud. On fund-raising trips, I preached about the need. Among our churches in New York I painted the picture as I had envisioned it. But always I was met with the same comment. “Dave, this dream has one flaw: It requires money.”