The Mission and Vision of Delmarva Teen Challenge

ENLIGHTENING to the Good News

People are starving for God, but most do not know that.  They have forsaken the “spring of living water” for “broken cisterns that cannot hold water (Jer. 2:13).  They have exchanged God’s infinite beauty for things of no comparable value (e.g., exotic vacations, shopping extravaganzas, theatrical productions, drugs, wine, sex, and etc.).  The result: they are dry and unhappy.

At Delmarva Teen Challenge, we believe that this God-planted thirst for joy and peace can only be quenched by encountering the magnificence of God.  By tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.  By partaking of the gospel of the glory of Christ.  When we discover that His love is better than life itself, the world and all its charm loses it hold upon us (see Ps. 63:3).

Pastor and author John Piper writes, “We were made to know and treasure the glory of God above all things; and when we trade that treasure for images, everything is disordered.  The sun of God’s glory was made to shine at the center of the solar system of our soul.  When it does, all the planets of our life are held in their proper orbit.  But when the sun is displaced, everything flies apart.  The healing of the soul begins by restoring the glory of God to its flaming, all-attracting place at the center.”
 

EMPOWERING through Relationship

We learn from the very first pages of Scripture that the central problem of life is separation from God—a condition created by our sin. Jesus died so that we might be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:18), so that we who once were separate, excluded, and foreigners could be brought near (Eph. 2:12-13), so that the dividing wall of hostility would be destroyed and the two made one (v. 14), so that we could become part of God’s family, his children (Jn. 1:12). The very word atonement means “at-one-ment”—what was separated is now at one.

Salvation is NOT mainly about forgiveness; it is about fellowship. Paul puts it like this in 1 Cor. 1:9, “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.” Forgiveness gets everything out of the way so that fellowship can happen. Fellowship is the consummate end of God’s redemptive purposes.

 At Delmarva Teen Challenge we seek to help men find intimacy with God and His people. We believe that loving relationships—beginning with God—are the key to health and wholeness. Life, to be meaningful, must be joined. God himself said, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18).

EQUIPPING for Service

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”  (Eph. 2:8-10).  Scripture makes it clear that we are saved to serve—not sit.  Further, we are saved to serve in order to bring glory to God: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

Service is our grateful response to all that God is and has become for us in Christ Jesus.  The foundation and fuel of all true service rests in the glory of God’s greatness and in hearts that have been Spirit-quickened to that glory.   

It is not enough to keep learning more and more.  We must act on what we know.  Pastor and popular author Rick Warren writes, “Impression without expression causes depression.  Study without service leads to stagnation.”  Just as the Dead Sea cannot support life because it has no outflow, so you and I will die if we insist on keeping our life.  Only those who throw away their lives for Jesus and the gospel will ever know what it means to truly live (Mk. 8:35) 

At Delmarva Teen Challenge, we would find it heart-breaking to merely see a person set free from the bondages of sin only to pursue a life of selfish gain. We aim to equip men to take dominion of their lives, their families, their communities, their schools, their work environments, and etc. by becoming servants of Christ who live to bring glory and honor to God in each and every role God would assign to them.