Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Josh Coward didn’t really know what he wanted to do in life, so he took a different route than many teens in that position — he didn’t go to college.
Instead, Coward, 19, signed up with the Teen Mania Honor Academy in Garden Valley, Texas, two hours east of Dallas.
The academy is run by Teen Mania ministries, which puts on approximately 40 annual Acquire the Fire youth conferences around the nation, runs summer camps, missions trips and the honor academy “to provoke a young generation to passionately pursue Jesus Christ and to take His life-giving message to the ends of the earth,” according to its Web site.
The academy is a 12-month internship that includes hands-on ministry experience, classroom instruction, and the building of relationships within small groups to develop students’ leadership and ministry abilities.
Coward said he learned about the program from Shanna Reagan, a Sweet Home High School graduate who attended last year.
“You go there to work, mainly,” said Coward, who graduated last June from the high school. “But you take classes in character development and developing a world view. It’s a leadership team program, basically.”
Coward was back in Sweet Home recently for the wedding of his mother, former City Councilwoman Jessica Coward, to Lebanon Director of Public Works Jim Ruef.
Josh Coward left for Texas last August and will finish this summer. He said he’s learned “so many things” from his experience, which has included helping out at Acquire the Fire conferences in Portland, in February, and in Houston. Coward said he may be involved in the upcoming Acquire the Fire in San Francisco at the end of March.
He said about 500 young people participate in the academy, in addition to some 150 “graduate interns” who serve as managers. Teen Mania, directed by Ron Luce, largely functions on intern labor.
“Almost everything we do is run by interns,” Coward said.
He started in the kitchen, doing lunch preparation, and then moved to special-events catering. Next thing he knew, he found himself the kitchen financial specialist, in charge of the kitchen budget and bookkeeping.
“They picked me because I knew what Excel actually was,” he said.
In addition to 30 hours of classroom instruction each week in leadership and ministry skills, Coward said he volunteers at night in the program’s call center, where participants for Global Expedition missions trips are recruited.
He said he lived last semester with six other young men.
“I learned a lot about personal space issues,” he said.
But Coward said the close community has been a big reason why he likes the program.
“The best thing is the people — just being around so many people who have the same general goals as I do,” he said. “We have cores, 10 to 15 guys (who live in adjoining rooms) and a core adviser. These are some of the closest friends I’ve ever had. When I graduate in August, I can’t imagine not being around them. It’s going to be weird.”
The experience has included a few misadventures, “most of them involving buses,” he said.
On a two-day bus trip to Portland for the Acquire the Fire conference there, Coward said, the bus got stuck in Idaho during a snow storm.
On another trip, this time to climb the 12,743-foot Hallett’s Peak in Estes Park, Colo., that bus broke down and Coward said the youths had to spend 12 hours at a Wal-Mart.
“We were supposed to get to the mountain at noon, but we got there at 11 p.m. and had to start climbing at 2 a.m.,” he recalled. “I was semiconscious for most of that trip.”
Next month, he said, all the interns are going to run a 10K.
“We have to get up at 4:45 (a.m.) for corporate exercise twice a week,” he said. “We’re going to go to four times a week soon so we don’t die when we all start running.”
After graduating from the program in August, Coward said he hopes to continue with Teen Mania, this time in its “graduate” program, the Center for Creative Media, where he will take classes in film production and photography for two years.
He said he may attend a traditional college some day, but right now he likes it where he’s at.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” he said of his mentality before going to the Honor Academy. “I had an idea but no real focus. I kind of went there to figure out what direction I wanted to go with life.
“I’m still kind of finding out, but the next step feels like I should work in media because it’s so influential in our culture,” he said. “I don’t think it’s being used in the right way.”