

Age: 24
Hometown: Palm Harbor, FL
Teen Challenge Center: Southwest Florida Teen Challenge Women’s Home
Which Center/What Year did you Graduate: Southwest Florida, 2013
My Testimony in Brief:
I originally graduated Teen Challenge in 2009. During my internship I met a man and we left prematurely to be together. We got married and fell back into a destructive lifestyle. After 3 years I came back to Teen Challenge and in that time my husband filed for divorce. I was crushed but learned to lean on Jesus. He mended my broken hearts and showed me who Baylee was in Christ. I am currently in an internship & my husband is back in Teen Challenge as well. God has completely restored our marriage and placed a calling on our lives to work in this ministry together. We are both enrolled in the ELP program and plan on continuing in the call he placed on our lives 5 years ago. I now walk everyday in His light and the promises he has for our lives!
The purpose and calling God has given me: To work in Teen Challenge, walking alongside broken individuals just like me & to be a Godly wife!
The ELP’s impact on my leadership: Wow! Since being in ELP this time around my whole perspective on leading has changed. God has birthed a burden in me to Shepherd women just as my leaders have done me. I have learned who I am in Christ and the authority and compassion I carry to build ladies up while allowing God to continuously grow me!
This month we are starting one of my favorite courses Knowing and Understanding God’s Will and our text is Experiencing God by Blackaby, Blackaby and King. God is inviting you to experience Him in an intimate love relationship through which He reveals to you His will, His ways, and His work. Through the biblical principles in this course, God can teach you how to:
Level I Adolescent
Our course for the Adolescent track is Discover Your God-given Purpose and our text: Chazown by Craig Groeschel. Chazown comes from the Hebrew word meaning a dream, revelation, or Vision. You were born with your own Chazown; do you know what it is?
Monthly Book Orders and Grades
Southeast region Rep’s can go to Google Drive and search for ELP Monthly Order Form and Grade Sheet Edited. Look for your center’s name in the tabs at the bottom and fill in your center’s information. No need to save or email the spreadsheet (Google Drive saves it and I can access the info from my Drive). If you place an initial order on the form and update the order later (i.e. add 2 more books) after we have ordered your books, please send me an email andree.aiken@teenchallenge.cc. Thank you.
Welcome
This month we welcome Adam Holderread (TC Ozark’s) to the Level II! Welcome Adam we look forward to the rich insights you’ll bring to the group and our growing together as leaders.
Core Courses
Our core course this month is Ethics and Integrity and our text: Integrity by Dr. Henry Cloud. Integrity—more than simple honesty, is the key to success. A person with integrity has the ability to pull everything together, to make it all happen no matter how challenging the circumstances. In Integrity, he explores the six qualities of character that define integrity, and how people with integrity:
Integrity is not something that you either have or don’t, but instead is an exciting growth path that all of us can engage in and enjoy.
Your first post will be up on the forum on Monday, September 15th.
I hope you took some time last month to reflect on “how things are going in your boat”… In that article we said that after prayer, the most important thing a leader can do is build a healthy culture for the teams they lead. Leaders must delegate a lot of things, but culture is not one of them. The leader is solely responsible for how healthy a team or ministry is. As a leader, being a “culture bearer” requires a shift in values, skills and allocation of time. For instance, as a staff member I should value being an effective contributor to the team and the mission. I do my part to enrich culture by embracing and embodying the Core Values and the TC DNA. I would be honing a particular skill such as teaching, counseling or computer skills. My time would be primarily allocated to working with students or in administration, completing my assigned tasks and responsibilities. As a leader, whether I’m leading a rally team, a work crew or a center, my values and skillset have to shift, as well as how I manage my time. It’s important what we value – we spend our time doing the things we value, and skills that are used without being instructed by values, aren’t done with much passion and creativity. So if I’m directing a center, and value making individual contributions such as counseling, I will probably pursue a degree in counseling and spend a lot of time counseling students. Instead, as a team leader, there has to be a shift – rather than valuing what I can contribute individually, I now value the success and contributions of others, I value the results of the whole team, I value the work and disciplines I need to do as a manager. This managerial skillset includes things like setting the culture, selecting the right people who are a fit for the culture, designing job descriptions, empowerment and delegation, performance evaluation and development, communication, building a cohesive team, and rewards and motivation. The book “The Leadership Pipeline” talks about this shift: “First-time managers need to learn how to reallocate their time so that they not only complete their assigned work but also help others perform effectively. They cannot allocate all of their time to putting out fires, seizing opportunities, and handling tasks themselves.” Putting out fires…yikes! Sounds like Teen Challenge! One of the challenges of leadership is slowing down the high speed train that we call Teen Challenge and valuing and spending time on the right things. Effective leaders and healthy organizations value an enriched culture and take the time to cultivate it. In the next 3 articles we’ll highlight 3 very practical areas in which a leader enriches culture: bringing the right people on the team, developing people, and building a cohesive team. In the meantime, assess how you allocate your time – how does it reflect what you value?
Article written by – Karissa Corpeny – Director of Corporate Training (TC Southeast)