Where Is Ron Luce Now? All About the Teen Mania Founder’s Life After the Controversial Ministry Shown in Shiny Happy People
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Ron Luce rose to prominence as the founder and president of the evangelical Christian youth organization Teen Mania Ministries.
Luce co-founded Teen Mania with his wife, Katie Luce, in 1986, and the organization went on to become one of the largest Christian youth organizations in the country. Teen Mania events consisted of massive pep rallies, mission trips and a leadership academy.
The organization, which went bankrupt in 2015, is featured in the Prime Video docuseries, Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War. The docuseries, which premiered on July 23, featured several former Teen Mania members reflecting on their time in the organization.
“We believed we were changing the world,” one former member said in the docuseries. “But then, it gets weird.” Some members alleged they worked 15 hours a day, and others claimed they felt like they were in a cult. In 2010, after former Teen Mania member Mica Ringo sent pages of abuse allegations from a blog to board members, the organization’s then-executive vice president, David Hasz, responded on an alumni call.
“There are stories on that site that sometimes are true,” he said in footage shared in Shiny Happy People. “And then sometimes there are stories that are not true.”
While Luce was not interviewed for the docuseries, he appeared several times in archival footage. After Teen Mania disbanded in 2015, Luce has continued evangelizing in communities across the country and world.
So, where is Ron Luce now? Here’s everything to know about what the Teen Mania Ministries founder is doing after the controversial organization went bankrupt.
Ron Luce is best known for co-founding Teen Mania Ministries with his wife, Katie. He launched the organization in 1986 when he was 25 years old after he experienced a “life-changing experience with Christ,” according to his biography.
Luce has spoken about once being a “16-year-old party animal” who ran away from a “broken home” when he was 15 years old. He subsequently claimed to become a “drug and alcohol abuser,” but that changed after he turned his efforts towards Christianity.
“But a life-changing experience with Christ prompted Luce to dedicate his life’s work to reaching kids and pulling them out of the same circumstances from which he came,” his biography reads.
Luce went on to attend Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., where he studied psychology and theology. He later got his master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Tulsa.
After graduating, Luce founded Teen Mania with the hopes of “raising up an army of young people who would change the world.”
In addition to serving as the president and figurehead of Teen Mania for nearly 30 years, Luce is also an author, speaker and television personality. He also served on the White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities from 2002 to 2004 during President George W. Bush’s presidency.
What was Teen Mania?
Teen Mania Ministries was a Dallas-based evangelical Christian youth organization. After Luce and Katie co-founded Teen Mania, it quickly became one of the biggest youth organizations in the United States.
The group became known for their “Acquire the Fire” events, which were massive pep rally-like concerts and church services where Luce and other figures would energetically speak to attendees. The rallies drew 3 million attendees across more than 500 events in 33 cities across the country, according to Christianity Today.
Another cornerstone of the organization was leading youth on mission trips that were called “Global Expeditions.” The company sent people on weeks-long trips across the U.S. and 69 other countries worldwide.
Teen Mania’s final signature program was the “Honor Academy,” which was a year-long residential ministry leadership program based in Garden Valley, Texas. At the program’s peak in the mid-2000s, the “Honor Academy” had more than 1,000 students enrolled, per WORLD Magazine.
In the 29 years that Teen Mania ran, the organization also faced several controversies. In particular, the organization shifted its messaging from purely religious to an emphasis on politics and the military. Some of the initiatives included the “Battle Cry Campaign,” which focused on “taking America back to being a Christian nation.”
The mission statement read, in part, that the goal of Teen Mania was “to build an engaged ensemble of young people that are: radical, passionate, resilient, informed revolutionaries that will take the Gospel to the nations and multiply by teaching others to do the same.”
Luce announced in December 2015 that Teen Mania was closing permanently because of financial difficulties. At the time, Charity Navigator alleged that Teen Mania had a net worth of negative $5.2 million, according to The Good News Today. The organization subsequently filed for bankruptcy.
Content retrieved from: https://people.com/where-is-ron-luce-now-11777634.
