Teen Challenge Brockton currently has 63 students and follows a strict schedule of prayer, breakfast, schoolwork, work in the community, dinner, prayer, shower, devotions, and homework. The community work builds on the talents each resident brings to the program and teaches additional life skills: everything from customer service to catering to moving furniture to carpentry. This also provides a range of services to the community and is a way for residents to give back.
“It was good to work – I didn’t want to feel like someone was feeding me and housing me for free,” said Sean Merrill, a recent Teen Challenge Brockton graduate who has stayed on as an intern.
Before entering Teen Challenge Brockton, Merrill went to eight rehabilitation programs to try to break his addiction to pills and heroin and had all but given up hope.
“When I walked through the doors at Teen Challenge, Pastor Barry said to me ‘Welcome home,’” Merrill recalled. “I had never heard ‘welcome home’ at any of the other rehabs I had gone to… I surrendered.”
Pastor Barry (Rev. Barron Baugh) is an Outreach Chaplain with Teen Challenge Brockton and, during the group’s weekly outreach trip to bring hot breakfast to Perkins Park on Tuesday, he encouraged those who need help to get it.
“Get it right today,” he said with strong conviction. “Tomorrow’s not promised.”
According to the organization’s website: Teen Challenge is one of the oldest, largest and most successful drug recovery programs of its kind in the world. It serves individuals and families by providing Christian faith-based residential recovery homes for more than 400 adults, and outreach and drug prevention programs to children and youth in area schools and local communities.
*Additional reporting by Rob Terranova
