Within the long list of mentors and individuals who have influenced my life is the name David Wilkerson. So it was with great shock that I learned this week that he was tragically killed in an automobile accident Wednesday in east Texas. He was 79.
Wilkerson was the founder of the very successful program Teen Challenge, a story that was recorded in the book The Cross and the Switchblade, then later made into a movie with Pat Boone and Eric Estrada. He wrote several books, established a ministry called World Challenge, and founded Times Square Church in New York City.
I have been out of touch with Wilkerson’s ministry for a number of years, but he had a profound influence on my early Christian life.
For one, his book The Cross and the Switchblade played a part in my own conversion story. On July 19, 1985 I discovered the book while perusing the Occult section of a bookstore. Someone had placed it in the wrong section! I took the book home and started reading it, and two days later accepted Christ! If you’re not familiar with the story, it is an amazing testimony of his ministry among the gangs of New York. In an often-told line from the book, gang leader Nicky Cruz (played by Eric Estrada in the film version) threatened Wilkerson with a knife, and Wilkerson replied, “Nicky, you can cut me into a thousand little pieces, but every single one of them are still gonna love you.” The new film, Thousand Pieces, is in development and expected to be released next year and will re-tell the story to a new generation.
I later went to David Wilkerson’s alma mater for college, then went to Los Angles and did some urban ministry around Compton, Southgate, and Lynnwood, working with the Teen Challenge program there. During that time I was able to communicate Christ’s love among some gang members and engage people on the streets with the Gospel message.
Later I interned in Detroit doing similar inner-city ministry. During that time I lived in a Teen Challenge center, spoke in their chapel services, and got to know the program better. I helped get some people into the program as well. On some occasions, I took their overflow of donated bread products down to the Cass Corridor area, sharing the Bread of Life as we passed out free food.
Revival Tabernacle, the Detroit church in which I did my first ministry internship, had close ties with Times Square Church and World Challenge. Through that connection I got to meet people from TSC. One such man was Wilkerson’s associate pastor, Bob Philips, who gave me wise marital counsel that influenced my decision to propose to my wife just a few weeks later.
My short story is only one among millions who have been touched in some way through David Wilkerson’s bold commitment to Christ. I wholeheartedly recommend you read The Cross and the Switchblade if you haven’t already. The book recounts how his ministry really took off when he decided to turn off the television and seek the Lord in prayer. I’m not against entertainment at all. But I wonder what amazing things God might do with us if we did the same. For some of us, its not the tv, but something else. What might God do through us if we truly gave Him everything?
May God bless the Wilkerson family in this difficult time and continue to bear fruit from their ministry.
