Sal DiBianca welcomes guests to the STC Christmas Banquet.
Sandhills Teen Challenge recently held its 25th annual Christmas banquet on its Carthage, N.C., campus, a 31-acre site serving as home for “a residential faith-based recovery program for men ages 18 and over with drug or alcohol problems.”
A reported 1,008 guests attended one of three banquets held at 6:30 p.m. on December 8, 9 and 10, 2011. Each gathering featured a meal, a concert by the Sandhills Teen Challenge Choir, testimonials by program graduates and students and an inspirational-and-fundraising presentation by Sal DiBianca, STC director. He and his wife, Debby, are graduates of the Teen Challenge International program.
Before the Dec. 10 banquet began, guests filled the STC Chapel/Dinning Hall. Tables placed end-to-end were covered in white and decorated with poinsettias.
Sal DiBianca welcomed attendees to the festivities and introduced the Rev. Brent Thompson, a 2006 graduate and current Academic Dean, to open the evening with a prayer of blessing over the meal.
After the meal, served by STC staffers and students, attention was turned to the stage as Sal DiBianca started the program for the evening.
“My wife and I came here 25 years ago and tonight we are celebrating 25 years of ministry at this location,” DiBianca said. “How many of you know that behind every good man there is a better woman? God gave me a great helpmate. I really ‘married up.’ She’s the queen of Teen Challenge.”
Debby DiBianca welcomed guests and thanked those who sponsored tables at the dinner. She also thanked pastors for their support and thanked STC volunteers such as; Brad Roback, who teaches small engine repair; Bernie Markey, who teaches beginning carpentry; Merv and Maggie Mullet, who’ve prepared STC banquet foods for 22 years; Pastor Gregg Newton, who preaches chapel services at STC every Tuesday; and Sandhills Classic Car Club for staging STC benefit exhibitions.
Debby then told her story of addiction and the tragedy of having eight abortions before giving birth to the DiBianca’s two children.
“I had one small spot on my uterus that was still healthy, and that’s where Brandon and Jamie were placed,” she said. “I’ve always prayed for my kids to meet the most awesome spouses, like my ‘Italian Stallion.’”
Audience laughter.
The DiBiancas’ son and daughter-in-law joined them onstage.
Brandon and Nicole DiBianca, were married on Oct. 1, 2011. He works as a student youth pastor at Grace Church in Southern Pines. She works as a nurse. The DiBiancas’ older child, Jamie, is married to Matt Gilliam. She serves as music director at Albemarle High School. He works as the church worship and creative arts pastor at Albemarle First Assembly.
“On October 1, I was ‘mother of the groom,’” Debby said. “I’ve been praying for her [Brandon’s wife] for 25 years.”
Sal Dibianca said Teen Challenge began in February 1958 with the Rev. David Wilkerson’s work in Brooklyn, New York.
Wilkerson was a young country preacher pastoring a church in eastern Pennsylvania. He read an article in “LIFE” magazine about seven teenagers on trial for murder.
During a Manhattan gang fight, those teens beat a young man to death. Wilkerson made a trip from his hometown in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, to New York City. He eventually resigned from his church and moved to the New York City area to work fulltime with teenage gang members. His work, called “Teen Challenge,” began to offer help to drug and alcohol addicts of all ages. The story of Teen Challenge is told in “The Cross and the Switchblade,” a best-selling book.
DiBianca said there are over 200 Teen Challenge centers in the U.S. and 1000 centers in 80 countries around the world. Teen Challenge students “find freedom through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
“‘The Cross and the Switchblade’ used to be a public school ‘textbook’ in N.C.,” he said. “Teen Challenge has the answer. Catherine Hess studied Teen Challenge to disprove a cure rate of 70 percent. She found the ‘Jesus factor,’ and she came to Christ.”
[Catherine Hess works with the National Academy for State Health Policy. She joined NASHP in 2005 and in 2011 she was promoted to managing director for coverage and access. She works with a team of program directors, managers and staff to develop and implement programs and projects focused on state policies and practices related to insurance coverage, access to care and health care reform.]
[A 1975 Federal Study of Teen Challenge (Rehrersburg, PA) found a 70 percent success rate for those who graduated from the program seven years earlier. In 1999, a 3-year research study supervised by Northwestern University (Chicago) concluded that 86 percent of those completing the Teen Challenge program remained drug free.]
The STC mission statement is this: “To help people who have life-controlling problems, and initiate the discipleship process to the point where the student can function as a Christian in society, applying spiritually motivated Biblical principles to relationships in the family, local church, chosen vocation and the community. Teen Challenge endeavors to help people become mentally sound, emotionally balanced, socially adjusted, physically well and spiritually alive.”
DiBianca said, “God has sent people our way over the years who have helped to develop the campus we have, today. Bed capacity has gone from 24 to 38. An academic wing housing a computer literacy program, which is an extension of Sandhills Community College, and a vocational training facility have been built and the programs launched.”
He described the student routine at STC: wakeup at 6:00 a.m., breakfast at 6:30, prayer at 7:00, work chores at 7:30, chapel at 8:00m group studies at 9:00, personal studies at 10:00 … other activities … lights out at 10:00 p.m.
“People come here not because their lives are straight but because they need them straightened out,” DiBianca said. “We believe in a disciplined life – teaching students a new way of life to replace old habits. One of the biggest problems of drug and alcohol abusers is they’re selfish.”
STC gives its students opportunities to learn unselfish behavior by volunteering weekly distributing food to 175 children (Back Pack Pals during the school year) and to nearly 200 elderly people (Snack Pack Pals).
DiBianca said the cost per day for each STC student is $47, which translates to $1,786 per year per student. The STC 2012 fund-raising goal is $651,890.
“I usually don’t have a problem asking for money, because I’m not asking for me – I’m asking for broken people,” he said. “We help people whose lives are damaged or destroyed.”
DiBianca told about his early life in the Los Angeles, California, area.
“March 1979 I was living in my car,” he said. “I made a choice at 12 years of age to smoke pot with a friend. When I was 17, my dad had lung cancer surgery. At 17, I was dealing drugs. My father died, and I was addicted to drugs and losing my education. Someone introduced me to cocaine, not long after my father died.”
At 21 years old, living in his car he stopped by his mother’s house. She was watching a TV evangelist’s program.
“I heard a preacher say, ‘God loves you and cares for you.’” DiBianca recalled. “I knelt and prayed a prayer in front of a TV. A year (to date) later, I entered Teen Challenge. It was Teen Challenge [Los Angeles] where my life was turned around.”
He talked about his early relationship with Debby.
“I got her pregnant when she was 15,” he said. “He [Jesus] has actually allowed us to show people our scars. … He [Jesus] said to Thomas, ‘Look at me,’ and he showed them his hands. He’ll allow you to use the pain in your life to heal the pain of another.
“We challenge students everywhere to say ‘Yes’ to life and ‘No’ to drugs,” so they don’t have to come to Teen Challenge. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
DiBianca then led and sang with the STC Choir, made up of STC students and Debby and Brandon DiBianca (vocals and guitar), along with Jared Guden on bass guitar. The choir sang classics such as “Silent Night,” “O Holy Night,” “The Little Drummer Boy” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.”
After a rousing concert, DiBianca told a story about a man and numerous beached starfish. The man was working hard at throwing perishing starfish back into the ocean, when a passerby commented to the man, “You can’t save them all.” The man picked up one starfish, threw it into the ocean and said, “No, but I just saved that one.”
“Change a life, one at a time,” DiBianca said.
He next asked some STC graduates to give testimonials.
Jerod from Portland, Oregon/Charlotte, N.C., said he grew up in a Christian home but started manipulating people, drinking and smoking “weed.”
“By age 27, I was a heroin addict,” he said. “I ended up here; my family lived in Charlotte. God changed my life. I have twins who live on the West Coast. I’m renewing my relationship with my wife. I’m not hurting … not screwing people over.”
Jerod said he’s thinking about pursuing youth ministry.
Jeff spoke next, saying he came to STC in 2004 but left he program after four months. (The Teen Challenge program usually lasts 12 to 18 months for each student.)
“I thought I had it together,” he said. “In a month or two, I was in the Wake County jail because of ‘crack.’”
Jeff went from the Wake County jail to a homeless shelter but eventually returned to Teen Challenge and graduated in 2008. He recently married.
A young man named Gordon said, “I tried to drink half a cup of bleach, just to get out of this world. I was tearing my family apart.”
He referred to Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (NIV).
“I’ve got something now, and I want to keep it,” Gordon said. “I love the Lord.”
DBianca asked the men in the choir to tell their names and what God had freed them from. The men gave information such as the following: 22 years of methadone and oxycodone; cocaine for 20 years; 11 years of drugs and heroin; 33 years on crack cocaine. A 40-year-old told of addiction to weed and alcohol; a 54-year-old said he spent 35 years with a crack addiction; a 32-year-old told of 21 years of alcohol and drug abuse and “a violent lifestyle”; a 25-year-old said he used drugs and alcohol for 12 years; a 26-year-old spent 10 years focused on drugs and alcohol; an 18-year-old became meth-addicted; a 48-year-old was on drugs … .
Sal and the choir then finished with a song titled “Our God.”
DiBianca showed a short video featuring the Linus character from the comic strip “Peanuts” reciting “the Christmas story,” found in Luke, chapter two. When the character Charlie Brown asked what Christmas was all about, Linus quoted the famous Christ’s-birth passage from Luke.
The clip ended and DiBianca said, “And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” He then preached, “gave an altar call” and led responders and the audience in a corporate “sinner’s prayer.”
He gave banquet attendees opportunity to give funds and provide written information about periodic contributions. STC staff members collected the offering and envelopes in large Christmas stockings.
DiBianca led the audience in a chorus containing these words: “I believe in Jesus … I believe he came for us all … I believe he’s here, now … here with the power to heal, now … and the grace to forgive.”
"Merry Christmas, everyone," DiBianca said. "May the peace of God that passes all understanding rest on you this Christmas."
