Home › What We Do › Character & Leadership

Character & Leadership

Developing important life and leadership skills

Character and leadership skills are developed as clients work their way through fourteen group studies (GSNC) and seven customized individual learning units (PACE). During this time clients participate in about 3-4 hours of classroom study every day.

Group Studies for New Christians (GSNC)

Group Studies for New Christians is composed of 14 learning units. Each unit takes about 3 weeks to complete.

  • Attitudes
  • Temptation
  • Growing Through Failure
  • Christian Practices
  • Anger and Personal Rights
  • Love and Accepting Myself
  • Personal Relationships with Others

Personal Accelerated Christian Education (PACE)

Clients must also complete a customized individual program called 'PACE'. Guided by his teacher/counsellor, the client decides which units would best benefit him and signs an accountability contract promising to complete the units.

  • Orientation
  • Self-image and Identity
  • Spiritual growth
  • Relationships
  • Leadership
  • Future plans and next steps

Clients build character and leadership skills while serving others in various ways throughout their program. Volunteerism gives clients the opportunity to give back to the community expecting nothing in return.

At Operation Christmas Child (Samaritan’s Purse) clients volunteer to load sea containers onto trucks that transport the goods to third world countries. Also several times a year Teen Challenge those in the program have volunteered as ushers for concerts, and at other events that involves set up of the facilities and clean up afterwards. Teen Challenge clients have also volunteered to help the cast and crew set up and construct stage sets and lay out the trails for the outdoor Canadian Badlands 'Passion Play' in Drumheller, Alberta held annually in July.

Sometimes, clients are called upon to serve their neighbours in emergency situations such as sandbagging the banks of a local river during spring flooding at the Kerith Creek Retreat near Priddis. Clients are frequently called on to help out local farmers with hay baling, fence painting, digging holes, or clearing snow.

Clients also develop character when they volunteer to speak out about the transformation that is happening in their lives. People are often moved to hear their life stories and those in the program learn how valuable they are as they realize that that God is using them to strengthen others.