Origins of T4J – Chat Focus
Randy Laughlin founded a chat group and mailing list called Teens4Jesus in August of 1998. However, it was a one-man show, run not by Randy, but by Andrew Li. There were others on the staff, but Andrew designed and managed the site. In mid-1999, lack of support for the site caused Andrew to resign from his position. The site was no longer updated, and Teens4Jesus fell into disrepair.
In December 1999 John Turek visited the site. The site and the message it had to offer impressed him. He saw that it was in decline and emailed Randy offering to help out in whatever way he could. After a few brief emails Randy turned over all information and ownership to John. John then posted messages on the Internet asking for volunteers interested in starting up an online youth group to e-mail him. Trisha Bridges (later Bleau, now Smith) replied to his request.
Between the two of them the site took on a new shape. Trisha knew nothing about design but recruited people to help. A new staff took shape under her leadership, while John worked on the site’s layout. He created a new IRC chat room for the site, teaching her how things ran. She created a few mailing lists for the site and dreamed up ideas for content.
During this time a few previous staff members began to show up in chat. They sat back and watched how things were being run, occasionally commenting. Of course, the new staff did not know this. Eventually it all came out and the two staffs combined. A mass mailing was sent out to all of the old list subscribers inviting them to join the new mailing lists.
Launch of Teens4Jesus Online Youth Group
On January 4, 2000 the Teens4Jesus Online Youth Group, under new management, made its debut. It was officially open and ready to serve the youth of our world. It was lacking in content, but plans were made and staff had committed to working on developing content.
Satan attacked this new group from every possible angle. He began with attacking the chat room. Within the first few days the chat room went through tremendous strife. It was on a secular server and many people came in to harass chatters. One group in particular loved to harass the T4J users and hacked the room, killing off bots and changing settings. It was decided the chat had to be moved to a more secure server after reporting the abuse failed to bring about change.
The room moved to Kirenet. It was a pay chat, but the group was willing to pay to ensure their protection. More late nights were spent programming the new room, the bots, and getting everything set up. Two men not on staff volunteered to help. This was nothing unusual as many people had helped out and then left. These men seemed genuinely interested in setting things up. They got all of the information and set to work, and the result was a working bot and chat room. A few days later, T4J was banned from Kirenet for extreme abuse. It was never discovered exactly what had happened, although millions of users were affected.
It was about this time that one of the old staff suggested returning to the original channel on the Christian-Chat Network. The change was made, and this is where T4J hosted until February of 2002. The site’s chat later moved to Awesome Christians, then Christian-IRC, as well as a few other hosts before abandoning chat as its focus. T4J has later established its own chat server from which chat services were available for other sites as well.
Web Hosting Issues
In the 1st 6 months, the site went through many changes, including a new web host. This host was hacked twice, resulting in much downtime for the site. However, thanks to the persistence on the part of the staff, they were able to bring the site back up. Satan tried to attack, but in the process the staff was able to look into the future and make decisions that would affect the rest of the ministry.
In July 2000, the site again moved to a new web host. This time, the host was very helpful and provided many features. During this time, Trisha Bridges decided to explore filing for Non-Profit status for the ministry. Before that could happen, Trisha met Keith Ramsey, creator of Grace of Christ. They decided to form a new ministry, Unity in Christ, and three sites would be sub ministries: Grace of Christ, Christian Web Associates and Teens4Jesus. Unity in Christ would apply for non-profit status. At this point, the ministry was renamed from Teens4Jesus Online Youth Group to Teens4Jesus Online Youth Ministries.
The end of 2001 brought more changes. The web host offering free services made changes to its servers and the T4J site went down. Three months after being down it was moved to a dedicated server. A new design and layout was implemented and new content was added.
Non-Profit Status Achieved
A few months later Trisha resigned from Unity in Christ’s staff, taking the various T4J ministries with her to make them independent. Paperwork began for the filing process for 501(c)(3) status, thanks to help from Dr. Jeff Victor, President and Founder of Summit Bible College. The ministry expanded from a few sites to many sites. In August of 2002 there were 9 websites live with four more under development. In November of 2003 there were 17 sites, with Unity in Christ and Grace of Christ joining once more under the T4J Ministries.
In October 2002 Teens4Jesus became an official non-profit organization. The ministry had grown in status and had made connections with publishers, publicity groups, management groups, movie producers, software creators, etc. Free products arrived in the mail daily for review and giveaway. Groups were contacting the ministry non-stop asking for interviews, offering tickets to various events, and requesting information.
The ministry continued to grow and change. 2005 was a rough year and little happened within the ministry, though it continued to grow in visitor interaction. New staff continued to apply and joined staff, though there were few updates made overall.
The year 2006 was better. After a year of decline T4J once again began development of new content and growing. The overall number of websites was reducted back to 9, making the management load more reasonable and realistic.
Closing its Doors
Though the ministry had been popular and had touched countless lives, it was not meant to last. God had other plans and the challenges of running such a large ministry had become too much for the existing staff. The decision to close was not made lightly and was not something anyone wished to see, but it happened nonetheless. All content from each of the 17 websites was backed up and the non-profit status was let go. T4J was officially closed.
20 Years Later
In 2023, Trisha once more felt the urging from God to begin online ministry once more. The church she had been attending had reawakened a passion for service and the desire to reach the youth of our world. A quick search online resulted in the renewing of the Teens4Jesus.org name and backups were pulled to begin the process of editing, uploading, and recreating T4J. Having been such monstrously large websites, this process is still underway and will likely take many months to complete before new content can be added, especially considering Trisha is the sole volunteer working on the ministry at this time.
Please pray for the ministry and its future. At this time there are no plans to file for non-profit status, but God only knows if that is His plan for the future of T4J.
Welcome back to all of our old visitors and we look forward to meeting all of the new ones!