About Wade...

Hi, I am Wade, the founder of Tumbling Walls. I am chief cook and bottle washer (meaning I do whatever gets done and can’t blame anybody else when it doesn’t). Tumbling Walls was supposed to be my career. It didn’t turn out that way. In some strange way, I think my life is a rerun of the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus”. Mr. Holland dreamed he would become a music composer. He didn't. While his agenda had to take a backseat, he was able to pursue music in a high school classroom. My career path didn’t go the way I had planned. However, looking back on it, I see it went God's way. I have been a youth pastor, director of Christian education, youth camp director, ministry director, concert promoter, producer of a Christian music show for CBS affiliate WDOH, vice-president of TCA Artist Representation (a Christian artist management and booking agency), pastor, speaker, workshop leader, licensed social worker, program director for a juvenile court system, and director (superintendent) of a junior high/high school recovery school. I got to do ministry in all shapes and sizes. And it has been a blast! Now retired, I have returned to Tumbling Walls. Whatever is next is up to God.

Our Beginning...

Formed in 1990, Tumbling Walls has always been about helping people build stronger relationships with themselves, our families, the church and community, and Jesus. It has never been about the ministry being seen or heard, but about Jesus being seen and heard. Whether Jesus is seen in what is written or heard in the "Power and Light Show" podcast, it is always about HIM. He gets the last word!

We are a 501c3, non-profit, faith-based organization that engages with people to offer hope and help. We want to come alongside people and help them work through the issues and obstacles that bog down their relationship with each other and Christ.

Our Calling...

Tumbling Walls’ ministries is about helping tweens, teens, parents, families, and married couples handle their issues positively, enhance self-worth, problem solve obstacles that block the way to a healthy and fulfilling life (i.e. substance use/abuse, violence, delinquency, broken marriages), and grow in our relationship with Christ. We are providing 21st-century tools to the 21st-century family. We are working to impact families positively. We know families are dealing with many situations today that could have, at some point in time, involved a critical time of emotional, mental, physical, or spiritual crisis. There are absolutely no guarantees that families are exempt from crisis.

Our mission is to help families live successfully inside and outside their homes by building their houses on a spiritual foundation that will make them solid and sound inside and outside.

Some mothers have turned against their daughters and daughters against their mothers. Some fathers have turned against their sons and sons against their fathers. Some parents have turned against their children, and children have turned against their parents. Some husbands have turned against their wives and wives against their husbands. Some brothers and sisters have turned against their sisters and brothers. When family members become disconnected from each other, problems develop that threaten the family’s ability to function adequately. For many families, relationships are cold and matter-of-fact. Alcohol, drugs, tobacco, sexual activity, and violence have invaded tweens and teens' innocence and purity. Their lives have been impacted by the separation and/or divorce of their parents. Thus, their families have been changed forever. Husbands, wives, moms, dads, tweens, and teens have become numb. They are in so much pain and turmoil that they disengage from each other and maybe even from life itself. Essentially, each of these human lives slowly builds up walls between their families and them, possibly even between them and their world…and the walls have to come tumbling down.

Our mission is to help families find the meaning and hope of life that will sustain them personally and as a family. With so many uncontrollable forces outside the home challenging families for their time and attention, families find themselves going in every direction, twisting every way until they break. Increasingly, families are being kidnapped, one by one, by misleading outside forces and by a false portrayal of what success is. Families are finding it more difficult to take time for each other or communicate effectively. Their values, once appropriate, are now considered to be outdated, and their faith is being challenged as questions about its relevancy, relationships, and authenticity arise. And so, as the influences outside of the home capture the minds, bodies, and souls of families, chaos tears away at the very fabric that has been holding them together until families become rocked with confusion, filled with uncertainty, and experience strained, fragmented relationships with each other and with Christ.

When I was 10 years old, I was a newspaper carrier. A new family moved into town and called and asked that a newspaper be delivered to their home. When I arrived, there was a chain link fence around the house, and the porch was 40’ or 50’ from the gate. There was a sign with the words “beware of dog” on the gate. I wanted to land the paper on the porch but wasn’t sure if I could from such a long distance. I threw the paper about halfway up the walk. That was my best throw. I went home. The next day, the customer called and asked that I put the paper on the porch. That evening, I rolled up in front of the home and saw the sign but not the dog, so I cautiously opened the gate and looked to my right and left. No dog! I walked up to the porch, dropped the paper in front of the door, turned to walk away, and there he was. My mind wasn’t saying dog, it was saying bear. His eyes were beet red; his ears were perked up; his teeth were quivering up and down, and he was giving me the low guttural growl, one you hear when it is time for dinner. Frightened, I tried to regain my senses. I remembered my dad saying if I ever met up with a cross dog, I could take my hand and push it to the back of the dog’s mouth and hold the lower jaw. He can’t clamp down on my hand if I do this. But what if I missed? The other thing I could do is check the tail. If the tail is wagging, slowly move away. Potentially, he is just protecting his territory. The dog I was facing had his tail wagging. I was faced with a choice…which end should I believe? Do I believe the front end or the backside? With consistency and stability, families can also begin to believe in each other again.

Families continue to have less time for the Church. Student pastors state they see fewer students (tweens/teens) than ever before, and those who do attend are very sporadic in their attendance. Pastors say the same thing about their congregations. Maybe it is time for the Church to extend their ministries with tweens/teens through the parents. Even though parents, tweens, and teens have issues with each other, they see each other more than anyone outside the home sees them. The biblical passage that mandates us to tell it to our children, and our children their children, is intended to start at home. This passage is repeated several times throughout the Bible.

This will be done on an intergenerational level, where we will purposefully bring together the different generations in ongoing, mutually beneficial, engaging, fun, and meaningful meetings. We have segregated our age groups for too long, thus limiting opportunities for learning from the different age groups’ knowledge and experience. The abstract titled "An Intergenerational Entrepreneurship Program in an Educational Setting” states that annually, masses of children leave their rural schools without the skills they need to survive in today's competitive job market. Youth in rural areas may suffer deficits in education, cognitive skills, and work experience. Lack of parental encouragement, poverty, neglect, and abuse are only some of the factors putting these youth at risk. Adult mentors give youth caring support and leadership, while the youth add purpose to the lives of their mentors. If they leave school with poor skills and abilities, what sort of condition might they be in socially and spiritually? It appears we are 100 miles wide and a half-an-inch deep! Many know what to believe but can’t explain why they believe it. It is our vision, through intergenerational experiential learning, that tweens and teens experience nurturing, healthy, and safe learning environments in which all families are fully supported in their roles and responsibilities. Current research attributes many of the problems of tweens and teens to a lack of significant relationships. Many young people are growing up in single-parent, mother-led families where time to commit to the parent/child relationship is curtailed as the parent works to meet the family's material needs without another adult's assistance. According to an Illinois intergenerational initiative study, the problems of poverty, drug abuse, infant mortality, child abuse, and negative images of the disabled and mentally ill improved dramatically when relationships were nurtured. Intentionally, our mission has to work with communities, school systems, help agencies, and faith-based organizations to ensure stronger families and communities through a family-school-community–faith-based partnership. We must promote lifelong learning (discipleship) so that individuals 1) value learning, 2) learn how to learn, 3) demonstrate effective communication, 4) develop and nurture thinking and problem-solving skills, 5) enjoy a positive quality of life, 6) are fulfilled, 7) experience the joy of learning, and 8) contribute to and benefit from the intergenerational transmission of culture so that beginning with today’s adolescents we can reduce the risk and/or prevent turmoil and/or crisis through relationship mending, relationship building, and renewal. It’s where we tell it (Truth) to our children so they pass it on.

Fun, Meaningful Meetings for Parents and Teens (there are already 12 sessions you can download for free at Bible Studies/Podcasts in Fun Meaningful Meetings section) will intervene amid turmoil and/or crisis and help preadolescents, teenagers, parents, and families assess their needs/damages and rebuild/restore the relationships that has separated them from each other. Part of the focus in each session will be to teach family members about personal accountability and assist them to grow toward/in adulthood successfully, and challenge and equip parents to Talk the Talk with their children and Walk the Talk in front of their children, and then expect nothing less from their children.

Additionally, we will strategize initiatives that will serve the Church in the fulfillment of its mission. When Jesus left earth, He left the Church to tend to His business. It is through the Church that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to work. Jesus didn’t say that if the Church failed, there was another possibility…No, the Church is His solution…His only solution. Since Jesus said the Church is to lead people to Christ and disciple them, we must be part of His solution. Consequently, Tumbling Walls commits to participating fully in assisting the Church to be the Church.