Rev. Nolan J Harkness spent most of his adult life working with youth and troubled youth. His springboard into youth ministry came in the mid-eighties during a type of teen suicide epidemic where one teenager every ninety minutes were committing suicide and one to two thousand were attempting suicide each day and failing. Nolan started working volunteering everywhere he could while he traveled as a revivalists attempting to wake up the church to our nations youths greatest need. He worked as a youth leader /pastor in 5 different churches building 3 of them up from scratch. He ran a street outreach in his city on Saturday nights and started “Teen Talk Radio” which started in his own living room on a home stereo cassette tape recorder that ended up becoming syndicated to most of the populated Northeast. In 14 years he produced and recorded over 2500 radio broadcast. At the end of his years of youth ministry he became the Executive Director of a “closing” local Youth for Christ drop in youth center.
He never was able to draw to single regular salary for any of his work with teens but worked a day job all those years one of which was a substitute teacher in a local special education public school for over 13 years just to stay working in the culture daily for $63 a day. The average sub was lasting for two weeks because of the abuse. Nolan stayed 13 years… To God be all the glory, as it was only by His grace I was able to do it all….
