Ray Boltz’s Children Share Teen Mania Experiences in New Season of ‘Shiny Happy People’

“Ron Luce’s preaching was very dynamic and exciting,” said Ranfeld. She said that after her first Acquire the Fire event, she felt her life had been changed by the experience, giving her a sense of purpose and meaning. 

“I internalized the idea of people going to hell,” Ranfeld said, explaining that she bought into the message that she should do something to stop people from being tormented for eternity. “And so the only moral and ethical decision was to participate in this movement.” 

Phil said his first Teen Mania mission trip was to Bolivia. His parents wanted him to go for only one month, but he wanted to go for two so “more people will be saved.”

At one point, Ranfeld was in a group that started praying for a woman who had one leg that was shorter than the other. The group prayed fervently that the shorter leg would grow out to a normal length, but nothing happened.

“I just remember feeling so embarrassed that her leg didn’t grow back,” said Ranfeld. “Why didn’t it happen? I had faith. I guess I didn’t have enough faith. And I felt so guilty.”

Phil said that on mission trips “sacrifice itself became almost a goal.” The siblings described a mentality where students were willing to be physically hurt as part of their sacrifice for Jesus.

At the end of Episode 1, Phil recounted how he almost lost his life after having an emergency surgery for appendicitis while on a mission trip in rural India. He described the surgery as “vintage” and said that, afterward, his wound got “massively infected.” He developed MRSA.

Despite the severity of the situation, Phil said his parents were not “getting real information” about his condition and were instead told that he was “fine.” Fortunately, a parent volunteer contacted his mom and told her to meet Phil at the airport with an ambulance so that he could go to the hospital immediately after arriving back in the U.S. Phil spent weeks in the hospital and had to get a 600-milliliter abscess drained. 

Nevertheless, Phil continued in his dedication to Teen Mania. Ron Luce visited him in the hospital, writing Galatians 6:17 in Phil’s guest book. The end of that verse says, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus,” but Luce crossed out “Jesus” and wrote “world changer.” Phil took the words to heart, concluding that his suffering had meaning. 

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Episode 2 spends time on the experiences of young people who were interns at Teen Mania’s Honor Academy, an intense, months-long program where teenagers paid their own money to work for the ministry.

They were all assigned different jobs, and Phil ended up with the one job he didn’t want: working in the call center, where he tried to get people to attend Acquire the Fire events or go on Teen Mania mission trips. “I was a teenage telemarketer for Jesus,” he said. He was good at it, but it “was kind of soul-killing.”