Powerlifter flexes spiritual muscles for ministry

Walk into John Black’s storefront church, Jesus Speaks Ministries, and there is nothing unusual about the faded carpet or the mix of old upholstered chairs in the simple sanctuary.
   
What stands out is the pastor, a 54-year-old tree trunk of power, his arms bursting out of a short-sleeve white shirt as he goes over his sermon notes.
   
This is powerlifter John Black, the man who alone and with his powerlifting team has won several national and international titles. The man who Men’s Journal magazine in 2004 named to its dream team of personal trainers across the nation and celebrities from Bruce Springsteen to big-name wrestlers such as Ric Flair, Triple H and The Undertaker have chosen to work out with when they are in town.
   
In a culture obsessed with physical fitness, you might imagine Black would be in Southern California, operating an exclusive gym, serving as a personal trainer to the stars and making exercise videos.
   
But if God called others to travel the world spreading the gospel, then Black’s calling has been to spend his life on the west side of Cleveland. His storefront church is below his well-known gym, Black’s Health World. He lives around the corner, and his mother still lives a block and a half away.
   
Forget stereotypes of television preachers in thousand-dollar suits and expensive cars preaching a prosperity gospel. On this Sunday, one of the strongest men in the world is open about his own struggle to keep going. 
   
His mother’s house needs repairs.Black declared bankruptcy last year. And it gets harder each year to keep open a gym in a Cleveland neighborhood in the face of competition from downtown health clubs and brand new gyms built by municipalities.
   
Maybe a guy from the west side, who survived gang fights, toughman competitions and having his body crushed under more than 700 pounds of weight, could fall into despair. But not a Christian, he tells worshipers this Sunday morning.
   
“We have to keep a song in our heart. We have to know the Spirit of God will see us through these times,” Black says.
   
His voice rises in authority as he reads a biblical passage telling how ancient believers went into battle singing and praising God. Black pauses, takes off his glasses and looks over his modest flock.
   
What he is about to say is the core of his own approach to faith and life — “That’s how we have to go into battle, church.”
   
At age 20, Black devoted himself to weight lifting, putting together the beginnings of a powerlifting team that would become legendary both for its prowess and intensity at meets. Soon second- and third-place trophies were replaced with championship hardware.
   
One day in the late 1970s, coming home from an Ohio meet with both a team title and first place in the individual lifts — all the honors he had coveted — he started to thank God.
   
“An emptiness came over me,” Black said. He was thanking someone he didn’t know. From his first spiritual epiphany, there was no magical transition to his present life. Moments of pain and loss, not triumph, led him into active ministry. In the early 1980s, after losing a wallet full of cash, Black made a promise to God: If he got his wallet back, then he would start going to a men’s program at People’s United Methodist Church, called Ten Brave Christians.
   
The wallet, with nothing missing, was waiting for him when he got home. A young Christian man, who refused any reward but prayer, had returned it. Black went on to work at several positions at People’s Church, from youth director to trustee.
   
In 1982, he was lifting 722 pounds at a national meet in Portland, Ore., when his knee gave out, and the weight crushed his chest and tore the kneecap on his right leg. Black could have been killed. He ended up in a wheelchair for months.
   
Yet he said he “hit the floor thanking God” and rededicated his life to Christ. From the wheelchair, he would start a coffeehouse for youth on the grounds of People’s Church.
   
In 1992, Black began working with a storefront pastor, Gordon Fine Jr., and was ordained in the Association of International Gospel Assemblies. Fine left the church in 1994, and Black took over as pastor of the church that is now Jesus Speaks. His goal is plain: “I try my best to help each person understand how to have a personal relationship with Christ.”
   
Black’s prowess as a powerlifter has gotten him and his team into prisons from Attica to Grafton, and he still visits juvenile detention homes. The team begins with prayer and feats of strength, then talks about the gospel.
   
The message is “you can be strong and believe in the Lord.” Walk up the wide steps leading to Black’s Health World, and you enter into a place where tradition trumps time, a sea of black iron and gray steel on top of a hardwood floor burn.
   
Beyond a sign declaring “Through this door walk the strongest powerlifters in the world,” several huge men lift some serious weight. Two lifters are on either side of Frank Costanzo as he prepares to lift 565 pounds. Behind him is Black, focused and confident in the man in front of him. “Explode out of the hole. Explode out of the hole,” Black cries as Costanzo lifts the weight. “Don’t compromise. Smoke that thing.” 
   
Costanzo completes the lift and puts the weight back on the bars. “He’s the best there is,” Costanzo, 39, says of Black. “That’s the way the great powerlifters are. He knows how to turn it on when he gets under the bar.”
   
Luke Folta, 24, of Cleveland, said Black does not evangelize members of the powerlifting team but shares his faith through his respect for others. 
   
“He just stands for strength,” he said, “and we can all use him as an ideal to go through our lives and be strong and do the right thing.” (RNS)