Christian bodybuilders buck stereotypes

CanadianChristianity ^ | 09/10/07 | Steve Weatherbe

[freedom44]

BODYBUILDING may seem the height of vanity to many people. But for Errol Rivard and a small but worldwide band of dumbbell pushers based in Victoria, it's an opportunity to promote gospel values.

Last month, Rivard and three local members of the International Christian Body Building Association(ICBBA) - which he founded in 2002 - flexed their pecs and witnessed about their faith at a local avant garde event called Celebrate the Body.

Something of a circus of the performing arts - with modern dancers improvising to a string ensemble in one venue while acrobats cavorted in another - it was an odd place to find bodybuilders.

Odder still,ones that were explicitly Christian.

"They were very brave about it," said organizer Gwen Dobie of the Arts Connection. "We were happy to have them."

"To be honest, I was very hesitant," responds Rivard, a security guard by night and organizer of the 300-strong ICBBA during his waking daytime hours. "But we checked them out and saw that it was a classy event."

Three other bodybuilders (two of them women) joined Rivard for the evening, where they did short routines which provided other performers a chance to change sets and lights.

But they may be even more out of place in their accustomed role of witnessing to others in the bodybuilding community.

"As a Christian, I do feel out of place at competitions," admits Rivard. "We are a light in the dark. Vanity and pride have a very big place there. So do jealousy - and a pecking order, or segregation based on competitiveness."

So while at a recent B.C. competition, many participants gravitated at first to those favoured to win, Rivard set about to pal with those who looked like they needed support.

"In fact," he says, "I only went myself to support a friend." By the end of the event, many participants had joined his unofficial group - attracted, he says, by the values he was demonstrating, rather than by preaching.

"We found that if we focus most of our evangelistic thrusts on one event, a lot of people really are not prepared to make a decision for Christ, because they have no idea what it means to be a follower of Christ," he says. "And there's no way you can develop something over a period of two hours that will give them all the tools and the information that they need."

But with epicentre, teens receive four to five months of evangelism training prior to Ignition. "Then when someone comes to Christ, they're prepared," says Collins. "And we refer all of the kids who make decisions to a local church to be followed up by the youth pastor or some adult sponsors."

The people God has put in place in tandem with epicentre are Victoria's network of youth pastors who are responsible for planning and hosting the final event. All of them appear to be onboard, says Andy Moore, the youth pastor at Glad Tidings Victoria.

"We've had a tremendous array of support from the churches of our community - all of them just saying 'yes' to the vision and the idea and putting resource and effort into the project," he says. "I have had no negative comments at all."

And just as epicentre did not exist until two years ago, Moore also believes that if Ignition "would have come to us two or three years ago, I don't think we would've been ready. I think there were still some key youth pastors and some key students that were either too young or too green in their positions. But now it seems to just be the right timing for something of this magnitude.

"It's given us a wave to ride, and we're riding it together."

Collins credits this level of church-wide support to a refusal to repeat past mistakes. "The church is starting to realize that there was a generation lost a few years back, and now they're putting more emphasis into youth ministry, into children's ministry," he says. "Twenty years ago, very few churches had children's pastors. Now many churches do."

In phase one of epicentre (Primal Fuel), churches identify and send out youth who show leadership potential. This is followed by focused and organized prayer (Transition), a night of worship with a call to evangelism (Hallofuzion), four nights of worship and teaching on the Christian lifestyle and witness (Gravity), and a two-weekend study of the basics of faith and discipleship (Event Horizon) - all leading up to Ignition.

Victoria's epicentre experience to date has been "our best one yet," says Collins. "We've had over 700 attend Hallofuzion, and we've had over 400 attend our four sessions of Gravity, and we've had probably about 200 attending our Event Horizon, which was geared to the non-churched kids. We're targeting 3,500 to 4,000 at least for Ignition."

"It's really going to show that you can have just an amazing life with God," says Yeats. "Ours is such an upbeat and lively city, I think they're just going to want that - and I think it's going to change a lot of things."

In the final event (Global Velocity), teens who have gone through the whole process can apply to be one of about 30 who will go on mission next summer to Nicaragua.

[CalvaryJohn]

Why aren’t they just bodybuilders who happen to be Christian, instead of Christian Body Builders? It sounds pretentious and seperatist.