Thom Nickels: Muscular Christianity? A Kensington mission has a different spin on church.

Walk down Kensington Avenue to 2755 and you’ll see a storefront church/enterprise known as Rock Ministries. Rock Ministries was founded in 2004 by an ex-boxer champion, Mark “Buddy” Osborn, as a way to help poor, disadvantaged teens attain focus and direction in their lives. Osborn’s way to attract the teens was to offer free boxing lessons provided the teens agreed to participate in a Bible study. 

Sounds like a good idea. Sort of.

Osborn, says that when he was younger he ran afoul of the law, then found Jesus and his life changed. Judging by the growth of Rock Ministries, one might call Pastor Osborn (as he is now called) a wildly successful man. Acting as both pastor and boxing instructor, the combination has worked to attract heretofore unchurched youths who might otherwise be a danger to themselves and to other people if left free to run wild in  the streets.

Over the years, Rock Ministries has grown into a megachurch enterprise, hosting services and multiple programs at the Rock Calvary Chapel, like Adult Bible Study, Sunday services at 11 a.m., Wednesday Prayer Night, Women’s Breakfast, Men’s Night and a program called Firm Foundations Addictions Study.  Rock Ministries also sponsors an annual Rock the Block festival that includes sporting spectacles like boxing, body grappling (or wrestling) exhibitions, free food, preaching and more Bible study.  

The mixture of brawn and macho with Jesus Saves Bible messages is appealing to youths who would otherwise never attend a conventional church. The Ministries website, for instance, showcases Brazilian jiu-jitsu and submission grappling, sports definitely not for fey Gandhi-loving guys, budding pianists, poets, or skinny soy vegan guys who wear yoga pants.

Boxing is very manly stuff, even if it often means a broken flat nose and an occasional missing tooth, but when you combine boxing and wrestling with Bible verses what you get — they say — is a muscular Christianity, befitting the rugged war-torn streets of Kensington where one’s manhood has to be defended or proven again and again.

Rock Ministries YouTube videos show boys as young as six or seven in boxing helmets moving about the ring like Joe Frazier at the height of his career. In one video, Osborn is seen leading group calisthenic exercises while an instant later he puts on his preacher’s hat and sermonizes about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. 

It’s an odd juxtaposition, but who am I to judge, right?

Rock Ministries has grown so big that its evangelical arm has been expanded to include missionaries or missionary families. The missionaries move into dilapidated houses Rock Ministries is able to purchase or that the city is able to donate. The goal is to have a Rock Ministries missionary family living on every block in Kensington to win hearts for “The King.”  Or, as one Rock Ministries spokesperson on YouTube explained, “Where new converts can be discipled,” after “moving in, spanning out and evangelizing and discipling.” 

“The Mission Field in Kensington is ready for workers,” another video proclaims.  

Much of the work of Rock Ministries appears to be good — Rock Ministries occasionally puts up a massive heated tent for those (especially veterans) wanting to detox in a supervised environment — but something about the group’s unbridled enthusiasm and eagerness to expand causes me to pause or at least move my hand near an alarm labeled: Could this be the beginning of a cult? 

Some of the attributes of a cult are there, but the line between cult and sect is not simple to draw. Missionary work is very big with Rock Ministries, and members display an insatiable eagerness to expand and win over the whole of Kensington and beyond. Certainly these missionary disciples have an eye out for many of Kensington’s homeless, addicted males. Getting them drug treatment is one thing, but is mixing the tenets of fundamentalism a good thing for Kensington and society? Could this produce fanatical street hotheads ready to “box” people into their version of “righteous living?” 

Unlike Kensington’s Roman Catholic-run Saint Francis Inn that offers free daily hot meals for the homeless, Rock Ministries central focus seems to be proselytizing for new members. The Franciscan brothers at Saint Francis Inn do not proselytize or try to win souls for Catholicism; they feed the hungry, allow the hungry to take away leftovers and leave the rest to God.  

Boxing may be a way for some to relieve the stresses of life but a boxer’s hands can also become lethal weapons. 

I met one such boxer a couple of years ago. This former local boxing star who fought professionally and had his name on hundreds of prize fight posters, ended up with a drug problem and homeless on the streets of Kensington. Many homeless males carry hidden knives or clubs to protect themselves against violent predators, but this man needed no weapons. His fists proved to be a stellar defense against the most horrendous assaults, so much so that when he told me that the city had classified his hands as lethal weapons, I believed him, despite the fact that the registration of body parts as “lethal weapons” is pure urban legend. His hands were lethal weapons in every other sense because, when I witnessed this man in action outside a local Wawa, I thought I had stepped into a Marvel comic book. The guy was nothing less than a superman, and his opponents fell like chess pieces.

Since very few men make it as professional boxers, once the first flush of youth has passed where will all of these Rock Ministries heavily trained boxers go, especially if their hands become as good as lethal weapons?  

The mixing of fighting with Christianity is perplexing to me and seems to go against the peaceful message of the Gospel. As the Book of Isaiah says, “…. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” 

Cults do not spring into action overnight but can take a long time to form. Jim Jones of Jonestown infamy began as an altruistic preacher. Hopefully Rock Ministries can avoid this deadly trap although there are many accounts of just invented contemporary churches going down the cult sliding board.  

In an article entitled The Punk Rock Church That Could Be a Cult, Ryan Katz writes in Topic Magazine: 

“The punk-rock church, with its charming leader and its willingness to accept outcasts, became an obsession for some followers, many of whom were looking for guidance. Daniel Cathey started attending DBC while couch-surfing with friends in high school. “I was just a poor kid with a skateboard and a mohawk,” he says. Another former member, Clay Warren, had battled a predilection for angel dust until he found DBC. For years he crashed with four DBC dudes in a hideous, neon-pink one-bedroom apartment a mile from the church. Warren ate, slept, and breathed DBC. “I would have done anything for Cleetus [the pastor] Warren says. “And I mean anything.”   

Let’s hope Philadelphia’s Rock Ministries does better.

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest is “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.” He is currently at work on “The Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,” about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.