‘Do I Take a Bullet for This Kid?’

Ben Page left his pro soccer career and moved to the inner city of Charlotte, North Carolina, to live among the kids in his ministry.

Listen as Ben shares the challenges, dangers and joys of living out the love of Christ to his neighbors in what was once one of the most dangerous communities in Charlotte.

“We would drop soccer balls on the ground and just start kicking a ball with whoever was in the park.”

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Transcript

Ben Page: 
00:00:01 I had this thought that like if that crowd comes back around in a car to handle their business, like do I take a bullet for this kid?  Do I take a bullet for his girlfriend?

Phil Fleischman:
00:00:12 A neighborhood scuffle began to look like it could turn into a shootout, and while trying to help out, Ben Page found himself in the middle of it.

Ben:
00:00:21 I remember praying that prayer that like “God, don’t let me tell somebody I love them unless I’m willing to die for ‘em”

Phil:
00:00:28 Ben Page was a professional soccer player who uprooted his life to serve a struggling community in Charlotte, North Carolina, and you’re going to hear his story. I’m Phil Fleischman.

Michael Shurbutt:
00:00:39 And I’m Michael Shurbutt. You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories… an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. 

Phil:
00:00:47 Michael is the Producer and Writer for GPS, so Michael thanks for joining me on this side of the mic for this episode.

Michael:
00:00:54 Yeah, I’m glad to be here! And I’m really excited about this series called “Going Into All the World.” It’s all about people who left what you might call a “comfortable life” to share the Gospel with people in a different community.

Phil:
00:01:06 You’re also going to hear what Billy Graham had to say about that.

Billy Graham:
00:01:10 We might say that Jesus only had two verbs. One is come: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But the other verb that He had was go. Come to Christ, and then go.

Michael:
00:01:25 More from Billy Graham later on in this episode. And to make sure you don’t miss out on any new episodes, subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. But to find more now, or anytime, about what it means to become a follower of Jesus Christ, check out our website. It’s Find-Peace-with-God-dot-net. That’s Find-Peace-with-God-dot-net.

MUSIC TRANSITION
V.O.:
00:01:44 G.P.S. God. People. Stories 

Phil:
00:01:51 Right now, Michael and I are in Grier Heights, an inner-city neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina. This is where Ben Page lives and where he serves people in the name of Jesus.

Michael:
00:02:00 This is a very different kind of place from where Ben grew up.

Ben Page:
00:02:04 I am from Woodstock, Georgia, and I’m the oldest of five. You know, I certainly wasn’t a country club kid and so on but I had everything I needed.

Phil:
00:02:18 Woodstock, where Ben grew up, is in the suburbs north of Atlanta. It’s also where he developed a love for soccer.

Ben:
00:02:25 I grew up in a Christian home, going to church every Sunday, youth group on Wednesday, that sort of thing. I was also a high-level athlete so as I got into my high school years, some of the faith stuff took a back seat because my weekends were spent all over the Southeast playing soccer and playing in tournaments. I would say I was like a nominal believer in a lot of ways um… where I had a foundation, I knew Bible stories, I knew about Jesus but I didn’t really have a relationship with Him.

Phil:
00:02:53 Ben had been drawn away from God by sports, but now God was going to be using soccer to keep Ben from drifting away from Him. After high school, Ben’s hard work paid off and landed him a spot playing soccer for Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Ben:
00:03:08 It just happened to be a Christian school and so that was a pretty amazing experience in terms of being in a setting where I was challenged in my faith, but I still wasn’t living for Jesus um… so it provided some safety nets. I think the Lord knew that I needed some guardrails.

Michael:
00:03:27 It wasn’t until Ben graduated college and was drafted by the Division 2 team, the Charlotte Eagles, that his life was changed by a relationship with Jesus Christ.  

Ben:
00:03:36 The Charlotte Eagles are owned by a missionary organization, it’s the only team in the world um… that has a mission that’s beyond soccer so their whole mission is to use the sport as a… a tool for evangelism.

Michael:
00:03:50 Because the team’s greater purpose is evangelism, Ben was surrounded by teammates who were passionate about their relationship with Christ. 

Ben:
00:03:58 I was at a pivotal moment in my life, being 22, 23 years old fresh out of college and as a man, you’re kind of deciding who you’re gonna be for the next sixty years and Godly men by God’s grace, I saw the fruit of these Godly men and I was like, “I want that.  I want my life to be important for something bigger than myself.

Phil:
00:04:22 Ben realized the importance of discipleship for growing deeper in his Christian faith. And it was at a prayer meeting with his mentor where the foundation was laid for what would eventually become his ministry.

Ben:
00:04:34 He invites me into this prayer setting and we just start praying for the city and one of the things that happened was a guy had a vision of the city of Charlotte and he saw fires in different locations in the city and he felt like um… it was a sign from the Lord to use what we knew, which was soccer, to see revival break out in different communities throughout Charlotte.

Phil:
00:04:59 With the inspiration from their prayer meeting, Ben and his teammates started with a simple plan to connect with kids. 

Ben:
00:05:06 We did the only thing we knew how to do and we just took a soccer ball and a bag of candy and started going to these communities. It sounds a little shady, actually, um… but that’s what we did. We would go into these communities where there was a lot of poverty and a lot of fatherless homes and we would drop soccer balls on the ground and just start kicking a ball with whoever was in the park and at the end we’d sit we’d have a little time where we’d just share a Bible story or just to tell the Gospel but the core message would say, “Jesus loves you and we love you and we’re gonna be back next week.”

Michael:
00:05:39 The approach was working, but Ben felt disconnected from the communities. He knew what he had to do next.  

Phil:
00:05:45 While on a mission trip in the nation of Colombia, Ben had seen the benefit of living within the community you’re serving. So, he left the upper-middle class neighborhood he was living in and moved to Grier Heights. 

Ben:
00:05:59 Grier Heights uh… this community in the late ‘90s and the early 2000’s was probably the most dangerous place in Charlotte and so you have a lot of the things that just come with poverty and so that’s kinda the stereotype that others in Charlotte would have of our community is it just being kinda dilapidated, a violent place.

Michael:
00:06:21 There were several moments that confirmed Ben’s decision to move to the neighborhood, but one stood out.

Ben:
00:06:28 I was standing on the sideline while we were coaching some kids and this twelve-year-old boy grabbed my hand and starts to hold my hand and I realized that he didn’t even know what he was doing.  He didn’t know what he’s reaching out for, he just know that he wanted to be loved um… and… and so I stopped in that moment and just put my arm around him.

Michael:
00:06:48 In spite of Grier Height’s bad reputation, Ben knew it was imperative for his ministry for him to live there and become a member of the community.

Ben:
00:06:56 Nobody wants to live in the hood so… You talk to anybody that’s in the hood, and they’re talking about how they are gonna try to get out. And so, for someone to choose to come live in the hood is the craziest thing on the planet if you don’t have to and so there was a sense of um… okay, like this guy’s for real and it builds a trust when you’re actual neighbors.

Phil:
00:07:18 At that time Ben was working under the Charlotte Eagles organization, “Urban Eagles”. But as he came to understand more about the needs in Grier Heights, it was time to pivot from Urban Eagle’s structure to one that fit more of the neighborhood’s needs.

Ben:
00:07:34 Organizationally we just kinda became a… a square peg in a round hole we saw the needs of academics and we saw the need of leadership development um… so how do we bring some programmatic structure to this.

Phil: 
00:07:45 Now, Ben’s organization takes on a holistic approach that gives young men from Grier Heights a number of ways to develop and grow.

Ben:
00:07:52 Today what it looks like is every single one of the young men that are part of our teams is involved in something year-round so they play soccer, they play basketball.  They’re involved in weekly Bible studies.  We provide tutoring and other different mentoring experiences we take a lot of trips.  Travel is huge for us and getting out of this context and experiencing different things in the world if you become a part of our teams, you’re a part of this family and all those different activities are now part of your life so becoming a part of a team is a lot more than just playing a sport, becoming a part of the team is joining a family and being involved in all this wraparound care, or enrichment activities. (33:03)

Michael:
00:08:36 With the new approach to ministry came a new name and a new organization. Ben left the Eagles and founded the ministry he directs now. It’s called “I Am 24/7.”

Ben:
00:08:46 My wife and I founded I AM 24/7 together in 2017 so we’ve been doing now on our own for about five years and so we have a staff of four full time and between five and six part time individuals depending on the season.

Michael:
00:09:00 Ben tells the story behind the name “I Am 24/7”…

Ben:
00:09:04 We got the name because we’re really big on identity so what happens um… there’s this sense of being lost all the time or I don’t know who I am that a lot of these kids struggle with and so this uh… concept of identity has always been huge and so our core message is teaching a young man to say like “I am an overcomer.”  “I am not a victim.”  “I am a child of God.” We also have this idea and the commitment to following the Lord 24/7. And then, lastly, like it kinda tells our story a little bit that, you know, we’re more than a program, we wanna be a family and we’re neighbors and so we’re together.  We’re available 24/7.

Phil:
00:09:47 Ben came across a verse in the Bible that reinforced their name choice.

Ben:
00:09:52 I wasn’t aware of this verse and I was reading through Jeremiah and Jeremiah 24:7 says this.  He… it says, Jeremiah’s prophesying and it says that: “I will… I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all of their hearts.”

Phil:
00:10:10 When he talks about being a family and available 24/7, Ben really means it and he remembers a time that was put to the test.

Ben:
00:10:19 There’s this one afternoon I was doing some yard work with a neighbor and one of the kids comes running by and said, “Coach, its going down the next street over.” For whatever reason the Lord kinda… was like, “Ben, you need to go” and so I took my car and drove around the next block. I see this group of kids gathered around, and these are older high school students gathered around this one house and then, all of a sudden, they start running away.

Michael:
00:10:51 A young man had come out of the house with his hand on a gun, causing the crowd to panic and scatter. This gave Ben an opportunity to diffuse the situation.

Phil:
00:10:59 Yeah, and that happened just a few blocks from where Michael and I are right now.

Ben:
00:11:04 He’s walking towards this group of kids.  I’m standing in the middle and I’m just like, “Alright, Lord, I don’t know what to do,” so I just… walked towards him and he let me hug him. In the middle of this moment where he has like got tears coming down his face ‘cause they jumped him and his girlfriend and I didn’t know this at the time but he was so upset because his girlfriend’s carrying his kid.

Michael:
00:11:27 It took a moment, but Ben was able to calm the young man and get him to step away from the situation. The incident led Ben to think hard about what he was willing to put on the line for Grier Heights.

Ben:
00:11:37 In that moment as we were walking away from this incident, I had this thought that like, if that crowd comes back around in a car to handle their business, like do I take a bullet for this kid?  Do I take a bullet for his girlfriend? I remember praying that prayer that like, “God don’t let me tell somebody I love them unless I’m willing to die for ‘em.”

Phil:
00:11:59 Thankfully, the situation didn’t come to that and everyone walked away safe. But it served as a sobering reminder of what it takes to gain the trust of a neighborhood that has a hard time accepting love from others.

Michael:
00:12:13 Ben shows his love for his neighbors through sacrifice and hard work… all in an effort to build up his neighborhood.

Ben:
00:12:20 If the Lord says “Be here,” then we’re gonna be here and the Lord’s gonna protect us and the Lord’s gonna use our lives anyway He sees fit, I guess that’s a sacrifice of choosing to live here. It’s a sacrifice sometimes when I see my family struggling with some of the things that are around, you know, like when there’s a murder that happens two hundred yards from our house and my family hears the gunshots and the sirens come past I could probably go and get a more high-paying job and live somewhere else so some people might say that like this is a sacrifice but do I see it that way?  Not… not really.

Phil:
00:13:01 The tough work that comes with ministering to this neighborhood, also comes with rewards. And Ben is seeing the fruit of his efforts.

Ben:
00:13:09 The statistic is against our kids and so high school graduations are massive and then college graduations are even more massive. So, I’ve been blessed to watch young men who know more struggle than I can even understand walk across the stage with huge accomplishments. But the biggest thing is probably watching kids come to faith.

Phil:
00:13:36 When we asked Ben if being a part of this community has shaped his faith, he told us how the ministry has changed his outlook on life.

Ben:
00:13:43 So, when you’re around people that struggle, um… you get to see a resiliency and it shapes your perspective on different struggles that I might have. As I get into my later thirties, people are talking about getting the bigger house or the nicer car and, it’s just like chasing stuff. But it’s like God has given me something bigger to live for and if I wasn’t in this environment constantly, I would probably be caught up in the same sort of thing.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Michael:
00:14:19 No matter the place, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to heal us and our communities. You can find out more about what it means to begin a relationship with Jesus by visiting our website. Find Peace With God-dot-net. That’s Find Peace With God-dot-net.

Phil:
00:14:34 Ben Page’s story may leave you thinking about using the power of the Gospel to build up your own community. If that’s the case, he’s got some advice in just a moment.  

MUSIC TRANSITION
V.O.:
00:14:43 You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories. A podcast production of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Billy Graham:
00:14:52 We might say that Jesus only had two verbs. One is come: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (4:02) (4:14) But the other verb that He had was go. Come to Christ, and then go. (4:20)

V.O.:
00:15:07 Billy Graham

Billy Graham:
00:15:08 We go because we’ve been sent. If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior and made Him Lord of your life, you have to take seriously this call, this command. Jesus said, “Beginning at Jerusalem, to all nations.” Where is your “Jerusalem”? The school where you attend or where you teach? The house you live in? The neighborhood you live in? And you’re willing to say, “I give my body, my mind, my plans, my goals, my ambitions, my future. I am willing to surrender it all to the Lordship of Christ”? 

Michael:
00:15:49 If you’d like to know more about what it means to turn your life over to Jesus Christ, call us. You can talk to someone right now at our Prayer Line. The number is 8 5 5 – 2 5 5 – P R A Y. That’s 8 5 5 – 2 5 5 – P R A Y.

Phil:
00:16:05 And if you’ve been listening to this episode and are starting to think, “What can I do to get involved in my community?” Here’s some advice from Ben.

Ben Page:
00:16:12 You don’t have to move into a community like this to live radically for Jesus, you just gotta be paying attention to what God’s doing around you. I’m done trying to come up with plans and then asking God to bless ‘em. Be paying attention to what God’s doing around you and go be a part of it. That could be just an individual friend that’s struggling, you know.  Instead of just seeing their struggle, see what God wants to do in their life. The people that go out and know God’s promises and speak God’s promises are the people that see God move all around them.

Phil:
00:16:42 Thank you to Ben Page for sharing the story of how God gave him a vision for serving the Lord by building up the residents of an impoverished community. I’m Phil Fleischman.

Michael:
00:16:52 And I’m Michael Shurbutt. Make sure you’re subscribed to GPS so you won’t miss the next finale of our “Going Into All the World” series. Next week, we’re going to meet a young couple, Garrett and Gabi Raburn. They said goodbye to their life in Texas, loaded up a U-Haul and headed to the Big Apple to start a church. That was not part of Gabi’s five-year plan.

Phil:
00:17:13 Thanks for listening to this episode of GPS: God. People. Stories. It’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association – Always Good News!

CLOSING MUSIC

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