Lifting Spirits
Amadeus Gandy takes off his shoes, chalks his hands, adjusts his weight belt, sets his wrist wraps and breathes, ready for his rack dead lift.
Beads of sweat drip down his brow as his face tenses and he breathes out every time he lifts 585 pounds.
The back of his “Swole. Priest” black shirt displays the Romans 12:1 verse — “I urge you therefore, brothers to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.”
“The church is no longer 'If you build it they will come.' The chaplain and pastor has to be out in the community and engaging with the community and be where they're at, learn their language and cross barriers,” said Gandy, 28, “I try to find ways to bring physical fitness into the realm of the faith.”
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Gandy arrived in Butler nearly a year ago to serve at Faith Lutheran Church and be the mission developer. During that time, Faith Lutheran Church and St. Luke Lutheran Church agreed to merge, to become known as the St. Luke Lutheran Church, Butler campus, which has a focus to perform mission work in the Butler area with its ministry team called Missionaries in Butler, or MIB.
Not only is Gandy a pastor, but he is also a three-year bodybuilder and holds the title Mr. Natural Indiana 2018.
Gandy claims he is the strongest pastor in Butler County with his current heaviest dead lift at 605 pounds. Additionally, he said he is the second-strongest person at Legends of Pittsburgh fitness Center at The Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills.
To other pastors and spiritual leaders, the challenge is open.
Gandy took first place in the heavyweight category and was the overall winner of the 2018 NPC Natural Indiana Championships that earned him the title.In November, Gandy plans to compete in the OCB Natural Steel City Championships.Gandy, who is originally from American Samoa, joined the Army and attended seminary in Indiana.In addition to being an avid lifter, Gandy is also a reserve chaplain in the Air Force. Gandy is one of the few pastors who can do a few hundred push-ups because the military is a physically demanding place, he said.“I've always had a heart for the military,” he said. “My dad was Army, grandfather was Air Force.”Initially, he went into college to be a special forces officer in the Army infantry. He majored in designing video games then switched to sports science.About that same time, Gandy's father deployed to Iraq for a second time.“This time he didn't come back, so that jolted my life,” he said. “Along the way we met different pastors, especially chaplains in the military. We got to know them and what their ministry looked like for helping those with deceased service members.”That moment, along with his Scripture class in college, created Gandy's epiphany.“I think God told me to ask what about Air Force chaplain,” he said. “That's a total 180 from the idea of taking lives versus saving lives spiritually.”He attended Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Ind., and joined the Air Force chaplain candidate program.
At seminary, Gandy created a weight-loss program called the Biggest Luther, a play on Lutherans. As an Air Force chaplain, he cannot proselytize.“I found it as a beautiful challenge to find ways of connecting the faith to everybody's everyday life,” he said. “My everyday life is the weightroom.”In the weightroom, Gandy teaches people how to have a disciplined and ritualistic life without a spiritual or religious connection.His workout routine that begins with a pre-workout beverage and music to focus his mind, assessment of the weightroom, then warm-up sets followed by his working sets creates a ritual.Form and technique are needed in the gym for lifts, which is the same in the church when people stand, sit and kneel for certain parts of the liturgy to communicate with their body about what they are engaging in and believe, he said.Community is also present in the church and gym.“The church should be a place of community and family. ... We are all children of God, so why is it weird for you to welcome a brother or sister in Christ?” he said. “We are children of the gym. We are all trying to better ourselves ... we are not here to put anyone down.”
Also, music provokes a certain mood and theme in the church and weight room, he said.Much like the liturgy is formulaic and starts and ends for a reason, a workout is the same, he said.When a person approaches the church with that mind-set, people view it differently, Gandy said.Weightlifting is a platform he can also engage other pastors and clergy to encourage them to take up healthy habits, he said.Gandy's right calf is tattooed with a soldier's memorial cross in memory of his father, who was a strong man himself, Gandy said.The tattoo and its location are serve as a reminder and motivation, he said.Christians believe in the Resurrection of the dead where the spirit ascends and the body stays behind, he said.A healthier body also reinforces a disciplined lifestyle and allows spiritual leaders to continue their ministry longer, he said.“God created the body. The body in its initial creation is good, so there shouldn't be this Gnostic or overly spiritual interpretation of the body as in the flesh is bad,” he said. “The body fell into sin, but God redeemed the body and will raise it up in the end times, so take care of your body.”
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