by Thom Van Vleck
Left to Right: Brian Kerby, Brett Kerby, John O’Brien, and Thom Van Vleck. The core members of the JWC Evangelism Team
The Jackson Weightlifting Club (JWC) has had many lives over the past 91 years. One of it’s incarnations was as an Evangelism team. We were inspired by Paul Anderson who toured the country and evangelized while demonstrating feats of strength.
It started with a relationship with Randy Richey who heads up Omega Force. They are a strong man evangelism team that has toured the country for many years. I met Randy at a Scottish highland games and he invited me to perform with his group in St. Louis. I talked Brian Kerby into going and we performed 6 shows in 4 days. Talk about a workout! We finished as the warm up for the US Strongman Nationals at the Family Arena in front of a crowd of over 3000.
Randy invited us to travel with them but Brian and I both had families and full time jobs. We would occasionally hook up with them but doing anything long term was out of the question.
Brian is an ordained minister and often would fill in at local Churches. He was filling in at a little Church in tiny Worthington, Missouri and they were having a 24 hours fast with the youth group. Brian suggested we do a little strongman show for the 20 or so kids present. Brian invited his brother Brett and I invited my friend John. That show ended up being quite a production and a real hit.
We had not intentions of taking it further. Just a one time deal. But a woman came up and gave Brian a check for $250. She said we needed to do this somewhere else. So the team was born. We would stay local and that way we could all be back to work the next day.
At first we weren’t going to call ourselves the JWC. That was the name of the weightlifting club started by my grandfather and continued by my Uncles. But Brian thought it would be the thing to do. My family has a deep Christian history and I was honored.
We never asked for money. Just an offering. We figured as long as there was money in the bank we would keep going. Over the next 10 years we did over 250 shows to over 25,000 spectators. Every show was all about the gospel. But some serious lifting and feats of strength were performed. We would bend short steel, steel bars (scroll work), break cement blocks, lift objects such as anvils and stones, lift traditional weights, strongman events such as the log lift, and tearing phone books and decks of cards in half. All the feats would tie into a Christian message.
Thom Van Vleck on the bed of nails with 380 pound Terry Lawson on top of hims and 330lb Brian Kerby at the very top. Yes, it’s a physics trick but it still hurts!!!!
Some of the more amazing feats we performed over the years include the following:
John O’Brien became a world class short steel bender. He would bend 3/8″ grade 8 bolts. We would always offer for someone to come out of the crowd and try it and no one ever even put a kink in it. John is one strong guy and he would lift about anything. He would lift a 90lb dumbbell with a 3 inch grip with one hand and the proceed to press it overhead for as many as 10 reps. We would have the crowd count along. Afterwards we would ask people to come up and try and lift it. The thing was that with that 3inch handle nobody could get a grip to even break it off the ground!
Brian Kerby was just strong. He would regularly load up 405lbs on the Bench with no warm up and then do reps. Again having the crowd count along and he would usually do 10 reps. Brian benched 550 raw in a meet one time. Another time he lifted a log loaded to over 300lbs. He lifted it so easily the crowd didn’t respond. So with the weight overhead he stood on one leg, the did a 360 degree turn, and then proceeded to talk for what seemed like a minute or two all while holding that weight.
Brett Kerby was amazing at grip strength. He would do all the bending that John would do but he was also great a ripping decks of cards in half. Now lots of strong guys could rip a deck of cards in half with a little work. Heck, I did it! But Brett would take it two steps further. He would rip the deck in half, then quarter it….and then eighth it!
Some of the other “regulars” included Mitch Ridout, Eric Todd, Jeff Jacques, and Joe Costello. Sometimes just two or three of us would go. Work and family came first. Just whoever could make it and we made do. Some of the funniest memories was going out to eat after a show. We would be exhausted and starving but full of joy.
I learned to do many feats of strength. I built a bed of nails and we would lay a platform across my body and load up audience members. I once had 14 kids standing on me. We would break concrete blocks across my stomach with a sledge hammer. One of my regular feats was to pull vehicles. One time we showed up at a Church and we had told them if they had a vehicle I would pull it. They had a fully loaded 80,000lb semi! I thought I’d met my match but somehow I managed to ever so slowly pull it. I had blood blisters all over my shoulders from the harness.
I never dreamed we would last as long as we did. The end came when Brian moved away for a new job. We did a couple more shows without him but it wasn’t the same and father time was moving in on all of us. Brett had to quit because of injuries. It just reached a natural conclusion.
That was about 10 years ago and to this day I’ll still be recognized by people who saw one of our shows. One of the more touching moments for me involved a boy that attended our show and I gave him a signed souvenir after the show. That boy died suddenly and at the funeral that souvenir was in his casket. His dad explained that it was a prized possession and his goal was to lift weights and get strong and do what we did. I like to think we did God’s work and glorified Him and not us. We just used His gifts to serve Him. My grandfather was a musician and he spread God’s word through his music. I’m a strength athlete and I served with my own talents in the same way. Through performance with a message.
