Greg Lewis smashes his elbow through flaming cinder blocks during Team Impact's show at Oak Grove Baptist Church. rdt View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

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Team Impact's power play helps save souls

Team of weightlifters and former football players uses feats of strength to lure people to hear message of salvation.

ROB HEDELT •   Rob Hedelt's archive •   E-mail Rob Hedelt

Date published: 3/8/2002

FOR JEFF NEAL and the
breathless hundreds
watching the bulky behemoth's muscles strain to the breaking point, the moment of truth is at hand.

For more than an hour, the glib, pony-tailed power-lifter and former Houston Oiler footballer has put Team Impact through a demolition derby of sorts, pitting bricks, blocks and huge slabs of ice against various body parts.

Wearing T-shirts ripped to reveal biceps thicker than lampposts, Neal and three beefcake buddies have slammed fists, elbows and even heads into enough brick and block to build a storage shed for the host church.

To lure nonbelievers and those in need of religious rebirth to the Westmoreland County
crusade, Neal and his crew of weightlifters have also snapped bats, bent steel bars and sandwiched one of their own between
a bed of nails and Neal, who happened to be holding a 315-pound barbell at the time.

Though he's got a honey-throated delivery that many a pastor would love to borrow, and the show has the pizzazz of a Los Vegas revue, Neal's already admitted it's all a big come-on.

"We're the bait, luring you in here by putting our heads through bricks," he said. "The message we share, that Jesus can be your salvation, is what it's all about."

To that end, the whole evening is a slowly building cauldron of excitement and exhortation.

One by one, huge stacks of bricks, blocks and ice have been smashed and cleared away, giving way each time to a Herculean feat even more impressive, like the blowing up of a hot-water bottle as if it was nothing more than a child's balloon.

It's all building to this, the moment when Neal will try to snap a pair of handcuffs locked around his wrists.

After that, the plan calls for him to share personal testimony and then urge the listeners to break free of their earthly bonds.

That comes in the altar call that ends all the Team Impact shows. If the carefully crafted marriage of masonry carnage and tent-show revival is successful, a bevy of tearfully joyful listeners will march up to secure salvation.

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Date published: 3/8/2002