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UM Charity Spotlight : : Heart Support -Part 2

Colleen Brent had the opportunity to sit down with Ben Sledge, Director of HeartSupport, at the Charlotte stop of Vans Warped Tour. We talked about the organization, how it’s doing, where it’s going, and loads of other topics. This was such a great interview that we’ve decided to bring it to you in two parts! If you missed part 1 make sure to check it out HERE.

Colleen Brent: What inspired you to start working with HeartSupport? Ben Sledge: In order to understand that, you have to understand my story, so I’ll give you a quick synopsis: I grew up in a Christian home but I was very kind of in and out of the whole thing. I got bullied a lot during my high school years, I was very skinny, had long scraggly hair, hung out with skaters and was into the scene music – so that automatically dubbed me ‘the weird kid’ and then I tried to go preppy/jock and that didn’t work out either. During that time period I began to see a lot of hypocrisy and a lot of judgmentalism in the church and the very people that claimed to be Christians were the one’s that were hurting me or judging me, or acting like they were pretty but had all addictions and what not, so I just thought it was a big sham. I ended up enlisting in the military out of high school and then September 11th hit and I got sent over to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan I really began to see pain and suffering and hurt for the first time and began to question ‘what is our purpose as humans?’ Not what is our purpose specifically on earth as individuals but as mankind because we’re really good at hurting each other, it seemed.

Out of that, I ended up getting wounded in combat: I had shrapnel blown all on my lower back, shattered wrist, concussion, and then my best friend got killed. At that point I was very angry, very upset, and I came home and battled a year-long post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicidal thoughts, I was in counseling, on medication, and I ended up getting married. When I was overseas [the second time], my wife left and it was just a huge blow to me. Here I was trying to fight a war and keep my head in the game and it was so difficult. I’ll never forget the day that one of my teammates came up to me and he said, “Sledge, I’m really, really sorry your wife left you, I am, believe me.

I know that must be very difficult, but if you don’t keep your head in the game we’re all gonna get killed.” I’m trying to make sense of war, my wife leaving me, an impending divorce – I come home from war very angry, very confused, very depressed, and I end up homeless and living on my best friend from college’s couch. He tries to cheer me up, and we’re living in Austin, Texas so we’re going down to Sixth Street and partying all the time and at this point I’m using and abusing women because I’m so angry at my ex-wife for what’s happened. I’m hurting and, you know it’s really funny, he was a super staunch atheist and one day he was just tired of me being depressed and just – I was the guy, he would try and bring girls home and I would be crying on the corner of the couch all ‘don’t mind me’ cause I got too drunk…just not a fun guy to be around really, so finally he was like ‘hey man, can I take you to church or something?” I was like ‘nah, I don’t know about that.” CB: Wait, so the atheist wanted to take you to church? BS: Yeah! Totally weird. Well, I ended up at this church, and it ended up being the message of what HeartSupport is. There’s this God that loves you, He’s crazy about you, and it doesn’t matter what you’re going through or how deep your addictions are or any of that. He wants to know you and He loves you. I met these two Christian guys that took a really uncanny interest in me. I was a mess. I was the guy that , they would invite to a baby shower and I would show up wasted at the baby shower…you don’t wanna be around that guy, but they never judged me, they continued to love me throughout that. When I was really, really hard to work with they continued to love me.

They began to show me a picture of this God that they claimed to know, eventually my heart changed, I got into recovery, and things in my life began to change. When I found out about HeartSupport, what Jake was doing, I was a big fan of his band and I knew that he shared a lot of the same beliefs as me as far as wanting to reach a generation that was drinking sand, effectively. You know, caught up in addiction, caught up in depression – so many young men and women here at Warped Tour with marks up and down their arms from self-harm because they’re growing up in a fatherless generation or they’ve been bullied or just put down, and I wanted to pay that forward.

I wanted them to have the hope that I knew and I wanted them to know that they can overcome and there is hope, and out of that we have seen amazing things happen. Part of the deal is that we sit in our tent oftentimes and have people share their stories, so I get to share mine and that will usually free them up to talk about what’s going on in their lives. Man, we’ve had suicide notes dropped in our tip jars and all types of just insane stuff happen in there, but the people who have done that we’ve been able to encounter, get them into recovery, get them into programs. We have one girl who’s been clean a year now, she was one of the ones who dropped a suicide note into our bucket, she had a cutting addiction and this year she’s at Warped Tour helping us. Same thing for another girl, this year at Warped Tour helping us sharing her hope and inspiration, we’ve had sex-trafficking victims who are now out of that and in safe homes who are now telling their stories on our site…Guys who have grown up without fathers sharing their stories and encouraging other people. It’s very much this pay it forward mentality, letting people there is hope and we’re here to help.

CB: My next question was ‘how has HeartSupport grown over the years?’ It sounds like there’s been a huge growth. BS: Yes, there really has, and I think that’s also part of the problem. We’re so lean and mean right now as an organization – we’ve got three staff members, Nate, Jake, and me. Then we have volunteers and we’re trying to figure out how to activate even more volunteers, but in their giftings and their strategies. We have people all the time go ‘how can I help, how can I volunteer?” Our answer is “hold on to that thought, we’re really trying to build out a team of volunteers right now that will train up even more volunteers so we can get this message out.” We’ve grown so exponentially, Warped Tour last year was really the beginning of that and people got excited. The more we began to partner with bands, too, the more that we became known as this place that you know, it’s just this come as you are mentality.

We want people to come as they are, but obviously we don’t want them to stay that way, unless they’re already in a good place. Out of that people just feel like they can be loved and accepted 100% as is, with that comes its challenges. With the organization just rapidly expanding, our blogs gaining momentum, some of them having a viral impact via social media outlets talking about everything from depression to a really bad break up, dating, and loneliness. We’re trying to figure out ways in which we can activiate and mobilize more people to impact the most amount of people as possible for the time being because of the growth. I think last year we had – last year was the first year, nobody knew who we were. It was kind of fun, if we just actively sat in our booth, no one would know what we do. Instead we got really active and charismatic and outgoing and energetic people to go out and reach the people that were walking by and tell them about our cause. T

hat’s what really caused this massive growth, and then people started telling their friends about ‘hey, I know this place where you can go and get help.’ Last year my inbox was nice and neat and clean, this year it’s a giant mess, I think I have like 300 emails already and I’ve only been on Warped Tour a week. I’m like ‘oh my Lord, now I’m going to come home to a firestorm.’ It’s just one of those things, we want to respond to every single email we get from people, so we just have to let them know that sometimes it just takes a little bit of time for us to get back. We need more staff, we need more volunteers, we need more people that want to help out.

CB: There are tons of different musicians who have contributed to HeartSupport, how important is their role and what do they bring to you guys? BS: Absolutely vital. It’s 100% needed. If we don’t have band members that are talking about where they’ve overcome struggles or their own personal demons or whatnot, then we as a community, with our focus being in music right now, we don’t have the people that impact them as much either. Instead of using their music as a tool to help people, which a lot of people get into music for that reason – and you know there are those that say ‘I want to be rich and famous and get the girl,’ and they may start off that way but then they get to see that their music does impact people, it’s a way to give back to their fans. It becomes a resource for them to use us as a necessity to impact these kids that do have these issues.

I’m willing to bet probably 99% of the musicians out here are not counselors or trained counselors. So you have a kid that comes up and goes through all this and they’re just gonna be like ‘tough it out there kiddo, I’m really proud of you’ kind of thing and they don’t get the emotional or spiritual support that they need. What do you do when a young girl says ‘I’m being raped by my brother in law?’ Those are stories that we get. Do you know what to do? Do you know how to call the police and what not? We become this vital in-between between them and the fans so when they partner with us, they get more bang for their buck but not only that, they create better fans out of that. The more they partner with us we post their show schedules and whatnot and when they do, we encourage their fan base to go to those shows to be hope in those places as well, especially to those that follow us on HeartSupport. It’s a very much a give-give relationship. When they partner with us the good that we can do together? Oh man, it’s super huge for us.

CB: HeartSupport is very influenced by Christianity and based in it, so how do you approach kids who are struggling with faith or maybe don’t have any faith and they might be hesitant to come talk to you guys? BS: One of the first things I do is tell them about the organization and why it was created and then the bands that we partner with out of that. Then I tell them about the help that we’ve gotten other people and then from there I let them know, I tell them, ‘hey 100% full disclosure, we are a Christian non-profit, we’re faith based.’ We didn’t want to do a bait and switch with you guys to where you get on the site and you’re like ‘my god, they talked about God, what the heck?!’ Instead we let them know, so much of the talking heads that you see on tv and people that protest you, Westboro Baptist and whatnot, we’re not here to judge you, we’re here to love you.

We’re supposed to love our neighbour and you’re our neighbour and we’re here to bless you and encourage you. Whether you believe the same thing as us or not is irrelevant. We want you to come explore with us, we believe that the God we talk about and we serve loves you 100% as is, right now in the midst of all your struggles and if that’s good enough for him, that’s good enough for us. We do it in a way that we’re not cramming it down their throats, but letting them know effectively what we stand for so they know what we’re coming from and if they choose not to check it out because of that, that’s okay. We have a lot of people from all different faiths. We may have different belief values, but that’s okay, we love them. We want them to know that they’re absolutely welcome as part of our community and they will find very few doors closed to them with us. We want them to serve and give hope to other people.

One of the other things is that we have an entire ‘Explore God’ section on our site where we ask the seven major questions that get typically asked of Christians and we let people come to their own decisions. We want them to explore. Benjamin Franklin said, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” We don’t want, if they don’t believe it, that’s okay! We have these seven major questions like “does life have a purpose,” “what’s our purpose as humans?” “What’s our purpose as mankind?” “What are we supposed to do with ourselves?” “Is there a God?” C.S. Lewis once remarked, “God is not the type thing you just lightly think about,” because if there’s a God it’s of the utmost importance but if there isn’t one it really doesn’t matter. You have to come to the decision, falling somewhere in between doesn’t help anybody.

We take it from a scientific, historical, philosophical point. We believe that Christianity and science usually line up a lot, they don’t disagree often times. I think with scientific advancements in the community as far as the expansion of the universe and the Big Bang Theory just prove more and point more to the existence of God. 9 people out of 10 are going to believe in God anyway, based on surveys so it’s not really surprising that they would at least explore that.

We do questions like “if there is a God why would he allow pain and suffering, because if there is a God he could obviously stop it?” You know, they’re hard questions. Then there’s things like “you know, what about this Jesus cat?” “Don’t all major religions teach the same thing?” “What about the bible, didn’t a bunch of dudes just get together to write that for power?” “Can I know God personally?” This invisible being – how am I supposed to know him personally? They’re really, really deep questions that we want them to explore with us. We filmed each video in front of a live audience to talk about what we’re going through. Each of them lasts about thirty minutes so they can just jump from the next one. If they come to believe, great, and if they don’t they’re still on their journey and we hope they come to the same belief as us but if they don’t that doesn’t exclude them from our community, in fact, it shows how much loving and inclusive we are.

But we do let people know that that’s our ultimate goal. If they ask ‘do you want people to become Christians?’ it’s kind of like ‘duh, of course.’ We are a Christian organization, that would be silly if we were like “no, we’re full!” It would be cruel and unkind if we think that this is what God put us on this planet for and we go ‘nah, I’m not gonna do that.’ So we absolutely hope that people do but at the same time we have found that our lives and the way that we interact with people have often times been the biggest apologetic, and what I mean by apologetic is that it convinces people of our faith.

CB: Do you have any last words that you’d want to tell kids reading this interview? BS: I think the thing that so many kids forget out here and just in life in general is that they are so unique and uniquely gifted. So many of them feel that they aren’t and they fail to realize that in their life there will only be one of them. There’s only ever going to be one Ben Sledge, there’s only ever gonna be one Jake Luhrs, there’s only gonna be one you. Because of that, so many of us need to step more into these active roles of who we are and really embracing who we are whether we’re the nerd or jock or whatnot and living content in those moments and at the same time helping people who are wrestling with that identity be exactly who they are.

That’s part of why we do what we do here at HeartSupport, it’s to get people to live a life of purpose on purpose and be who they were created to be. The question I ask so many people when I meet them is I say, ‘if you can do anything, any job or anything in the world, but here’s the catch, you don’t get paid for it – what would you be doing?’ So many of them are chasing down things for the money or something that somebody else has told them to be or a carbon copy of their parents that they never get to fully embrace the uniqueness that they are. I want so many kids to know that they’re so unique and they have such intrinsic value that they should embrace whatever it is that they want to do, whether it’s video games or comic books or being a musician in a band – persevere to be that because the only person that’s ever really going to stop them is going to be them. The harder that they push and the more that they persevere the more character and endurance it’s going to produce and in the end it eventually produces hope for them as well.

Connect with Heart Support on the following websites: http://www.heartsupport.com/ https://www.facebook.com/heartsupport https://twitter.com/heartsupport http://instagram.com/heartsupport

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