By Mary Jimenez
The Shreveport Times
With big business targeting youths with soft drinks, music, movies an other products, Rick Gage has made it his life mission to join them.
“If corporate America has a strategy for teens, don’t you think we ought to have a strategy?” said Gage, an ex-football coach turned evangelist, who spoke in Shreveport on Sunday at the Summer Grove Baptist Church, Road to March Madness Youth Rally and at the evening service.
In the 18 years of Gage’s Go Tell Ministry, he’s reached more than 2 million students in his On Track program and also serves youths in his Go Tell Crusades all over the country and in his Youth Camps held in Georgia, Florida, Virginia and Texas each summer.
About 200 students in the youth program at Summer Grove Baptist plan to attend Gage’s camp in June.
“ This is our kick-off for signing up for camp, “ said Nancy Reynolds, assistant for the student ministries program at the church, “and a way for them to get to know who Rick Gage is and get excited about going.”
Part of Gage’s emphasis on youth is simple math.
“There are more teens today than at any other time in history, “Gage said. “I look at it as an opportunity to make the greatest difference.”
Gage lives in Atlanta, GA. with his wife and two daughters.
He’s a son of evangelist, Freddie Gage, and says it wasn’t until he was 25 that he realized he was following the wrong road.
After listening to Christian preacher James Robinson in 1984, the then Texas Tech assistant coach got his first calling to be an evangelist.
“I came from a Christian home, a great ministry and great churches,” Gage said. “But it wasn’t until then that I realized I didn’t have the real thing. I got down on my knees and wept.”
In 1986, Gage left coaching behind for good and turned to what God had called him to do. But, he says, it wasn’t without taking some of his coaching skills with him.
“The sign of a great coach is getting the most out of your players,” he said. “The same thing goes for the ministry. You want to motivate them to be their best.”
His dynamic motivating style connected with close to 200 students at the morning rally.
“I was ready for something different,” said Tyler Sipes, 17, a senior in the youth group.
“It’s good to have speakers from different aspects of life. If people can relate to a speaker the more likely they are to get something from it.”
