IT'S A THURSDAY night in Kensington, and a hectic boxing practice is winding down. "Butts down!" a coach yells at the 20 boxers, and the 10-to-15-year-olds all drop to the floor for push-ups.
As the clock ticks closer to 6 p.m., they hang up their gloves, grab some water and towels and follow their coaches into a large auditorium off the training room. Everyone waits silently.
Suddenly a bald man wearing an open-collared white shirt strides into the room from the rear. They know Buddy Osborn. They know that they won't be hearing some profanity-spiced locker-room pep talk.
"We are near the end of St. Paul's letter to the Galatians," Osborn says, and the young fighters, some still sweating, open their Bibles to Galatians.
For Osborn, an ordained Calvary Christian minister and former amateur boxer, it's a scene that takes place twice a week at Rock Ministries, the gym-church hybrid he founded 12 years ago.
Osborn leads a weekly Bible study for all 50 of the Rock's fighters, some of whom are kickboxers or grapplers. The classes are mandatory for all of his fighters, many of whom end up converting to Christianity.
"The Holy Spirit is straight-up dope," Osborn, 56, continues. "And guess what? It's free."
He ends by sharing one last lesson. On a screen behind him, Osborn's face appears. It's his mug shot from the five years he spent in federal prison until 1993.
"Look! I had hair back then," he says. Everyone laughs.
Urban missionaries
For a long time, Mark "Buddy" Osborn saw boxing as his sole outlet for reaching at-risk youth. The sport had kept him on the straight and narrow while growing up in Kensington.
As a young boxer, his tenacity and skill had kept him away from the drug lifestyle that claimed the lives of three of his siblings.
"Boxers never quit," Osborn told the Daily News in an interview earlier this month in his Kensington office.
That same charisma and confident drive translated into a career with the roofers union, where he became intertwined with organized crime. In 1988, Osborn was convicted on RICO charges after a federal wiretap revealed widespread corruption and bribery in the union's leadership.
After completing his five-year sentence, Osborn began reaching out to kids in prison, while still coaching amateur boxers. He joined the Calvary Christian Church in Oxford Circle, converting on Dec. 31, 1995.
Around 1999, something happened that made him regard religion as more important than boxing: One of his brightest stars, a 16-year-old national champion, was locked up on murder charges. Osborn had been visiting the House of Correction in Holmesburg to meet other inmates, when he saw his former boxing pupil.
"I saw him come in with an orange jumpsuit and just started crying," Osborn recalled. At that moment, he said, he knew he "didn't want to train kids without faith."
Still, he had not yet fully integrated his coaching into his ministry. When he founded Rock Ministries in 2003, it was strictly a boxing gym. He became an ordained minister six years later.
Boxing became the bait to get teenagers off the streets and into a welcoming environment. The strategy may be the reason for the Rock's longevity.
While other religious ministries in Kensington have failed, the Rock - located a stone's throw from the El stop at Kensington Avenue and Somerset Street, one of the city's most notorious drug corners - soon will celebrate its 12th anniversary.
"Most kids arrive [at the Rock] for boxing," assistant pastor Craig Cerrito said. The Rock sponsors men's and women's boxing, kickboxing and grappling, with a slew of national and regional champions.
But these days, fighting is secondary to religious outreach.
"Our mission is to provide the Gospel to people who don't know Jesus," Cerrito said.
Osborn thinks the Rock's volunteers (whom he calls "urban missionaries") form the best link to residents, who appreciate seeing the same faces over the years.
"The urban-missionary field is overlooked and undersupported," he said. Area residents are unwilling to trust volunteers who pop in on a service trip or year of missionary work, but won't stay long-term.
"They don't trust people [to finish their work]," he said.
Osborn thinks the Rock has surpassed these early limits.
"We plant seeds of hope," he said.
'I was like, 'Nah . . . '
Escaping abusive relationships, absentee parents and gang-infested streets often unites the diverse flock of visitors to the Rock.
Andre Javier, 20, a seven-year veteran of the Rock's top boxing squad, didn't initially buy into the gym's religious message.
"When I found out it was a Christian gym, I was like, 'Nah . . . ' " Javier recalled. Despite his early reluctance, Javier came to prefer the Rock to other gyms in the area.
Subscribing to the Rock's religious philosophy did not come quickly.
"I was living two lives," Javier told the People Paper in an interview at the gym. He would participate in Bible studies at the Rock, but at home in North Philly he would smoke weed with friends.
With guidance from his mentors at the Rock, Javier converted to Christianity and embraced the gym's religious ethos.
"Some guys come for boxing, but you can't shake the faith aspect," he said.
Miky Rodriguez, 16, joined the Rock not from love of boxing but for self-defense in Kensington.
He arrived three months ago to build up strength so the drug dealers he encountered near F Street and Allegheny Avenue "wouldn't mess with" him, he said.
The emphasis on Bible studies and prayer scared him initially.
"I didn't really think I was going to like [the Rock]," he said. "I thought it was going to be all Bible studies."
Despite his reservations, Rodriguez, a basketball player at Kensington International Business, Finance, and Entrepreneurship High School, advanced quickly among the Rock's boxers. In only three months, he jumped from the C-team to the B-team.
Bringing his new lifestyle home to his friends and family, many of whom still pressure him to sell drugs, has been difficult. He and Javier, along with many other boxers at the Rock, look to Osborn and the coaches as father figures.
"Most of the guys [at the Rock] don't have a father," Javier said. Osborn, Cerrito and Gemet Argaw - a boxing coach who heard about the Rock after fleeing Ethiopia - help fill that role for many teens who come to the Rock.
For many of the boxers, an initial attraction to the violent sport as a means to protect themselves against crime in their own neighborhoods has become a way to keep practicing their religion.
Rodriguez, who joined a team at the Rock to fight off rival drug dealers, now comes for a different reason. "This is the only place where I come to learn about God," he said.
An unlikely benefactor
Osborn began to appreciate the impact of his changed lifestyle when Rock Ministries became a sanctioned Calvary Christian church in 2009. He worked on acquiring a neighboring building to hold services.
The property ended up coming from the unlikeliest of sources: a neighbor who had testified against him at his RICO trial.
"In my mind, I wanted to seriously hurt him," Osborn recalled thinking during the trial.
But old wounds healed, and the neighbor ended up attending Mass at the Rock.
"He reached out to me and said, 'Bud, would you be interested in my building?' " Osborn said.
The extra space now stores most of the Rock's expansive food pantry and hosts its weekly worship service.
'No place I'd rather be'
It is Sunday, and a capacity crowd of more than 200 believers gathers for Mass at the Rock. As Osborn prepares for his sermon, he notices a couple of new faces.
"He's a drug dealer," confides Osborn, pointing at one of them. "He did time for a weapons charge a few years back."
Before leading the crowd through the beginning of St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Osborn praises Juan Rivera V, a 9-year-old boxer who just returned from the USA Boxing Junior Olympic National Championships in Charleston, W. Va., with a silver medal.
"He won't only be a future world champion," Osborn says, beaming. "He'll be a champion for Christ."
At the end of the service, the crowd sways, singing a hymn in unison, some of them raising their hands to the sky:
Your name is higher than the rising sun. Amen! Amen! No place I would rather be than here in your love.