Most people might mark turning 80 with a nice family dinner, or perhaps a trip to a favorite destination. Fred Rice of Huntsville, Alabama, celebrated by lacing up his shoes, dusting chalk over his hands, and stepping onto a lifting platform where he faced a barbell weighing nearly 500 pounds.
For Rice, a longtime Presbyterian pastor and even longer-time powerlifter, it’s all in a day’s work.
Origins and Inspirations
Raised in Grove Park, Michigan, Rice grew up in a churchgoing family. His father, Fred Rice, Sr., was a Baptist pastor with roots in the Presbyterian Church (US) who had been mentored by Francis Schaeffer prior to Schaeffer’s move to Europe. Answering his own call to ministry, the younger Rice earned his Master of Divinity degree at Grace Theological Institute, then another master’s degree from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and a doctoral degree from Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary in Evansville, Indiana.
Rice began his pastoral ministry by serving Baptist congregations, but slowly his theological convictions became more Reformed. He served in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for decades, and in 2005, he moved to Huntsville, Alabama, and became an assistant pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Providence Presbytery. He retired from ministry in 2022.
As a young man, Rice became interested in strength training, inspired by his own grandfather — a famously strong Pennsylvania farmer — as well as athletic heroes such as Tommy Kono and Paul Anderson. In the 1950s and 60s, powerlifting was a subculture in the fitness industry with a fraction of the reach it has today. Even finding suitable equipment was hard to come by, Rice recalls, and in his youth he had to use plates made of wood, not iron or steel, to get a good lift. Throughout high school and his twenties, Rice carried on, then took a break from heavy lifting until the 1980s.
Upon his return to the bench, however, everything began to change.
Becoming a Champion
Rice picked up powerlifting again in the late 1980s to “reduce the stress from working.” Traditionally, powerlifting focuses on three main lifts: bench press, back squat, and deadlift. In competition, lifters seek to obtain a max total lift in each movement as well as a combined total for all three.
During decades away from the sport, he had learned about the American Drug Free Powerlifting Association, which sought to distinguish itself from other powerlifting groups in which steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs were rampant. At his first meet in 1989, Rice deadlifted 480 pounds. At age 46, he won the 1991 masters national championship for his weight class.
More accomplishments soon followed. In 1992, he set his first world record in deadlift, lifting 622 pounds. He came in second place overall in the 45-49 age group when squat and bench were totaled. All together, Rice has competed in over 60 meets, winning 14 USA Powerlifting masters national championships over the last 37 years. In 2014, he competed in the Czech Republic and won the International Powerlifting Federation overall masters world championship for all three lifts.
Nor has age slowed him down: in November 2025, he competed in the 100% Raw Powerlifting Federation, another drug-free lifting organization, where he set world records in squat and deadlift in the over-80 category.
Asked if at any point he had thought about retiring, Rice shrugs amiably. “I guess I never really hung up the belt,” he laughs.
A Closer Walk
As impressive as these accomplishments are, most folks who step into a pulpit would not necessarily be able to lift that pulpit, much less lift ten times its weight — Rice is loath to mention his physical prowess during his sermons. Rather, he trains in a posture of deep humility before his Maker, whom he knows has created a marvelous design in the human body (Psalm 139:14), and whom, Rice attests, has kept him mercifully injury-free.
“I thank God every day,” Rice says quickly, when asked about his walk with the Lord. “Everything I do, whether training or teaching, I do one day at a time by the grace of God.”
On his 80th birthday, Rice deadlifted a staggering 435 pounds, and this past fall, on his 81st, he hit the same lift again. He maintains a Youtube channel to teach and inspire other athletes, whose archives feature luminaries from the powerlifting world.
Though his heaviest lifts are now behind him, his relational lifts continue to increase. In recent years, Rice has moved into a mentoring role, where he pursues the ministry of encouragement to younger athletes and lives out his Christian witness at the gym. For Rice, lifting weights and lifting hearts go hand in hand, and growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ will always take precedence over growing in muscle mass.
The key is discipline: to be devoted to both his Creator and to his calling, which at heart should always be glorifying to God. Viewing the body as the temple for the Holy Spirit, Rice holds firm to the no-doping rule in sports (espoused by the ADFPA and others), striving to be an example for those who come after him.
“Our physical exercise should always contribute to our godliness,” Rice observes, citing 1 Timothy 4:8.
Even today, Rice trains in the same pattern as he always has — squats on Monday, deadlifts on Thursday, and bench mixed in several days a week— focusing on sound nutrition, proper technique, and gracious fellowship with his fellow athletes.
“Discipline should apply to every area of our lives, moral, physical, and spiritual,” he said.
“I should know,” he adds with a laugh. “God has greatly blessed me despite myself over the years.”
A regular contributor to byFaith, Benjamin Morris is a third-year student at Reformed Theological Seminary.