Ben Lippen Podcast
Welcome to the Ben Lippen Podcast, where we explore life’s challenges through the lens of Biblical truth and expert advice. We aim to equip families with practical, faith-centered tools for today’s world. Tune in for inspiring conversations that encourage and strengthen your walk in faith!
Ben Lippen Podcast
Earning the Right to be Heard
Ever wondered how faith holds up when life throws its worst at you? Joe Polek's story might just give you the answer you're seeking.
When Joe and his family relocated to Columbia in 2012 for a Christian radio position, they couldn't have anticipated the journey ahead. What began as a simple school choice for their daughters evolved into a profound testimony of God's provision through impossible circumstances. Now, with one daughter approaching graduation as a "lifer" at Ben Lippen and another entering high school, Joe reflects on the divine orchestration that kept his family connected to this special community.
The conversation takes a powerful turn as Joe candidly shares about losing his job when the radio station was sold, followed by a seizure that led to brain surgery—all while lacking health insurance. Yet through these harrowing challenges, the Ben Lippen and broader Christian community surrounded the Pollock family with remarkable support. Most astonishingly, the anonymous financial gifts they received totaled exactly $10,000—precisely matching the pay cut Joe had taken when forced to change jobs.
Joe's spiritual journey began at a snowy Young Life camp where a former NYC police officer's presentation of the gospel resonated in ways church never had. This connection to Young Life came full circle years later when, at his first Ben Lippen parent dinner, Joe found himself seated next to the local Young Life director—one of many "divine appointments" that confirmed his family's path.
With over two decades in Christian radio, Joe offers valuable insights about authentic faith communication. He emphasizes the Young Life philosophy of "earning the right to be heard" by building genuine relationships before sharing spiritual truths—an approach that guides his work on air and in his diverse neighborhood community.
For anyone navigating uncertainty, Joe's go-to scripture provides timeless wisdom: "Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34). Having weathered job loss, relocation, financial strain, and serious health challenges, Joe's testimony demonstrates how this biblical principle translates into daily trust.
Listen to this episode for a powerful reminder that sometimes our greatest challenges reveal God's most remarkable provision—and that authentic community plays an essential role in the journey of faith.
Do you have a story of unexpected provision during difficult times? We'd love to hear about it! Share your experience in the comments or reach out to us on social media.
All right, welcome everyone to another episode in our summer series of the Ben Lippen Podcast. And in this series we are capturing the hearts, voices and testimonies of different members of the Falcon family to draw us closer together in Christian community. And today I have with me someone who has been a part of the greater umbrella of the Falcon family for quite some time, and it's a voice you guys might be familiar with if you listen to the radio. I've got Joe Pollock with me, so thank you for being here with us today.
Joe Polek:Well, thanks for inviting me. I'm looking forward to it.
Erin Kay:So let's just dive right in. Tell us a little bit about who you are and your connection here to Ben Lippen.
Joe Polek:Well, it's crazy, but we've been here basically our whole school life for our kids. My daughter Whitney is going to be a senior. My daughter Brooklyn is going to be a freshman, so we have two high schoolers this upcoming school year. My wife is a pre-K-4 teaching assistant at SAR and she's done that for the last I don't know four years or so. She substitute taught before that. She served on the PTF before that. So ever since my first daughter was in pre-K-4, we have been a part of the Ben Lippen family.
Erin Kay:How did you hear about Ben Lippen and to know that you wanted this schooling for your daughters?
Joe Polek:So back in 2012, we were living in Maine and I was working in Christian radio and I could just feel like God was telling us it was time to move on. There were some things happening and it just felt like the door was opening. And so I started looking at jobs and found one at WMHK, which is the station that CIU used to own. And so I applied and my wife and I flew down for the job interview and they hired us, and so in the summer of 2012, we moved to Columbia, South Carolina, and it was the summer before my daughter would have started pre-K-4. And so we were looking for school. We didn't know anything, we didn't know where to live, we didn't know what side of town to be on or anything. But through going through the work that I would be employed by CIU, they told us that they also own Ben Lippen and that I should speak to Kelly Adams, and so we reached out to Kelly Adams, had a great meeting with Kelly and just really felt at home at Ben Lippen. After talking to Kelly, and then a friend of mine saw that we were moving to Columbia and at the time she was a college recruiter for Clemson and she said to me, your kid's going to go to Ben Lippen. She said that's one of those schools that when we get an application from Ben Lippen we almost just automatically accept it. And so between the conversations with Kelly Adams and then that conversation, I was like you know, this seems like a great school. It's a Christian school, let's give this a try. We didn't know anything about the public schools or any other private schools in the area. So we said let's give it a try. And we've been here ever since.
Joe Polek:So Whitney, she'll be in the life gang, right? Yeah, she has been excited about that. They went to graduation a few weeks ago and when all the students were on graduation that had been at Bentlip in their whole life, she was like that's me next year. And I think for my wife that was when it really clicked on her Like wow, this is becoming real, she's a senior. All this stuff that we're witnessing now is going to be her next year. All this stuff that we're witnessing now is going to be her next year. So, yeah, it's been that and she's a lifer and she's proud of it.
Erin Kay:So what made y'all decide to stay here at Ben Lippen?
Joe Polek:Well, when I was obviously employed at CIU for the radio station, we got the employee discount, which was very significant, and so that's how we got started. But then after I got laid off, when they sold the radio station, I mean we just we prayed about it a lot. We were like, what are we going to do? We didn't have any ideas. And Ben Lippen has been very gracious and they helped us.
Joe Polek:There were some hard times there early on. When I got laid off, I ended up having a seizure and had brain surgery and it was without. We were without medical insurance because I was without a job and there was just a lot going on. And through it all, kelly Adams and many other people at Ben Lippen were praying for us and supporting us and it was just our home, it was our family and God just made it possible for us over the years to stay.
Joe Polek:Every year we'd say to our daughters look, this may be the last year, we don't know. You know this is a definitely a year to year thing. Ben Lippen's expensive, we all know that, but it's worth it. And so every year we would look into what options do we have if it's not going to work out financially for us this year, and we even moved from Irmo to Chapin so that we would be ready if our kids needed to go to a public school that we wanted them to go to, and so we even moved out here to Chapin to be ready for that.
Joe Polek:But as soon as we did that, we once again felt God saying nope, you're staying at Ben Lippen. And he made it possible. I don't know how. All these years I work in Christian ministry. My wife at the time she was not teaching at Ben Lippen, but now she is, and so obviously we're not making a ton of money working in Christian ministry, both of us. And so God has just opened the doors, the way that only he can made it possible for us to stay at Ben Lippin all these years.
Erin Kay:What were some of the truths that we know about the Lord or scriptures that held your family together through these hard seasons of not knowing? What were some of the things that helped sustain you guys through this?
Joe Polek:Well, we just saw God's family of people surround us in amazing ways, whether it was our church family. We go to Gateway Baptist Church in Irmo and we were in a small group and people just surrounded us with love. I was working after I got laid off at the radio station with CIU. I went to work for Watch Fox Television for about nine months and obviously not a Christian environment there, but it was interesting to see how people there supported us. When I had some health issues and was taken by ambulance to go to the hospital, my coworker, who is not a Christian, called my wife and he said we are here for you guys, we will do whatever we can to help you. And we had some other people at the TV station reach out and it was really neat to see how God used people to encourage us. And then, obviously, like you know, jeremiah 29, 11, everybody knows that verse right. If you read the Bible, you've heard that God has plans for our life, plans not to harm us but to prosper us and give us a hope and a future. And so I knew that through it all.
Joe Polek:When I got laid off, my wife was obviously very stressed. She was a young mom, she didn't have a job. She was a stay-at-home mom. We were thinking what are we going to do? We don't have a job. We just moved from Maine to South Carolina, not two years earlier, and so I could see the stresses in her and so I felt like I was able to hold things together for a while and then, once I got a job at the TV station where my wife could relax a little bit, go OK, we're going to be OK through this season. That's where I really felt like for me I had some things happen where it was like all the stress and the pressure that I had put on myself to keep my family together I felt like that released during that time.
Joe Polek:And that's when I had a seizure and they ended up finding a cavernous malformation in my brain and recommended brain surgery. So I went through that process. It's just we went through a lot of stuff during that time and I tell you what my wife and I through it all. We saw God's people come together with us.
Joe Polek:For instance, we had when I got laid off when I took the job at a TV station. It was because I just needed a job, but it was a $10,000 pay cut and we had no health insurance at that time and we found through the process of my seizure and the brain surgery that God brought people together and we added up the gifts that we received and it totaled $10,000. People, literally we got checks in the mail from people that where there's no return address, we have no idea who they were. People dropped off meals to us and when my wife added up the gift cards and the checks that were delivered to us from some people we know and some people we have no idea to this day who they were, it totaled $10,000. And that was the pay cut that we took and so we just saw God's hand on it. You know I would have never chosen to go through a layoff and brain surgery and all that stuff, but through it all we've seen just God direct our family.
Erin Kay:And that brings up another good point, because we see in Scripture that we will face trials, we will face struggles. We're not immune to that. So, with that, how has this strengthened your faith? Because we also see that too. We see right Paul saying that in my weakness, that's when Christ's power becomes perfect. So how have you seen, looking backwards, the Lord using these times to strengthen your relationship with him and strengthen your relationship with others?
Joe Polek:You know I've worked in Christian radio since 2001. So it's been a long time, full-time and part-time. Even when I was working at the TV station and for a while did marketing for Bojangles, I was still doing radio on the side, as a side gig in different states. And so, working in Christian radio, I guess it's the same as if you worked at a church, right? You feel like you're always ministering to others and sometimes when you're reading the Bible, you feel like you're reading the Bible to figure out what you can say to others, to encourage them, and not necessarily reading the Bible to encourage yourself. You know we share tidbits of truth from the Bible on the radio or when I've done, you know, I spoke at chapel, at Ben Lippen and things like that. And so a lot of times I think pastors and you know people serving in Christian ministry we're always looking for ways that we can encourage others, and so when we do that, we're not necessarily encouraging ourself through that process.
Joe Polek:And so a couple years ago I decided I needed to do something I haven't done in a long time actually ever was.
Joe Polek:I sat down and I read from page one to the very last page of the Bible through. I did the Bible in a year. Over the years I've started and stopped it many, many times, but just three or four years ago I was able to do it for the first time the whole way through, and it was the first time I had read it chronologically like that. And so it gave me a different perspective. And I realized every other time when I was reading the Bible I was doing it to find ways to minister to others, like how can I say this on the air, how can I talk about this? To encourage this family going through something instead of what God wanted to speak to me through that passage, and so it's been an interesting transition. I think I've noticed, over since I did that, that I've noticed that when I read the Bible, I'm making sure that I'm doing it so that God's speaking to me through that and not just looking for ways for me to speak to others.
Erin Kay:Yes, reflecting that mirror inwards to how can I grow in him and how can I deepen my relationship. And a byproduct of that is that we do encourage others and support others.
Joe Polek:You know, it's something that I've had to work on, and I've talked to a few of my friends who work in churches and I think they've gone through it too. It's just an easy thing, and I would think people at Ben Lippen employees there would be the same way. It's like you're always looking for ways. How can I minister to my students? How can I minister to instead of ministering directly back at you? We are the ones who need to grow in our faith too, not just be helping others grow in their faith. I tell you, it's been a cool process for me to look back on. I never had that one really life changing moment that some people talk about in their testimonies. I grew up going to a church every Sunday with my family, and when I became a teenager, I really just I didn't want to do it anymore. Like I just I would try to fake being sick on Sunday mornings or sleeping in late or whatever, and I was a good kid. I didn't do anything wrong, so I had good morals, but I definitely wasn't living for God, and so I played volleyball in high school and my junior year one of my teammates asked me if I wanted to come with him to a thing called Young Life, which obviously we know. Young Life is a part of the Columbia community and Ben Lippen community. But I was like, look, I don't know what this is, but if you come pick me up I'll go. And so I went with him to Young Life Club my junior year, and then a little while later they invited me to their fall weekend trip to Lake Champion in New York and I heard the gospel message in a way that I've never heard it before. The guy who spoke was Bill Page. He was a former New York City cop. He was a big, tough dude, and so when he was speaking it just struck me in a new way. And the way he spoke about what Jesus did for us and dying on the cross and why we needed that, it just spoke to me in a way I'd never heard it before. And so at Young Life Camp they always invite the students to go out and to have some quiet time after they hear one of those messages. And it was snowing that night. I remember this vividly. It was snowing, and so I went outside to think about the message and that's when I asked Jesus into my heart and it changed me. It wasn't like I all of a sudden saw the light. But I know that my perspective on life and my purpose in life was different. I know that I became more outgoing when I got back to school. I started getting known as the young life guy. Everybody knew, even if they didn't know what Young Life was. They just knew Joe was the Young Life guy Because I was always inviting people to come to Young Life and to see how it could impact them. And so then after high school I went to a little community college in Maryland and I volunteered to be a Young Life leader.
Joe Polek:Then I transferred to Messiah College in Pennsylvania and before then I had never really heard of Christian radio. And when I became a Christian there was a small station in Baltimore at the time, and so I found it somehow and started listening to Christian music for the first time. And so when I got to Messiah College they had a campus radio station and I wanted to get involved in that and they were playing Christian music and so I started doing the Christian station. But you know, in college a lot of college kids when they're on the radio station they do it for fun and they're just goofing off on the radio, but for some reason, it was different for me. I wanted to do it well, I wanted to do it correctly, and so I practiced and I learned how to do radio properly, and so I was able.
Joe Polek:Then, my senior year of college, I heard about a job opening at a Christian radio station in Maine. I flew to Maine during my spring break. All my friends were going to the beaches and I went to snowy Maine and I got the job. And so here I am, 21 years old, no real experience, packed up my dorm room into a U-Haul and drove to Maine and started my new life.
Erin Kay:That's fantastic. It sounds to me like the Lord really developed you over time and you have a real sense of going when he calls you, where he calls you, even if you can't see the plan ahead, that trust and faith and what he has prepared for you One of the neatest parts when we moved to Columbia, the first new parent dinner that we went to, we attended the new parent dinner.
Joe Polek:So my daughter's getting ready to go in the pre-K four. We sit down at the table and we're introducing ourselves to the people around us and this guy next to me says hey, my name's Jason Blackwell, I am the Young Life Area Director and I freaked out because Young Life played such a huge role in my life and there was no Young Life in Maine. So when we were married and our kids were born, I always thought about Young Life, but in Maine there was no Young Life at the time. And so we moved to Columbia, South Carolina, and the first person I meet at school is the Young Life area director. And I just knew, like I said to my wife, like this is a God thing, there's no other.
Joe Polek:How many tables? There's 50 tables at that dinner and I got sat next to the Young Life guy with nobody knowing what Young Life had meant to me. So yeah, I've seen God's footprints all along the way in our life and it's things that we never would have predicted, never would have done on our own, but we've seen God just direct us the whole way.
Erin Kay:Incredible and I love that you can share your faith in that way and be an inspiration to other people, especially with the children that we have here at school, especially the high schoolers, how that next step can seem so frightening, especially the seniors. You know how that next step can seem so frightening, especially the seniors. You know, oh, we're graduating, now what? Now what? Because they've been so used to their world and their little bubble. But your story really can inspire them to say, hey, you know trust in the Lord and he will guide your steps. The scriptures tell us that is true and you've been a living testimony of that. So now moving forward, blending all that together, how do you make him known intentionally through your daily life?
Joe Polek:Well, one of the things that I love is the Young Life philosophy. They say you have to earn the right to be heard, and so that's one of the things that I take, whether it's when I work in Christian radio or even just with my neighbors. We live on a street full of people that have such a vast background. We are very diverse in our neighborhood, and it's really neat to see how we can all get along and interact together and love each other through the diversity that we have, and so I've always said you have to earn the right to be heard, because I want to share my life with you before I necessarily share God with you. You know I'm not big on let's just go stand on the street corner and shout it that Jesus loves you. I think that's great.
Joe Polek:Some people that do that, and it works for them, but for me, I need that relationship.
Joe Polek:I'm very relationship focused, and so if you want to share your faith with someone, you have to earn the right to be heard by them first, and so that means you need to just share your life with them.
Joe Polek:You need to become a friend with them and develop a relationship with them, and then, over time, they can see through your words, your actions and through your life what your faith is all about. And then they ask questions and now you've built that trust with them in a way to say, well, I want to learn more about what you live, or I want to learn more about why you believe in Jesus, so that earn the right to be heard. That I learned from Young Life is something that I take very seriously, even on the air, when I work with his radio. I don't just go preach. I make sure that I'm developing a relationship with my listeners over time and hopefully, as I do, that that they also see my faith play into action by the stories I share and by the things we do, with events that we do and with my family. So I'm big on just making sure that we share our faith in our life, the way we live, and not just in what we say. All right.
Erin Kay:So, as we wrap this up, are there any closing thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners?
Joe Polek:Well, I just love the Bible verse Matthew 6, 34. Back before I got involved in Young Life, my sister always on her bathroom mirror she had this verse and I didn't know really what it meant or what it was, but I would read it every day when I would walk past her bathroom mirror, and so it was the first Bible verse I ever learned in Matthew 6, 34. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own, and obviously, with all that we've been through, I've been laid off of jobs twice and went through brain surgery. If I worried about things that could potentially happen, we'd never survive in this world, and so I rely on that verse to know that God has it, and I just need to think about what's happening today, not what's going on tomorrow, and know that God will lead and direct our paths each day.
Erin Kay:And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?
Joe Polek:Well, we're always on campus. I do the PA for the football team, for the girls soccer team. We're always. Kelly Adams has always invited me to come to do different things and volunteer, so we're always around campus. But yeah, anybody can reach out to me. My email address is just my name backwards it's Pollockjoe at gmailcom.
Erin Kay:Great Thanks again. So much for being here with us today. We really appreciate how the Lord is working through your life, how he has worked in your life, and for the service that you and your entire family provide to Ben Lippen. It's truly a joy to have you as a part of our community.
