Introduction
At 14, Ben Lindsay was racially attacked by two adult members of the National Front and almost lost his life. A year later, Stephen Lawrence was murdered a short distance from his school, and friends of his knew the family. That was the moment, he says, that the age of innocence ended and the age of experience began. Everything Ben Lindsay OBE has built since, from twelve years as a church leader to founding the youth violence charity Power the Fight, has been shaped by that early, brutal lesson in how fragile safety can be for a young black boy in 1990s southeast London. What follows is a conversation about faith, race, grief, and a definition of leadership that has nothing to do with titles.
From the age of innocence to the age of experience
Ben describes his childhood before 14 as genuinely happy: a loving family, a grandmother two roads away, a neighbourhood where everyone knew everyone. Then, at 14, he was racially attacked and almost died. A year later, 15-year-old Stephen Lawrence was murdered near his school. Around the same period, Ben noticed that violence against young black people wasn't only coming from the National Front. Gangs, rival estates and postcode conflict added another layer. "There was a mad time in the 90s where the black child was some was a symbolism of we want to hurt, we want to maim, we want to kill, and it came from multiple perspectives," he reflects, looking back with the clarity that only comes with age.
Representation and the dinner table theory
Ben is cautious about treating representation as the whole answer, but he's clear it matters. He calls it the "dinner table theory": children who grow up hearing certain conversations, whether directly or overheard, absorb a vocabulary and confidence that puts them ahead before they've done anything themselves. He deliberately exposes his own three children to entrepreneurs, investment bankers, footballers, faith leaders and politicians so that ambition feels normal rather than exceptional. "It's not the be all and end all," he says, "but I do think we as a community need to try as much as we can to put our children in spaces which we weren't in."
Becoming a Christian and stumbling into church leadership
Ben became a Christian in 2000 after his then-girlfriend's mother converted first on an Alpha course, an outcome that shocked him into attending himself. He was baptised on 21 May 2001. What followed wasn't a plan. Opportunities to lead kept arriving exactly when he felt least ready for them: to lead a church, to launch a charity, to write a book, to do a PhD. "It's always when I'm not ready," he says. "That's when God says, that's now, that's when I need you to do it. It's not about you." He credits mentors, particularly a church leader called Owen Hilton who baptised him and later married him and his wife, with giving him living reference points for what black male leadership, marriage and fatherhood could look like.
Learning the hard way: money, mentors and masking weaknesses
Ben is candid about an early failure. In 2004, with no understanding of tax or accountancy, he tried to run a record label on credit, assuming future deals would cover the debt. They didn't. When he launched Power the Fight years later, the first person he recruited was an accountant to chair his board of trustees. "That is my biggest weakness," he says plainly. His broader lesson: know where you're weak, and bring in people who are strong there rather than pretending you can do everything yourself. He's also blunt about the myth of the self-made success story. "Nobody's self-made," he says. "Everybody had somebody who believed in them, somebody who gave them a loan, an opportunity, or some advice."
Building Power the Fight through a global pandemic
By the time Ben launched Power the Fight in 2019, he had roughly nineteen years of frontline experience in youth violence prevention, from the Youth Offending Service to church leadership. He knew the funders, the trainers and the gaps in provision. Then came 2020. The charity had built its early model on in-person training delivered largely for free. When the pandemic hit, in-person work stopped overnight, right as Ben had left church leadership to run the charity full time. The forced shift to online training turned out to be the making of the organisation: what had been a local offer became something that "could go everywhere." Power the Fight went on to win Charity of the Year in 2023, and Ben was appointed OBE.
Therapy before you need it
Ben has been in therapy for ten years, starting before he felt he needed it. The trigger was cumulative: years working with young people affected by violence, including the loss of a young man he'd worked closely with to a widely reported case, without any clinical supervision to process it. Later, as a church leader absorbing hundreds of pastoral conversations, he pushed back against the assumption that prayer alone was sufficient and sought out a Christian therapist. His analogy is athletic: "It's a bit like when you run and you're building up your oxygen levels, or you're going gym and you're building up that strength. You never know when you might need it." He's equally clear about what he doesn't want to pass on: therapy for his own children, if they need it, should never be because of him.
The book that split opinion, and arrived before George Floyd
Ben wrote a book connecting race and church, published in 2018, two years before George Floyd's murder made those conversations unavoidable. He expected black readers to embrace it and white readers to reject it. The reality was messier: some black readers pushed back hard, some white readers said it changed how they thought about church entirely, and the book briefly outsold both the Bible and the Quran once George Floyd's death drove a second wave of interest. He calls it "contradicting multiple narratives" and says the experience of public criticism, including on social media, toughened him in a way he needed for what came next with Power the Fight. "I don't think we're designed to hear everybody's opinion," he says. "We're not built for it."
Leadership as servanthood, and staying teachable
Asked to define leadership, Ben doesn't hesitate: servanthood. He points to Jesus washing the disciples' feet as much as Jesus overturning tables in the temple, arguing that serving people sometimes means comfort and sometimes means confrontation. He funds clinical supervision for his whole team, at real cost, because he sees it as part of serving them. He's uneasy with public recognition, admitting he doesn't always know what to do with awards, but accepts that visibility is sometimes necessary for the cause. The value he returns to again and again is teachability: a friend once asked him, early in his career, whether he was teachable, and the question has stayed with him for over a decade as a check against ego.
