{"id":12453,"date":"2017-05-22T15:09:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T19:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?p=12453"},"modified":"2017-05-22T15:10:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T19:10:39","slug":"joel-osteen-shares-inspirational-life-story-ben-tankard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2017\/05\/joel-osteen-shares-inspirational-life-story-ben-tankard.html","title":{"rendered":"Joel Osteen Shares Inspirational Life Story of Ben Tankard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pastor and motivational speaker Joel Osteen recently spoke about the inspiring faith journey of Ben Tankard to his 50,000 member Lakewood Church congregation and a TV\/streaming audience of over 20 million.<\/p>\n<p>Tankard, a good friend of Osteen, grew up in poverty and in a drug infested slum. He was a gift basketball player, however, and musician early on. After an NBA career ending injury, Tankard became a dog catcher to make ends meet until he got his break in selling music. Since then, Tankard has become the &#8220;Godfather&#8221; of gospel jazz by selling millions of records and earning multiple Grammy, Stellar, and Dove awards and nominations.<\/p>\n<p>The gold and platinum producer is also now a motivational speaker for the NBA. In addition, he is now\u00a0a pastor, author, pilot and reality TV dad for his hit show &#8220;The Tankards.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In addition to sharing Tankard&#8217;s story to the masses, Osteen posted about him on Facebook. In a post, Osteen writes &#8220;My friend, Ben Tankard, is an amazing minister, full of life, joy and wisdom. Every time I&#8217;m around him, he brings a smile to my face. I hope you&#8217;ll check out his new book. It will challenge you to become all God created you to be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h8853zLPINo\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>His highly anticipated new CD release &#8220;Cantankerous&#8221; is riding the charts and available everywhere gospel and jazz music is sold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pastor and motivational speaker Joel Osteen recently spoke about the inspiring faith journey of Ben Tankard to his 50,000 member Lakewood Church congregation and a TV\/streaming audience of over 20 million. Tankard, a good friend of Osteen, grew up in poverty and in a drug infested slum. He was a gift basketball player, however, and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":600,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3383,3388,1,30],"tags":[2153,1085,3405,538],"class_list":["post-12453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-celebrity","category-faith-based","category-television","category-video","tag-ben-tankard","tag-faith","tag-inspirational-story","tag-joel-osteen"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Joel Osteen Shares Inspirational Life Story of Ben Tankard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pastor Joel Osteen shared with his church congregation of over 50,000 the inspirational faith journey of Ben Tankard.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2017\/05\/joel-osteen-shares-inspirational-life-story-ben-tankard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Joel Osteen Shares Inspirational Life Story of Ben Tankard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pastor Joel Osteen shared with his church congregation of over 50,000 the inspirational faith journey of Ben Tankard.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2017\/05\/joel-osteen-shares-inspirational-life-story-ben-tankard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-05-22T19:09:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-05-22T19:10:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Megan Bailey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Joel Osteen Shares Inspirational Life Story of Ben Tankard","description":"Pastor Joel Osteen shared with his church congregation of over 50,000 the inspirational faith journey of Ben Tankard.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2017\/05\/joel-osteen-shares-inspirational-life-story-ben-tankard.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Joel Osteen Shares Inspirational Life Story of Ben Tankard","og_description":"Pastor Joel Osteen shared with his church congregation of over 50,000 the inspirational faith journey of Ben 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