Alabama churches reaching out to bikers

As the revving of motorcycle engines fills the air, worshipers rush inside the church. Some riders watch them, engines idling. Others don’t notice them as they focus on getting ready to ride.
   
Though some are on Harleys, they’re not Hell’s Angels. It’s a group of bikers on a mix of bike brands riding to lunch after attending Bible study and worship at The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham.
   
This scene may be played out at more and more of Alabama’s Baptist churches as members begin to reach out and offer programs specifically for bikers.
   
Sammy Gilbreath, director of the office of evangelism at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said as the biker culture is growing, so too are efforts to reach this changing population.
  
“The biker stereotype is changing. There is still the rebel culture, but bikers today are usually husbands and wives riding together. They’re affluent, white-collar and successful. It’s very much the unchurched CEO biker.”
   
Gilbreath’s office has begun a push to reach these bikers through its intentional evangelism initiative. “Intentional evangelism is finding what people are passionate about and turning that into intentional evangelism,” Gilbreath said, noting his office has developed witnessing tracts for bikers. “[Christians] have cocooned ourselves away from the unchurched. This is trying to send us back in by plugging into people’s passion.”
   
The Church at Brook Hills has set aside biker parking and begun a biker Sunday School class, also known as a relational Bible fellowship (RBF).
   
Keith Edge, co-founder of the biker RBF said, “Even though bikers look different, we love the Lord just as well as the people in a suit or dress (on Sunday).”
   
Many of the members may dress up during the week as pharmacists, nurses, realtors and other professionals, but at Brook Hills they feel comfortable wearing the clothes of their biker identities.
   
“We’re accepted as what we are and not trying to clean up to what a church wants us to be,” said James Jones, former Shelby County sheriff. “We have people coming to RBF in jeans, boots, leather chaps (riding) gear, ponytails, earrings and tattoos.”
   
Jones, who also helped begin the class, said when he was sheriff he had a hard time when dealing with people who looked like the typical biker stereotype. But being in the class and riding with other bikers taught Jones to “look past the outer appearance and into the hearts of these people.”
   
Jones said, “It all goes to God giving a vision to reach the unchurched and the motorcycle is a vehicle to bring people to church as they are.”
   
This is a lesson Jeannie Brooks knows well. She and her husband, Bill — known to the RBF as Brooks — attended church growing up, but marriage, a changing work schedule and buying a pair of Harleys helped keep them from going. When Jeannie Brooks heard about the class at Brook Hills, she decided to try it out. “It was total acceptance,” she said. “You didn’t walk into the sanctuary and have people look at you like you’re weird.
   
“It was the first time I ever wanted a Bible of my own so I could look at it and see what they were talking about,” she said. She and Brooks are now regular attenders.
   
At a recent RBF — which meets at 7:45 a.m. on Sundays — Brook Hills Pastor Rick Ousley told the class he enjoys telling others about them. “It’s so much fun telling people … how you get up early, how faithful you are and how we have parking just for you,” he said.
   
“The Biker RBF is the perfect model of what we desire The Church at Brook Hills to be,” Ousley said. “A place where hurting people are helped, lonely people are loved, and all people are accepted.”
   
Other churches in Alabama are launching similar efforts. Associations and churches are partnering with the SBOM, Gilbreath and Christian biker associations to hold motorcycle rides and rallies.
   
Jerry Grandstaff, director of missions for Columbia Association, said interest in biker ministries is growing in the Dothan area. “This is all relatively new for us,” he said. “This is really taking off, and the association is excited about how we can touch lives.”
   
The association has teamed up with the Christian motorcycle clubs in the area to hold an annual Christian biker rally on Labor Day. It also joins with the Christian Motorcycle Association (CMA) to do witnessing and ministry when secular biker events come to the area. Gilbreath’s office provides the tracts that the association hands out.
   
Grandstaff, who is himself a biker, said biker ministries interest him “not just because I’m a biker, but because there’s a need there.
   
“When we target a need, we need to develop a strategy to meet that need,” he said.
   
Other churches have also partnered with CMA to hold rides and rallies. Recently, Brook Hills, Pelham’s Valleydale Baptist Church and Birmingham’s The Church at Shelby Crossings joined with CMA for a “Son Ride.”
Pastor Mike Satterfield, who suited up in leathers and rode his bike for the event, said Shelby Crossings is developing plans for its own biker Bible study. “This ministry reaches beyond the four walls of the church and allows those who would normally be ostracized from the church feel like church is for ‘whosoever will,’” he said.
   
Matt Hall, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Russellville, said biker rallies offer opportunity to spread the gospel. “The goal is not to get Christian bikers to come to our church one Sunday. The goal is to get lost bikers to come hear the gospel and get saved.” Calvary hosts a biker rally each July.
   
First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, will hold its first Easter “Blessing of the Bikes” rally April 11. It will be followed by a charity ride to benefit the Jacksonville Christian Outreach Center, a local shelter. Born from Pastor Bert Breland’s experience of blessing the boats while growing up in Florida, the rally is sponsored by the church and the Mercy Riders, a local branch of the CMA.
   
“It’s another way the church can reach out,” Breland said. “We hope it will be an annual thing.”
Rex Parvin, a member of Valleydale, said a group of bikers meets at the church on good weather days to ride out to a destination for fellowship and a message, but plans are in the works to begin a Sunday morning Bible study also.
   
Gilbreath encourages churches who want to begin a biker ministry to prepare their congregations to accept people who will look, act and talk differently from what members may be used to.
   
He added that having parking set aside for motorcycles not only builds community as the bikers park and mingle before and after church, it also shows bikers the church accepts them. It can also prevent safety issues that can arise when trying to ride a motorcycle among cars.
   
“You’ve got to allow them to be who they are,” Gilbreath said.