My next steps in the Chaplain Ministry

By Richard Sanborn

I plan to continue with a Motorcycle Ministry that I have been doing for the past 4 years. On the fourth Sunday of the month, a bunch of local bikers and myself do what we call Slim’s Run. This ministry was born from a conversation at a Mexican restaurant while talking to a local teacher at a school located in the poorest area of the town that I live in. She shared with me and a couple of other bikers that there are many kids at her school who go without food some days unless they are in school. It seems that their parents don’t feed them due to the fact that they have put their money towards other things besides feeding their kids. This is especially prevalent on weekends and the summer when the kids are not in school. So on the fourth Sunday of each month, we get together at a local church that allows us to use space and packsack lunches to deliver to the project area of our town. So here you have a parade of bikers escorting a pickup truck loaded with 200 sack lunches to give to the children and families of this in need neighborhood. This has been a wonderful ministry in that we are well known in the neighborhood and have been able to not only deliver sack lunches, but also the love of God. This has not only been beneficial to the kids and families but also to us, there has been so much that has touched our hearts with the shining love of Jesus. There is nothing like the feeling of hearing a child say to you “today I will not be hungry…thank you”.

There are many bars in our area that have bike nights either monthly or weekly. I plan to approach the owners of these bars to propose allowing us to come to the bike nights and bless bikes. We have done this at a couple of bars and it went really well. We pray over every bike individually with the owner of the bike in our prayer circle around them and the bike. This gets us an in with groups that may never hear the word of God. It builds trust and allows us to be there and be trusted without all the clutter that religiosity can bring with it. We hang out after the blessings and the people that have approached us to learn more are the true reflections of the work of God. We are reaching people who would never be exposed to Jesus had we not brought him to them.

My church is incredibly involved in outreach and has a philosophy of no demographic except all people all the time, all brokenness accepted. I plan to work closely with the pastor to work towards getting the church to grow. This church is a church that wants the outliers of society, the people that have been rejected by society: felons, the addicts, the prostitutes, the homeless… etcetera. Our mission is to reach these people and let them know that there is a place at God’s table for them.  

These are the current and next steps of my journey as a chaplain.