In a cigarette and coffee-scented shrine in Colorado Springs, before a gathering of tattoos and black leather and long hair and a longer beard, a woman begins to speak into a microphone. She speaks of the hard, indescribable emotions of a recent night.
“I was ready to go,” he said. “And then Pastor Jayme calls me and says, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, “You have the whole church here.”
The whole church of men is not so different. People who have gone through the pain and darkness and reached the other side. People who have reached this point in some cases are unlikely at this point.
This is Pikes Peak Biker’s Church. This site was built by a self-made, born-again Christian who long ago turned his fast, alcoholic bike around on a slow and bumpy road to faith and compassion.
In fact, Jayme Pezoldt-Justice didn’t so much build the Biker Church – the congregation has had five homes in the Fountains and Churches building since 2007 – as much as he began to nurture and grow it through the same-minded demographic.
Perhaps the clothes were different. Maybe different choices. But Pezoldt-Justice knew that his fellow runners were just like any other church that people would go to: sinners seeking redemption.
In 2007, “I noticed in the motorcycle world that it was a lot like the church world,” Pezoldt-Justice says, “where there was this motorcycle group or club, and there was a motorcycle group or club, like there were Lutherans. and Catholics and Baptists. But it wasn’t this was one place where all would gather, and all would be a community.
True to his rebel form, Eques found not much for the church. Or maybe it was the other way around: Churches weren’t much for bikers.
The Biker’s Church Institute reads: “We all know that churches are not comfortable for ‘people like us’, we just want to know what that is…
What that means, Pezoldt-Justice says with a laugh: “A lot of us look scary, and some people act scary because maybe we’re carrying a person or we’re just scary. We talk nonsense. We are rough around the edges. “
Pezoldt-Justice wants them to come up, reads “bugs in his beard and all.” Biker’s Church website.
I did not come because of the loyalties of the people around you, the site continues to suggest, but because of the love of a higher power. For a good word from the shepherd, who says: “I take them and bury them.” They do not collect on both sides.
The page continues: “We are not bound by colors or cuts. We are bound to each other and to our lives by Christ and by love.
And the popular saying: Do you have to come as a biker? “The answer is a very big NO!”
Perhaps a great deal. “You have to be prepared for the language,” Pezoldt-Justice says. “It is not necessary to clean up the people.”
For Jenny Johnson, Biker’s Church took some getting used to when she first approached 10 years ago.
“I was about bikers,” he said. “But he just realized that bikers are just normal people with their disabilities, like everyone else.”
Johnson says she was going through a “divorce deal” at the time. “They made me feel welcome, and they were encouraging and caring.”
They know the rough twists and turns of life. That included Pezoldt-Justice, who was all too familiar with abusive relationships. She is married and has been sober for almost 25 years. In 1998, he went into prison and began his recovery.
Romans 8:28 is one of my verses. He can use everything for his own glory,” says Pezoldt-Justice. “So our crashes burn and burn. … He is using my abuse in my first marriage to minister to those who were abused. He uses my addiction to minister to those who are addicted. My prison uses time for people who have been thrown into prison.
It is also there for hospitable people. It was the late David Scott Barnett. The accident left him in a wheelchair.
“I am grateful to be alive,” he said.
He is pleased to be here at Biker’s Church, where his 1982 Sturgis model is displayed in the foyer. Pezoldt-Justice is requested.
The outlook would be tough for Scot Barnett—he’s not sure if he’ll ever be able to ride again. But it would also be a commemoration of the good times. A reminder to keep the faith.
“I have a miracle in the back of my mind,” he said.
In his hat, coat cut off and all, he bows his head in prayer.
