A mobile church obliges a mobile flock

WHITSETT Chaplain Steve Johnson takes a small boom box out of his office, places it on a chair and pops in a CD of hymns.

It's what passes for a choir at this church, a converted tractor-trailer in the parking lot of the Travel Centers of America truck stop in Whitsett, in eastern Guilford County.

Temptations are many on the road, but the Mobile Chapel provides a spiritual oasis amid the diesel pumps. The house of worship is one of about 40 operated for the benefit of truckers by a Pennsylvania-based ministry called Transport for Christ.

"A lot of guys come in and just want to talk because they're alone all day," said Tony Pierzchala, lead chaplain at the Whitsett chapel. "It's hard for them to be involved in their local churches, their local communities when they're gone so much from home."

The chapel is open around the clock, though usually staffed only during the day and early evening. Inside are Bibles, in both English and Spanish, free for the taking, as well as a trucking newsletter, bumper stickers that say "Christ is the Answer" and bottled water with Bible verses printed on the label.

A Plexiglas donation box sits on a table, and a plastic coin bank shaped like a parking meter stands nearby. The ministry gets much of its funding from trucker donations as well as local churches that the chaplains attend.

Services are nondenominational and held at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Sundays and 7 p.m. most other days of the week if a chaplain is available.

Transport for Christ was founded in 1951 in Canada by truck driver Jim Keyes. For its first few decades, the ministry truly was a mobile one, in that it hauled its chapels from truck stop to truck stop, via semi. It established its first stationary chapel in Harrisburg, Pa., in 1986.

It is one of several similar ministries that operate on America's highways, including Truckstop Ministries, which has chapels in Mebane and Charlotte, and Trucking for Jesus, which has a chapel in Linwood.

TFC missionaries came to Whitsett in 2004 and conducted services in the truckers lounge before getting a chapel put on site the following year.

Moving to North Carolina

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Pierzchala moved to North Carolina 14 years ago, hearing the economy was booming in the Tar Heel state, and worked awhile selling cars. He got involved with TFC in 2005 after his wife spotted a newspaper article about the ministry. He had previously been involved in some coffeehouse ministries and, like many of TFC's chaplains, had a background in the trucking industry as an independent courier.

A large, friendly man with a goatee and a thick Northeastern accent, the 60-year-old likes to reminisce about his hometown's industrial glory days. He had been a steelworker himself before getting laid off in the 1980s.

"Back then, if your wife worked, you could get a house where the doctors and dentists lived," he said over lunch at Little Italy in Burlington. "But now, Bethlehem Steel tore down their plants, and you can actually see deer a mile from downtown Buffalo."

He is one of about a half-dozen pastors who work at the Mobile Chapel, and his role is similar to that of a pastor in a typical church in that he's there to raise funds, give spiritual advice and, if need be, tell someone where he can get professional counseling.

Steve Johnson, who has been with TFC for four years, begins a recent Sunday by making an announcement over the truck stop's PA system that church will begin in about an hour. He then starts walking the lot.

Many drivers have their hoods up; others are cleaning out their cabs. The chaplains usually don't bother anyone who is sleeping or has the shades drawn, but if they see someone sitting behind the wheel, they'll approach. Many drivers say they'll try to make it if they have time and take the TFC newsletter that Johnson hands out.

A typical day for a trucker can entail 11 hours behind the wheel, said chaplain Jim Harkless, who helped found the Whitsett chapel.

"A driver likes to get 500 to 600 miles under his belt in a day's time," Harkless said in a telephone interview from his home in Aiken, S.C. "If he gets tied up in an accident, in bad weather, in a breakdown, he may only get 50 miles. And a lot of drivers, they get paid by the mile -- not dollars, but cents, like 20 to 50 cents a mile."

They may also be away from home for two to three months at a time. Some are on the road so much they just use their trucking company's address as a home address.

Add to that the nation's current economic woes, and the stress becomes immense.

"You can make a lot of money doing this," Pierzchala said. "But if you're an independent driver, your bills are huge. One wheel will cost you $300 to $400. Then they got a lease [on a truck]. Whether or not they have the work, they still have to pay that lease. Company drivers are faring a little bit better, but overall tonnage is down. The freight just ain't there."

Alone on the road

Aside from monetary concerns, the biggest challenge for truckers, both drivers and chaplains said, is dealing with the loneliness of being on the road.

"You don't have the type of person-to-person contact that most of us enjoy on a regular basis," Scott Weidner, president and CEO of TFC, said in a telephone interview. "These folks are isolated from the people they know and love. And when they're lonely and they're away from home and unaccountable, to some degree, for a period of time, the temptation, it gets pretty tough for them."

Those temptations might include prostitution, drinking and drugs.

"I've talked to truckers that have let strange women into their truck, and now they're ashamed to go home," Harkless, a former truck driver himself, said. "In a time of weakness, we do some strange and dumb things. There are a lot of sad cases out there."

Hubert Johnson, a 62-year-old driver from Statesboro, Ga., is the first to arrive at Steve Johnson's Sunday service (the two Johnsons are not related). He takes off his ball cap and grabs a Bible.

"I'm on the road all the time, but I still need to get fed somehow," he says. "I need to go do my worship some place. I go to these chapels every Sunday morning if I'm where they have one."

Eventually two more truckers show up. Steve Johnson turns the CD player on, and the congregants follow along to standards such as "Amazing Grace" and "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Steve Johnson asks if anyone has any prayer requests, then starts reading from Psalm 99.

After the service, the drivers drop a few dollars into the donation box and stick around for a while to talk with the chaplain.

Steve Johnson and Pierzchala say they've had services where no one showed up and some where 20 people came and there was standing room only. Typical attendance for a Sunday, though, is seven to 10. The services during the week usually attract a handful of drivers.

But many truckers will just want to chat with someone.

"It's not unusual to have coffee with them after the service at the restaurant," Pierzchala said. "A lot of truckers won't say nothing when there's a crowd. But sometimes they'll wander in individually late at night, and they'll share. They'll say, 'Pray for my wife who has cancer.' One Easter I had a lady show up who had just lost her daughter, and she just wanted to talk about her."