Truckin' with Jesus

With blue carpeting and simulated yellow-stained-glass windows, pulpit and miniature organ, the decor of the three tiny chapels is Modern Fundamentalist. What distinguishes the houses of worship is their mobility. Semitrailers with lighted crosses on their tractor cabs, they belong to Transport for Christ, a nomadic nondenominational mission to the truckers of North America. The mobile chapels can usually be found parked smack amidst a clutter of oil drums, automobiles and other semitrailer rigs at spots like the Mid-Continent Truck Stop in Mesquite, Texas, or the Mass. 10 Truck Stop outside Boston.

Thousands of truckers each year drop in for services that begin with a safety lecture, often featuring state highway patrol movies of bloody and fatal accidents. The films serve a dual purpose: a caution against careless driving and a reminder of impending eternity. At a truck terminal in Dallas, Chaplain Mahlon Martin followed a film by giving the assembled drivers a typical Transport for Christ pitch: "People who say that one of these days they'll get it straightened out with the Lord might find that tomorrow is too late." Besides regular services, the two-man chapel crews also offer counseling to lonely or depressed drivers.

Transport for Christ--and its blend of safety and salvation--was a trucker's idea. It was founded by a Canadian, James W. ("Chaplain Jim") Keys, now 43. Keys, who had driven out of Toronto from the age of 13, was a veteran of a trucker's pleasures. "I wasn't such a great drinker," he says, "but women were a source of evil for me." He had also narrowly escaped death from a flash fire while fueling trucks. "At the ripe old age of 20, I was coming apart." A chance visit to a Toronto church service led to three nights of prayer, and "on that third night I gave myself to Jesus Christ." He got married, began Bible studies, and was eventually ordained by the Independent Assemblies of God in 1956.

By then he had started his ministry in a small way by distributing Gospel literature at truck stops. At first the truckers did not want to listen to him. "Satan just didn't want us in the industry," Keys says. Driving late one night near Toronto, his religious feelings grew so strong, Keys recalls, that he "got out of the van, walked down the white line and claimed the highways of North America for Christ." Finally, in 1968 he acquired his first mobile chapel.

Gear with God. Keys' outfit, with its headquarters in Waterdown, Ont., now has twelve ordained chaplains who head the blue-uniformed chapel crews in the three rigs. It also includes 40 full-time evangelists and 300 part-time workers. Keys publishes a tabloid newspaper, The Highway Evangelist (circ. 105,000), ten times a year. Columns include "New Wheels" (births), "Gear Box Groanings" (illnesses), and "Silent Wheels" (deaths). There are also pamphlets laced with trucking metaphors like "highballing to heaven." The Bible is "the road map of life," and drivers are urged to "gear with God--you'll pull no loads in neutral." Drivers who have heeded Keys' message range from those who have given up alcohol, drugs or reading pornographic paperbacks to those who seem to find Jesus a substitute for NoDoz--and sometimes a tranquilizer. "I know Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour of my Life," wrote one California trucker, "and I can truthfully say that he takes the hazards and nervous tension out of driving."

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