c. 2006 Religion News Service

ROBERTSDALE, Ala. _ It was 9:15 a.m. on a Sunday at the Oasis Truck Center near the Alabama-Florida state line when the cashier handed Donavan Fowler the microphone.

A recent graduate of Pensacola Bible Institute, Fowler announced that church services were beginning in 15 minutes in the red semi-truck out in the parking lot.

As the service time neared, seats in the semi-truck remained empty. Melissa Blanton, whose husband David started the ministry here two years ago, and her son went out to scour the parking lot filled with rows of 18-wheelers.

They handed out religious tracts and invited truckers to the worship service.

But no one came.

Standing inside the trailer, Melissa watched a trucker dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and baseball cap, pace in front of the truck. “Come on sir,” she said, peering out the iron bars on the trailer door. “Come on.”

She went outside to encourage the man to come in. It worked. The truck driver came inside the trailer, sat down and filled out a visitor’s form.

Sundays at some truck stops aren’t just places where truck drivers can rest, eat or gas up before getting back on the road. They’re places where they can worship.

At trucker church, you don’t have to wear your Sunday best and you’re not expected to sit through a long sermon. It doesn’t matter if there’s just one trucker in the congregation or none. The service still goes on.

“Last week nobody came in at 9:30,” said Melissa, whose husband started the Oasis trucking ministry as part of Interstate Chapel Ministries. “We just had the service and kept on going.”

Farther down Interstate 10, at the TA Truck Stop in Grand Bay, Chris Henley has been ministering to truckers for 26 years. “Rarely,” she said, “do you actually have churchy-type people dressed for church.”

Every Sunday, Henley and her husband, Bob, are at the truck stop preparing for the 8 a.m. service in the truck stop’s TV room. They have one service on Sundays.

“It’s very one-on-one and very unpredictable,” she said. “We have travelers, transients and truckers with varied backgrounds.”

More than two decades ago, a friend who was a minister approached the Henleys about helping him start a ministry for truck drivers.

“He was passing by the truck stop one day and the Lord just impressed upon him that truck drivers have a difficult time being in church every Sunday,” Chris said. “One, because of the dress code, and some trucks aren’t allowed in church parking lots.”

Chris started volunteering, and has been involved since. Her husband eventually joined her and now preaches on most Sundays. They are both retired teachers.

Back at Oasis, the coffee is brewing and a gospel CD is playing inside the tractor/trailer before the first of three services started.

The floors are carpeted and wood paneling covers the walls. Cream-colored lace curtains adorn windows that were added to the trailer. A pulpit sits at the front of the trailer, facing four rows of chairs. A window air-conditioner unit blows during the service to cool off worshippers on the humid morning.

An office with a computer is located in the rear of the trailer, near the racks of free Bibles, sermons on tape and “Trucking for Jesus” bumper stickers.

Melissa Blanton was in the Mirage Cafe at the truck stop eating breakfast with truckers, hoping she could get them to church, a job her husband usually does. But her husband, an ordained minister who drives an 18-wheeler for a living, had been on the road for almost eight weeks, and was unable to be in the pulpit.

When he can’t be there, students and graduates of the Pensacola school and preachers from around the area take his place.

On this Sunday, Fowler, who drives a 10-wheeler gas truck in Pensacola, filled in.

With only one trucker in the congregation, the service began with Rick Funderburk, another recent graduate of Pensacola Bible Institute, leading the singing. He hopes to start a ministry to bikers one day.

“Anybody have a favorite song they want to sing today?” Funderburk asked. No one responded. So Funderburk selected “Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus” from one of the hymnals in the chairs.

The half-dozen worshippers sang as the noise of diesel engines could be heard in the background.

Following the singing, Fowler, stood in the pulpit and preached a brief sermon. There is no offering since many truckers struggle to make ends meet, the Blantons said.

Sam Hernandez, a trucker for 26 years who lives in his 18-wheeler, was the only trucker to attend church this day.

“I figured, `Why not?”’ said Hernandez, who hauls cars from St. Petersburg, Fla., to New Orleans. “It couldn’t hurt more than a little bit.”

Later, while David Blanton was home during a break from the road, he said he knows the loneliness truckers face on the road. One day he’d like to go into full-time ministry to be available “24 hours a day.”

“It’s been a tough road being gone this past 10 weeks,” he said. “It reminds me how lonely truckers are.”

Inside that truck, he said, “It’s just me, the Lord and the radio.”

KRE/JL END BUSBY

(Renee Busby writes for The Mobile Register in Mobile, Ala.)

Editors: To obtain photos of services at the Trucker Church, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.