Roadside assistance

The fields are fertile, says Pastor Rob Rowbottom, quoting Jesus — who spoke in parables and therefore could easily have been talking about State Street.

It is a Sunday morning. Much of the Salt Lake Valley is in church or getting ready for church, but here on State Street thousands of people are standing in the middle of the road, getting ready for a biker rally to Wendover. "There's the harvest," says Pastor Rowbottom, pointing to the bandanna-clad multitude.

Pastor Rowbottom is the pastor of Road to Freedom Biker Mission, a free-wheeling ministry that sometimes hunkers down at the First Baptist Church of West Valley City and sometimes takes to the open road. On this recent Sunday, Pastor Rowbottom was riding to Nevada as part of a rally to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Sometimes he uses the "plant seeds" analogy. Sometimes he uses the "fishers of men" analogy. You can fish sitting in a big lake and you may catch many fish, he says, but "I liken this ministry to trolling." You lower the bait — God's truth, Pastor Rowbottom explains — and who nibbles? "The meanest and the hungriest, the one who needs it the most and is willing to go after it."

Not that bikers are mean, he says. That's just the stereotype society has, he says — bikers as outlaws (even though these days lawyers and accountants ride Harleys and wear tattoos). But there are also, among the bikers, a subgroup who are addicts and/or criminals, plus just regular folks who don't know God loves them, Pastor Rowbottom says.

So he likes to hang out where bikers hang out: at biker shops and rallies, for example; anyplace where somebody might just need a man of the cloth, or in this case, leather. He'll be on hand June 19 for a rally to raise money for the Rescue Mission and Rescue Haven, two Salt Lake homeless shelters.

At Road to Freedom Biker Mission, everyone ministers. Ministering, he says, is about listening, praying with people, bringing comfort, even if it's just manning the water stations at a biker event. "That's one of the most impor-

tant parts of the ministry: availability. Just being there." So if he's at the right place at the right time — out on I-80, maybe, or sitting on a stool at Blue Wolf Motorcycles — he figures he might be able to share God's love.