Truck-Stop Preacher Takes Jesus On Road -- North Bend Is Site Of Weekly Mobile Ministry

NORTH BEND - At first glance, Kim Taylor's big semi rig doesn't look much different from the other 18-wheelers around it: diesel-fed Mack tractor up front, 40-foot trailer in back.

But on closer inspection, his begins to stand out. That lighted cross above the cab is a tip-off; so is the Gospel verse written across the back.

And while other semis at the Seattle East Auto Truck Plaza yesterday carried loads such as watermelons, auto parts, fertilizer and fiberglass boats, Taylor's was likely the only one with a pulpit and eight pews inside.

The white and blue mobile chapel, parked on a landscaped knoll, is part of Transport for Christ, an unaffiliated ministry with the goal of bringing Jesus to truckers - and vice versa.

"These guys are on the road for weeks at a time. They're often lonely and they need somebody to be there, a listening ear, a friend they can relate to," said Taylor, 37.

Apparently, the soul-saving business is good: Transport for Christ, which now operates 14 such rigs in the United States and Canada, expects to have 20 by the end of the year and as many as 100 by 2000.

"It's our vision that five to seven years from now, no driver in this country will ever be more than half a day from one of our chapels," said Randy Fontaine, general adminstrator in the program's Denver, Pa., headquarters.

Near North Bend yesterday morning, as truckers and other travelers stopped for hearty breakfasts at the popular truck-stop cafe, Taylor "went fishing" for souls in the parking lot, handing out literature and spreading word of his 11 a.m. service.

Eventually, he gathered a modest flock of eight: six drivers, one traveling with his wife and another with his fiancee.

In his 45-minute service, Taylor reminded his congregation that just as God parted the Red Sea for Moses, he could do the impossible for them. "He can deliver you from those hazardous road conditions, from those untimely layovers."

Heads bowed for Taylor's closing prayer, in which he asked for health, safety and peace, not just for the truckers but for their relatives back home.

The small congregation included drivers from as near as Oregon and as far as Florida; truckers as experienced as 30-year veteran Stan Dunigan of Hudson, Fla., and as new as Arthur Washington III of Nashville, Tenn., barely five months in the business.

"Being a God-fearing person, I can't make a move without knowing I'm being blessed," Washington said after the service. "It means a lot to know there is someone out here I can call on on a spiritual level."

Transport for Christ started in 1951, but until recently it was concentrated in the northeast United States.

In the program's early years, ministers actually drove the chapels from stop to stop for services, but they soon found it worked better to leave the units parked where the drivers would know they could find them.

Across the country, truck-stop operators say on-site chapels tend to decrease the amount of prostitution and drug trafficking that go on in their lots.

Taylor, a married father of two who hopes to be ordained as a Baptist minister this fall, lives and milks cows on a rural British Columbia dairy farm. He and another Canadian preacher drive down on alternating weekends to conduct services at the North Bend truck stop.

When the financing makes it possible, he hopes to have the chapel open seven days a week.

That will be good news to road-bound Christians such as Deborah Earwood, the lone female driver in yesterday's congregation.

Earwood, an Ohio native with two years in the business, had just delivered a load of truck parts from Georgia to Renton and was waiting to contact a dispatcher today for her next assignment.

"I more or less live in my truck and this is my family out here," she said.

"Sometimes you're going down the road and you need somebody to talk to. And you can't just pull into any church parking lot with a semi truck."