Truck Drivers Find God at Mobile Chapel
"We have all the time to listen to them," Roberts said. "We build relationships. Jesus Christ came to build relationships … he just had to go to the woman at the well, the woman taken in adultery, the demoniac, the blind man."
TFC chaplains, said Roberts, do not talk down to the truck drivers.
"We identify with them. When they confess their sins, we confess our sins with them. When they pray for a wayward child, we pray for a wayward child."
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The chaplains shared stories of the people they have led to Christ, including a man who was a member of the Puerto Rican mafia. After the man rededicated his life to Christ, he turned himself and his truck filled with contrabands in to the police. The police allowed him to go free and he lived with Chaplain David Hershey and his family for six months. Other TFC chaplains and volunteers said they have brought home drug addicts and allowed them to live with their families in an effort to rehabilitate them and show them the love of Christ.
Lost Church
At a time when churches are criticized for focusing on bigger buildings and better programs instead of reaching the lost and hurt, the low-budget, no-frills TFC mobile chapels stand in sharp contrast.
Young megachurch pastor David Platt in his new book Radical fretted over how the American church culture defines success by "bigger crowds, bigger budgets, and bigger buildings," which he says looks nothing like Jesus' "minichurch" or the early church.
"I am convinced that we as Christ followers in American churches have embraced values and ideas that are not only unbiblical but that actually contradict the gospel we claim to believe," Platt wrote.
Jerry Rankin, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, has complained about how American Christians are neglecting God's mission.
"Here the people of the world are swarming into our cities – the immigrants, Muslims, the South Asians, Hispanics – and what do our churches do?" Rankin said in a recent interview with The Christian Post. "They abandon where these people are and move out to the suburbs so they can continue to build their programs and fellowship among their own kind of people and neglect the lostness of the people of the world in their own city and neighborhood."
TFC Chaplain Roberts agrees there is a growing problem with churches in North America, which he said has become a "business enterprise."
"They say how many bodies can I get into this building, how many bucks can I get out of their pockets so I can put bricks up," Roberts said. "I'm seeing churches split all over the place because of building this program and that program."
While Roberts resisted comparing ministries, saying all have an important part in the body of Christ, he said emphatically that TFC chaplains have one shared passion.
"[I]t is to see drivers come to know Jesus Christ, not an organization," said Roberts. "[O]ur part is a small part focusing where they are at and introducing them to our savior Jesus Christ."
Jewish Conversion
Last January, Roberts introduced Phil Saunders, a Jewish truck driver, to Christ. The two recalled spending seven hours talking and reading the Bible before Saunders dedicated his life to following Jesus Christ.
"I'm not going to say that Christianity and belief in Christ has made my life here on Earth easier necessarily," Saunders said. "But it is certainly suffice to say it has brought me peace that comes with knowing the truth, and knowing the truth makes you free."
