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Open Road Chapels in the News Truck Stop Chapel from the Toronto Sun Rev. Don Harrison wanders lonesome highways, tending to a wandering flock Even with Jesus as your co-pilot, it’s sometimes hard to get in the right lane. You would think the large crosses — which catch and reflect the headlights around — would allow the man of God some divine traffic control. But unmoved drivers still won’t easily let him in, as he heads toward a truck-stop in Bowmanville, an hour’s drive outside the city. It’s the big-rig drivers who always seem to make room for his mobile church, as Harris on — who once hauled more mundane cargo, just like them — thanks each with a blink of his lights and a call out over the CB radio. Even if most of the people in cars don’t appreciate tonight’s pilgrimage, the men and women in the monster rigs seem to. This evening, the head of Open Road Chapels will park his mobile sanctuary on a sloppy and cold parking lot outside a popular Fifth Wheel diner and truckers’ fill up station. It’ll sit next to a trailer-turned-church, which is permanently grounded there. Most of the drivers who pull in will head — tired and hungry — straight for the $3.99 all-day breakfast special. Others will sit in their cabs — dome lights on — to fill out their log books. But a few will seek out some direction, which has nothing to do with where their cargo is headed. There are millions of truck drivers in the U.S., and an estimated 276,200 here in Canada. Constantly on the move, like caravans of another era, their home churches are often several provinces away. Since the early 1950s, truck-stop missionaries — which seem to have originated in this country — have taken to the roads, figuring if drivers can’t come to the church, then maybe the church should get a map and find those wandering sheep instead. From Halifax to Winnipeg to Calgary to Vancouver, preachers set up shop at a truck-stop diner table — sometimes, if lucky, in an office or a trailer church — hoping to make their own special delivery. They compete for the limited time the drivers are allowed to sit idle, they fight to enter large gas stops that have policies against their property being used by any church group, and they try to reach a changing spiritual demographic who —despite diverse backgrounds — are often united in the weight carried on their shoulders. “I don’t know how many guys I just pray with, out by their truck,” the mobile preacher says, as he pulls into the Fifth Wheel. “When you offload freight with these guys, you soon learn the industry is all they have. If we can help get them on track, that’s a good thing." In the 1950s, truck drivers — especially long-haul operators — were seen as an untapped and wandering congregation. Truck-stop ministries were, at first, strictly mobile, but then planted permanent roots along major routes. A number of years ago, a driver from Winnipeg pulled up to Mike Foisy’s chapel, at the TransCanada Truckstop in Chilliwack. The trucker had just found out his teenaged daughter had drowned. He had just come off the ferry from Vancouver Island, and still had to make the drive to identify her body. “He said he couldn’t go on anymore,” recalls Foisy, a Transport For Christ lead past or. For three hours, he sat and prayed and talked with the man. “At the end, he said, ‘I’m going to make it.’ He’s been a friend, ever since,” Foisy adds. He says he’s humbled by the difficult and undervalued job the drivers do. “I know they’re needed, but they need someone too,” he says. At the Bowmanville truck stop, Open Road Chapel head Harrison finishes up a quick meal, checks in with a volunteer manning a permanent trailer chapel — a complete church, the size of your living- room — and heads out into the dark yard. Despite stories of women driving more and more trucks, this is still largely a toilet-seat-up world, It’s also lonely and hard on families. Wade Slade, 52, is a long way from home in Concept ion Bay, N.L., and has been away for the past three or four weeks — long enough that’s he’s not entirely certain how long. He’s carrying hundreds of thousands of pounds of pipe. And, sometimes, baggage of his own, as his job only allows him to go to his home church three or four times a year. Pastor Harrison stands with him in the mud, lays a hand over the trucker’s shoulder, and says a few words of inspiration. Sometimes, Slade will pull over at a truck-stop chapel outside Montreal. “I’m not looking for any thing in particular — just the odd prayer,” he explains. Harrison walks from truck to truck, mostly talking to drivers about the weather or how far away from home they are. It used to be most drivers in Canada were Christians, or at least had it as a background. Today, their religious views are as diverse as the cargo they’re hauling. So often, Harrison will spend his time just holding a flashlight or a door open, and never talk about God. On this night, he rarely will mention his calling to the men he greets. “They’re people who deserve respect. and that’s enough for me” he says. His night at the stop runs late. He phones his wife in Orillia to tell her he won’t be making it home as planned. He’ll see her after supper, tomorrow. Her voice on the other end of the phone sounds as if she’s used to this happening. He turns on the heat in the chilly cab of the mobile chapel, and draws up the back door, like a drawbridge. He’ll sleep alongside his flock — lulled by the drone of the nearby highway and the sounds of gears switching in the lot around him. At 56 years old, he can’t see himself stopping any time soon. He says he has a ways to travel yet, and many more deliveries to make. Watch the Video for this story Highway to Heaven from the Toronto Star January 2007 Evangelicals offer friendship, a helping hand and prayer to alleviate the loneliness of the long-distance trucker. Driving east on Highway 401 at night, it’s easy to see the glare of the Fifth Wheel truck stop at Bowmanville, but if you look carefully you might also notice a little string of lights illuminating a wooden cross and beneath it, a small white trailer. This modest structure is the Open Road Chapel, fixed more or less permanently in the parking lot between the rattle of the railroad tracks and the roar of the freeway. The interior is as simple and clean as its exterior — an organ, a few Bibles, arrangements of artificial flowers, a jar of candies. Presiding over the sparse furnishings, wearing red jackets that say Open Road. are two men with walkie-talkies. But they are just as likely to be found in the parking lot, talking to men they say are among the loneliest in Canada — long-distance truckers. As much as the emphasis is helping people, when you touch people’s hearts in time of need, they’ll share your soul with you,” says Rev. Don Harrison, a former trucker and truck mechanic who started the Open Road chapels in 1992. ‘When you get down and get depressed, talking with them takes a load off your shoulder’ Rag MacLeod trucker Trucking in Canada employs one-third of a million people and is the largest single occupation for male Canadians. It’s a stressful job, so much so that a Canadian study showed an annual turnover rate of 35 percent, according to a 2003 report on trucking for Transport Canada. Truckers are on average older than people in other occupations, 80 percent are overweight and 60 percent do not get enough exercise. Hardly any of them follow Canada’s Food Guide. And there’s that loneliness thing that keeps coming up. “I’m not buttonholing them,” says Harrison, “but being a friend” Many trucker drivers are drawn more by the friendliness than an interest in religion. Donnie Christensen, 44, from Grand Falls, N.R, is one of those. Stopping at the Fifth Wheel at Bowmanville last week he explained that he goes home every week and attends his Lutheran Church. Truck stop ministers have spoken to him, he said, asked if he’s Christian and if he studies the Bible. He answered yes to the first question and no to the second and the minister told him he needed to study the Bible if he wanted to be a Christian, which more or less brought the conversation to an end. “We agreed to disagree.” He’s turned to the ministers more often on long-distance routes in the southern U.S Even though, like most drivers, he has a laptop computer and a cell phone with a walkie-talkie function, he still can feel isolated. “You can count on a friendly face there. It’s funny I don’t see more people taking advantage of it. I could never have anything but good to say about them.” “I can sense if a person doesn’t want to talk,” says Martin. “We want to help these guys, the single most thing I want is to encourage them. Relationships are what this is all about.” There are several trucking ministries in Ontario, including Knights of the Road, based on Transport for Christ in the US., where Harrison worked for four years in Canada before starting Open Road. “We felt we needed to reach Canadian drivers,” he says. “Our administrative centre is in Orillia, on Highway U, and when people want to make an investment in an organization, they want to know where you are and if you are accountable.” With a board of directors, staff and volunteers, Open Road has 75 names on its roster. Its opera ting budget is about $300,000, which is raised through donations. Like many evangelical organizations, staff members have to raise their own salary by finding donors — in this case, from churches, trucking companies, business and private foundations. Harrison estimates his ministry reaches 25,000 individuals every year Open Road isn’t charged for its space on the parking lot. Mark AIlott, the franchise holder for the Fifth Wheel at Bowmanville, welcomes the little chapel on the highway and picks up the refrain about truckers’ loneliness, “They’ve got a following. I see them more as support — some of these drivers are a long way from home.” Open Road Chapels offers Sustenance from Truck News Nov. 2006 When your average driver pulls off the highway into a roadside truck stop, there are typically a limited amount of items they might be looking for. Fuel, food and use of the facilities usually claim top priority, but how do faith and fellowship rank on a trucker’s needs list? Reverend Don Harrison, executive director of Open Road Chapels, looks to provide both practical and spiritual sustenance with a whole different approach to one-on-one counselling with truckers. “Our philosophy is, people don’t care how much you know, they care how much you care,” says Harrison, who co-founded Open Road Chapels with his wife Suzanne 15 years ago. “When you help people in a time of need they will listen to you, as opposed to trying to speak spiritually when they have a practical need.” Practical issues can range anywhere from the loneliness of the open road to divorce proceedings to problems with a trucking comp any, all of which have an audience with Harrison or the full- time staff at each location. This practical approach has attracted many truckers to the company’s five permanent office trailers at Fifth Wheel Truck Stops across Ontario. “A successful day would be a day that we have an impact on people that would be both practical and spiritual,” he says. “We do see men and women come to Christ on a regular basis. There’s a lot of people out there that have needs and they desperately need to know the Lord, but they have some practical issues that they need help with too.” But for some, like 36-year veteran driver Stephen Turner, having an audience with Harrison can serve simply as a religious pick- me-up when away from his home congregation. “Don’s ministry has been a great blessing over the past 15 years,” Turner told Truck News.”! can come out and tell Don about what’s been going on in my life, pray with him and then head out of here rejoicing.” “Most times people will find. either in the restaurant or elsewhere,” he says. In the many years since he began offering spiritual support for drivers at truck stops, Harrison’s role has taken him well beyond the label of mere counsellor. He has also performed a number of weddings for Fifth Wheel staff, from managers to corporate staff and even their extended families. “Over the years, the only thing I haven’t done is taken a guy’s truck and delivered his load.” he says. Though if such a situation should arise, I suppose Harrison could ask himself the age-old question: When Would Jesus Drive? By Adam Ledlow ORILLIA, Ont.
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