Bikers find highway to God in Manvel

By John Tompkins
The Facts
Published July 6, 2009

MANVEL — Wearing a leather vest adorned with biker patches, Frank Scott stepped up to the podium to start his music service.

After a biker in the congregation joked about his appearance, Scott looked out at the audience with a smile.

“Amen, I’m going to have to cut you,” he said, laughing. “This group is talking ugly about me.”

Scott and his wife, Judy, have traveled all over the world and sang church music for many different congregations for more than 40 years. But the group he plays for now at Biker Church in Manvel look more like an audience waiting to hear blaring electric guitars at a rock concert than those about to start singing Christian hymns.

Instead of shirts, ties and Sunday dresses, Biker Church members wear vests, leather pants and sport tattoos. And instead of coming to church in the family car, most participants roll into the Jordan Center, where the church services are performed, on motorcycles and line them up in front of the door.

“If you walked into our church with a suit and tie, people would look at you funny,” said the church’s pastor, David Wright.

Robert “Tree” Perot said he started attending Biker Church after a member saw him on the side of a highway praying by his motorcycle. The man handed him a necklace with a cross fashioned from nails and asked him to come to Biker Church.

Though the church is different from traditional churches, it has the same goal of bringing people close to God, Perot said.

“We use motorcycles as a tool,” he said. “I don’t know why, but God led me to this.”

Most people see the name “Biker Church” and assume it is tailored to bikers, Wright said. While most who attend fit that category, visitors are surprised to learn its services are the same as those of most churches, he said.

“We’re a whole lot more like anyone else’s church than everyone thinks,” Wright said.