Biker pulpit

Congregation follows road of Christianity at community church

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If you just look at their appearance -- the sleeveless denim jackets, the patches, the tattoos, the sunglasses, the long hair -- your first impulse might be to make sure your medical insurance is up to date. Or better yet, you may want to be someplace else.

These guys are bikers, serious ones, and many of their machines are Harleys.

And when one, Paulee Curran, speaks, you listen.

"God spoke to me in a clear voice," Curran said on a recent Saturday afternoon in the Sunrise Manor section of Clark County. "Later, I got rid of the last gun in my arsenal. He said, 'Why do you need that when you've got the biggest 'G' in the book?' "

Curran, raised a Catholic in Indiana and Alabama, had fallen about as far from mainstream life as one could. "I was with the Sons of Silence," he recalled, "out of Colorado Springs. I rode all over the country. I was the countrywide enforcer."

The Sons of Silence were reportedly one of the five most dangerous outlaw biker gangs, along with groups such as the Bandidos and Hell's Angels. If you were out of line, you did not want to see Curran heading in your direction.

Now, in a manner as unexpected to him as it could be, he is the pastor of the Church in the Wind. The congregation of bikers meets at 5 p.m. Saturdays inside Sunrise Southern Baptist Church at 1750 Betty Lane.

The church was created by and for bikers who prefer Jesus to jail and believe Christianity can coexist with biker colors.

"I was tired of being shot at, tired of being stopped by the police, tired of that lifestyle," Curran said.

When he rediscovered his faith, Curran said, he was simply a believer and grateful for that.

"I got introduced to Gary Davis, and he suggested I be pastor," he said. "I said, 'I've got no training to be pastor,' and he said, 'That'll come.' "

Davis, now in Denver, coordinates the bikers' church.

The movement began in 1990, said Curran, when Mike Weymouth, who had led a rough life with one of the gangs, began an effort that has since resulted in 17 churches in 15 states.

"Now he rides with a group called Soldiers for Jesus. I'm with Bikers for Christ," Curran said.

Four years went by and Davis wanted to ordain Curran. "I said no," Curran recalled. Later, Ron Shaw at the International Church of Las Vegas got in touch and asked what God had in store for Curran. "That's where it started," Curran said.

His wife, Las Vegas native Anna Lisa Curran, continued the story: "Then we got a message from Gary, saying it's time."

"I fought this tooth and nail," Paulee Curran said. "I didn't want to be a pastor."

Church in the Wind was organized in Phoenix, in 1990.

"It is the only motorcycle organization that has a church in the Las Vegas Valley," Curran said.

Pastor Bill Potts of the Sunrise Southern Baptist Church said the Church in the Wind group first met at a home owned by the Grapevine Church at Nellis Boulevard and Sahara Avenue. There wasn't much space.

"We had a room we could put 50 people in," said Curran, "and at 51, we were out the door."

One alternative was a membrane tent, but everyone hated it.

Potts said his church council jumped at the idea of inviting the Church in the Wind members to share quarters, "so we took them in," he said.

"Two months and we'll have been here a year," said Curran.

Outside, prior to a recent evening's service, bikers congregated, joked with one another and shared bear hugs. Tiny Steinhauer, associate pastor of Church in the Wind, introduced himself. Several of the congregation members wore patches identifying themselves as Vietnam veterans.

Curran said the Sons of Silence tried to get him back, but he wasn't interested.

"I said if they wanted me back, they were going to be Christians, and (they) hung up," he said.

The church attracts roughly three or four dozen riders each weekend and it does what other churches do -- at least churches with thundering motorcycles. Members go on runs, or "putts"; they take part in poker runs like the Hump-to-Pahrump event; they plan an Easter sunrise service at Sandy Valley; and they look for converts among the familiar.

"They had a big presence in Bullhead City during the Laughlin River Run last year," said Potts. "They saved 200 men and women."

The church will be back there at this year's event, set for April 26-30, with a larger presence, said Curran.

Anna Lisa Curran said many bikers feel beyond redemption and are sure no one wants them or cares in any way about them.

"They feel they might as well be bad as they can be," she said. "No one ever ministered to them."

But more bikers are starting to see the church-going riders as forgiven. "They're starting to search," she said.

Sunrise Southern Baptist Church had its own humble beginnings in 1957 when a United States Air Force sergeant was stationed here and noticed there was no Baptist church in the immediate area. He found about three dozen people interested in starting one, said Potts, and began holding services at East Lake Mead and Hollywood boulevards, in, appropriately enough, a carpenter's shop.

One of the two wings of the church on Bonnie Lane, Potts said, had begun life as a barracks building for the workers who built Hoover Dam.

"I came here in 1990," Potts said. "I've been here 16 years."

Besides Sunrise Baptist and Curran's congregation, the facility also is home to two other churches.

One is the Iglesia Bautista Betel, led by local physician George Alvarez. The other, ministered by the Rev. Tony Forehand, is Grace Baptist Church, which was formed at about the time the bikers began holding services at the Sunrise Southern Baptist Church facility.

"The aim of the church is to minister to the families living in the Sunrise Mountain area of east Las Vegas," Potts said.