RECYCLING EFFORT
Church ministry takes quest for bikes to Midtown bakery
While some might look for bicycles at a bike shop, Chain Reaction Ministries has been going to a doughnut shop, hoping to find the bikes it needs to provide the poor and homeless with basic transportation needed to hold a job and earn a living. In its continuing search for bicycles, church members are engaging with bicyclists on their weekly visits to a traditional Saturday morning ride destination — Brown’s Bakery. Brown’s Bakery has been a popular hangout for cyclists since the 1970s.
It started out as the destination for the Oklahoma Bicycle Society’s Donut Ride, a meandering tour through historic neighborhoods to Midtown and back to Will Rogers Park every Saturday morning.
Today, there appear to be lots of doughnut rides to Brown’s, and they are coming from a variety of places across the city, landing at the shop like bees to honey. The bike club I ride with makes the journey from Norman
almost every week.
That’s where I got Tom Russell’s business card. Sitting there, eating a chocolate doughnut and trying not to think about the stiff south wind standing between me and home, I saw Tom drop a card on the table and walk away without a word.
Along with his name and his phone number was the title Chain Reaction Ministries and a single phrase in red letters, “HELP ME FIND BIKES!” The card was from Restoration Church of the Dome, 3700 N Walker Ave. in Oklahoma City.
On the back, the card went on to say the church ministry is dedicated to serving Christ by repairing used bicycles and giving them to people who need basic transportation to their jobs.
It made sense that Tom would be spending time at Brown’s, connecting with people likely to have at least one or two old bikes gathering dust in their garages. So, I kept his card and eventually followed up with a call to the church’s pastor, John Malget.
Malget explained that the card I received at Brown’s was associated with a program he and his 60-member congregation started nearly four years ago, modeled after a similar program at Memorial Drive Christian Church in Houston. Initially, his vision was to fix up and give away 100 bikes to the homeless, the poor, the underemployed, people transitioning from prison and others working to better themselves.
Since then, the congregation has given away more than 2,500 bikes, averaging about 700 a year.
The church takes in hundreds of bicycles, salvaging some for spare parts needed to get other bikes back on the road.
Occasionally, they get bikes that are simply too expensive to give away, so they trade them in at Al’s Bicycles in exchange for supplies such as tires, chains and tubes, congregation member Larry Batten said.
“Al’s has been amazing to us,” he said.
Batten said the church has a repair shop equipped with tools donated by the Bricktown Rotary Club. There are two bike mechanics in the shop who have a strong sense of empathy for the cause because both used to be homeless.
The church works with 27 help agencies that refer people to their ministry, Malget said, because the church doesn’t give bicycles to just anyone. Each person must show a pay stub as proof of employment.
“We are providing a hand up, not a hand out,” he said.
The ministry has seen plenty of happy endings since it started the program, Batten said.
They have received more than 125 letters, saying thank you, and in some cases, people who have gone on to purchase cars have returned to give their bikes back.
“They got the job, they got the bike, they got off the street and they got their life back together,” Batten said. “That’s the whole point of this program.”
Since 2013, there has been plenty of success to celebrate for a ministry that started out with such a modest vision. With more than 2,500 bikes given away, Restoration Church is changing lives with something as simple as old, donated bicycles.
It’s easy to forget the functional role bikes can play in our lives as we join our Saturdaymorning rides to Brown’s or to other destinations at the far corners of the county.
The bicycle can be an inexpensive form of transportation that many people still use to fulfill basic social needs like holding a job and earning an income. Bike routes, bike lanes and bike trails are great for recreation, but they also are intended as safe transportation thoroughfares for people going to work, to school or to the grocery store.
Bicycles are wonderful things. They help keep us healthy, keep us happy and they can take us wherever we want to go. In addition to that, we also can count on a bike to take us to the places we need to go when no motorized forms of transportation are available.
For 200 years, the bicycle has been a true freedom machine, and for the guys at Chain Reaction Ministries, that may be the best part of all.