OFF THE WIRE
BY: Amy Trent
nelsoncountytimes.com
Pastor Billy Powell (center) welcomes a newcomer to Rock Solid Biker Church
The pews overflowed the first night Solid Rock Biker Church opened in Lynchburg. Late arrivals were left to lean against the walls, eyes wide.
Many had come to see if the stories were true. Had bad boy Billy Powell, a member of the notorious Pagan Motorcycle Club, really turned preacher?
“I just felt compelled to go and check him out,” says Thomas “Doppler” Case, chaplain of Riders for the Rock, a local motorcycle ministry.
“People have a hard time believing how much a person can change and he’s changed a lot,” says Case. “I admire him for it.
“Billy’s somewhat infamous.”
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Powell, a Nelson County native, joined the Pagans at 24 and for more than two decades lived a violent life.
He is well known to area law enforcement and bikers of all ilk.
In 2009 he was among 27 members of the Outlaw and Pagan motorcycle clubs indicted on federal charges including attempted murder, kidnapping, extortion and narcotics distribution. Powell was charged with one count of violence in aid of racketeering for a show of force on March 14, 2009. Court documents show he was charged with involvement in a malicious wounding.
The charges against him were dismissed on Nov. 22, 2010.
The case ended about five months later with the national president of the American Outlaw Association, Jack Rosga, sentenced to 20 years in prison and 20 other club members pleading guilty or being convicted.
Powell doesn’t shy away from his violent past, though he is reluctant to reveal specifics.
“I was good at it,” says Powell, as he sits in the back of Solid Rock, which shares space with a thrift shop near Miller Park.
“It was something I could do. If I had a bad day, you were going to have a badder day.”
Then in November 2008, he says, the Holy Spirit reached out to him. Around the same time, a shared love of riding led him to Michael Dodson Jr., a member of Hard Core Motorcycle Ministry. Dodson, who says he knows the specifics of Powell’s past, invited Powell to attend his biker-friendly church in Altavista.
“I was on the road to destruction,” says Powell. But, he says, “God knew that violence wasn’t what was in my heart.”
“I really felt like God just pointed him to out to me,” said Dodson, who eventually introduced Powell to his father, Mike Dodson Sr., pastor of Tree of Life Ministries in Lynchburg.
About a year later, Powell says he found Jesus. He remembers the exact day: October 4, 2009.
“I will do what you want me to do,” Powell says he told God.
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“Tonight we’re gonna talk about building on the rock,” says Powell, his voice filling the small Fort Avenue building that was once a post office. His voice carries through the speakers into the parking lot, where a few stragglers still scarf down hot dogs and chips.
“Do you know what a foundation is? Faith is based on things you cannot see.”
About 40 people crowd the shop, including Powell’s wife Cathy and two of their six children. Little girls with beaded braids, elderly women, people from the local shelter and bikers with patch-covered leather vests nod their heads in agreement as Powell continues.
His thick wedding band catches the light as he grabs the long, curling motorcycle handlebars mounted to the pulpit. When building a motorcycle, a good, solid frame is paramount, he says.
Faith, he says, must also be built on something sturdy.
The pace picks up and Powell’s fervor takes hold of his body. He pumps his muscled arms then thrusts his hands toward the audience as his lesson unfolds. The artwork that traipses down his arms all the way to the back of his knuckles swirls as he moves. Tattoo flames lick his neck.
Powell makes his living as a tattoo artist.
“If Billy Powell can get saved, anybody can get saved,” says Powell. “Ain’t nobody gonna stop me from telling people what the Bible’s done for me.”
Soon he dispatches a biker with a well-worn black helmet upturned to gather donations. Powell says the donations pay for the Lynchburg church, which costs $2,400 a year in rent and pre-service meals, which cost $60 to $80 a week.
Powell started his first Solid Rock Biker Church in February 2010 on U.S. 29 in Altavista, where he continues to draw crowds to Tuesday evening services. Prior to turning the building over to Powell, Dodson Jr. preached at the church, as part of a different biker ministry.
Powell started his second church at the former Tree of Life thrift store on Fort Avenue in June and can be found preaching there every Thursday evening. Last month he added Saturday evening services.
Dodson Sr. is familiar with Powell’s rough reputation. He says simply that “he really deserves a chance and he needed someone to back him.”
“We just saw his vision,” said Dodson Jr., who now preaches at Christian Life Ministries in Bedford.
As Powell preaches inside the small glass-front shop down from Kenney’s, curious outsiders often push their faces against the front window so they can see inside.
That’s exactly what Powell wants.
“This is right where we need to be,” says Powell, who wants to start youth, outreach and food programs.
“Everyone who comes through that door is subject to be preached to.”
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Solid Rock’s appeal is strong in the small but growing area of motorcycle ministry, of which there are at least five locally.
Harry Humphries Jr., part of Hard Core Motorcycle Ministry, estimates there are several hundred bikers in Central Virginia. Solid Rock turns no one away. On most evenings strangers wandering by will ask for food and congregants happily welcome them into the fold. Eventually those same faces appear inside the church.
“I still have grease on my pants, I still have on my boots and I stink,” says Humphries. “But they don’t care; they want me here.”
Dodson Jr. says part of Powell’s appeal is that his training isn’t from a book or school, it’s from real-life experiences.
He “understands because he has actually been there, done that. He’s actually been in their position. You could have all the education in the world and still not understand. Powell can say, ‘I have walked those miles,’” says Dodson Jr.
Powell put it this way: “They’re seeing somebody up there that has pulled time. It is somebody that looks like them and doesn’t use big words because he can’t.”
His services often draw on his past, though he is reluctant to let outsiders in on the details. His own mistakes are fodder in his sermons, especially when he talks to children.
Powell has consumed the word with fervor, but frequently what comes out of his mouth in church is not the standard King James version.
“I’m gonna break it down piece by piece. Think about it. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. That’s cool,” says Powell, his voice rising to a crescendo before he leapfrogs to the next thought.
After meeting Powell at a Roanoke biker church on a Wednesday night in June, Lori and Bill Grabbert rode to Lynchburg to hear him the next night.
“We liked what he was saying and we decided to come and check it out,” says Lori.
“If you listen to him talk for 10 minutes you know that he’s a normal person,” says Bill. “He’s not gonna be knocking on your door in a suit and tie the next day asking if you’ve accepted Christ.”
Humphries says Powell’s story of leaving a motorcycle gang is evidence of God’s presence.
“For him to come out and start doing God’s work, it’s a miracle.”
