Friday, July 16, 1999
Biker couple leave drugs for Christ
Christian Motorcyclists Association gathers this weekend
BY ERIN GIBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Wayne and Lynn Coursen at their Camp Dennison home.
(Steven M. Herppich photos)
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Twenty years ago in Tucson, Wayne and Lynn Coursen strapped guns to their sides and rode out on a black Harley Davidson packed with drugs and money for booze.
Today the former biker gang members living in Camp Dennison are strung out on the Lord, not cocaine. They pack Bibles and folded tracts on accepting Jesus on their bike when they ride out to help those living the way they once did.
Their mission is to bring bikers to Christ.
“We're not beating them over the heads with Bibles,” Mrs. Coursen said. “We're not harassing them for smoking cigarettes and drinking and whatever else they do. We're just loving them right where they are.”
The Coursens show their mission prominently.
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The Coursens are part of Christ's Cruisers, a growing ministry in Cincinnati and the local chapter of the international Chris tian Motorcyclists Association, founded in Hatfield, Ark., almost 30 years ago.
This weekend the local branch will hold a family campout near Chilo, Clermont County.
Like many in Christ's Cruisers, the couple isn't some Hollywood concoction of new leather, fast bikes and tough talk. The Coursens have survived homelessness, heavy drinking and drug abuse. They rode with “one-percenter” gangs, a term that describes the hard-line clubs that support themselves with illegal gun or drug trades or prostitution.
Outward clues linger:
• On their front porch, a copy of Motorcycle Tour and Cruiser Magazine sits within feet of an issue of Country Living.
• Both of the Coursens have five fading tattoos. (They both plan to get a sixth).
• They ride wearing black leather boots and vests covered in colorful patches.
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IF YOU GO
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• What: 16th Annual Christian Motorcyclists Association Ohio State Rally.
• When: Aug. 13-15.
• Where: Pentecostal Conference Campground, Madison County. Take Interstate 71 north from Cincinnati about 75 miles to Ohio 38. Go north on Ohio 38 to London. Campground is four miles west of London on U.S. 42.
• Miscellaneous: The weekend will include a bike show and bike games, regional evangelist Rick Steffy, local music and children's games. Pre-registration is $8; registration at the door is $12. Those attending must pay fees to camp.
• Information: (614) 851-8334.
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Sometimes, they wear the biker garb they call “leathers” to their church, Faith Evangelical Free Church in Milford, where she sings in the choir and he has served on a governing board. They tell stories about the days they rode with biker gangs in Florida and Arizona.
But they share the darkest details only with those who need to hear them — those living the rough biker life today.
“We accept them because we came out of there,” Mrs. Coursen said. “They don't get this from everybody.”
The Coursens know. Although today they're as homeowners with two children and pets, 25 years ago they were outcast teens. They believed only bikers would accept them.
Mrs. Coursen, 40, left her family home in Upstate New York at 14.
“I just didn't fit in,” she said. “I wore leathers to school. I hung out with older people. I dated older people.”
She started riding and abandoned the church she grew up in, citing “Christianity so lame there was nothing there to help you when you got into trouble.”
The pearl-handled guns and knives she carried earned her the nickname “Pearl,” which adorns her leather vest.
She was on her second marriage at 23, this time to a man who shot and killed himself two weeks later with a .357-caliber Magnum.
“The only thing I had left from that marriage was his leather jacket,” she said.
Earlier, in Pensacola, Fla., Mr. Coursen, now 47, was growing up in a Presbyterian church.
The teen who was forced to shine his shoes and wear a tie each Sunday started riding with biker gangs and doing drugs. He bought his first Harley — a 1959 Panhead — in 1969 while a senior in high school. Wayne, nicknamed “Skin” for “Skinny Wayne,” rode with a gang in Florida, then was riding independently in Arizona when he met his future wife in a biker bar in Tucson.
It was 1981 and within in a week they knew they were in love.
They had no jobs but they had fun.
In September 1982, they quit gangs and rode to New York to get married in a church. After the ceremony, they rode to their reception on “Bertha,” their black 1977 Harley Superglide, with wedding guests in tow.
They soon bought a house in Canandaigua, N.Y., and had their first child, Lacy, now 15.
They were still riding independently on May 1, 1988, when Lynn said she felt moved by the Holy Spirit to change her life and to become a Christian. They moved to Cincinnati three months later, and their son, Jesse, was born in February 1989.
In 1991, Mr. Coursen gave his heart to Christ. Soon after, the couple decided to sell Bertha.
“The bike was our God,” Mr. Coursen said. “You cannot have two gods.”
They quit riding until September of last year, when they found a motorcycle for sale in the classifieds. A church pastor was selling the bike. He took what they could afford, and they took the bike named Izzy home.
God brought them the bike, they said, so they decided to use it to glorify him. They joined Christ's Cruisers the next month and became two of the group's most active members. The group had grown from one member in 1992 to more than 70 members. It has gained another 12 active members since then.
Darrell Christy of Delhi Township, group president and ex-biker gang member, met the couple in October.
“They heard other testimonies, how the Lord brought us basically from the pits of hell — that's where we were,” said Mr. Christy, 45, who suffered a near-fatal motorcycle crash before he quit the gang, and substance abuse.
“The Lord can reach anybody, and the people in this chapter are living proof,” he said.
The Coursens connected with the group and started riding their bike to minister at motorcycle rallies.
“They began to develop a real burden in their hearts for these people we met at motorcycle events,” Mr. Christy said. “They began to remember their own past and how miserable they were — with no peace.”
Those real-world memories allow the Coursens to relate to those in hardship, he said.
“I remember being an "old lady' and what that entailed,” Mrs. Coursen said.
An old lady is a woman biker who's considered the property of her boyfriend. He may force her to support him by selling guns or drugs or by working in strip clubs or prostitution.
“When I see (old ladies) now, I just want to love on them more,” she said.
The Coursens and other Christ's Cruisers have driven to bike rallies almost every weekend since October. The region's toughest biker clubs have begun to accept them as fellow riders and ministers.
Their atypical outreach ministry also touches their church, said the Rev. Steve LoVellette, pastor of Faith Evangelical Free Church.
Two years ago this fall, Mrs. Coursen held a one-night homeless campout for church youth. They slept in boxes in the parking lot and warmed a small amount of soup over a fire in a barrel. She told them how she once was homeless, living in an abandoned building in Florida, and had survived to find Christ.
Twenty years ago, the Coursens scoffed at those who said, “Find Christ.”
“If someone had told me, "You're going to hell,' I would have been like, "Tell me something I don't know,'” Mr. Coursen said.
He said the hard-core bikers are wary, looking behind them, fearing the law and the rival gang members.
“There's good and bad in everybody, and there's good and bad in Christians,” Mrs. Coursen said.
The couple must convince bikers that their bad experiences with Christianity were because of bad Christians, not a bad religion. A biker they met recently was taught Jesus wouldn't accept his many piercings and tattoos.
Mr. Coursen opened the motorcycle compartment, grabbed his wife's red Bible and handed it to her over their front porch railing. Her handwriting fills all the blank spaces on its pages.
Mr. Coursen's said his next tattoo will be of Joshua 24:15:
“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
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