Results Of Recycling

Rockers Share Inspiration Of Second Chances

Christian rockers Recycled will perform Friday at a True Love Waits concert at His Way Fellowship in Gateway.
Christian rockers Recycled will perform Friday at a True Love Waits concert at His Way Fellowship in Gateway.

Karl Roten is no stranger to music. But he’s no stranger to hard times either. Roten said he had hit rock bottom when he offered to give up what he loved most if God would answer his prayers.

Happily, he said, God didn’t take his music away. Instead, he “redirected” it.

“God restored us and gave us back our purpose,” said Roten, speaking for several of his fellow musicians in Recycled, a Christian rock band based in Rogers.

Pursuing secular music past youth and popularity means “the world doesn’t have much use for you,” he added. “But God doesn’t throw anything away. That’s why we have been ‘Recycled.’”

Now Roten, pastor of Open Door Baptist Church in Rogers, and his fellow musicians travel to festivals, prisons and motorcycle rallies to share that message.

Their hope, he said, is that “people can understand that God welcomes everyone just as you are - although he doesn’t expect you to stay that way. He wants you to change to be more like him, but only because you love him,” not, he said, out of fear.

“We hope people will see we were just normal folks, our liveswere a mess, but God gave us a new purpose.”

In December, Recycled - Rick Searcy, Shelly Searcy, Denice Holloway, Jesse Simpson, Stanley Craddock and Roten - traveled to Bulgaria with Rocking Chair, a Christian blues band, playing a series of concerts around Sofia, the capital city.

“They are really open to any kind of Western music there,” Roten said. “They’ll come out and listen, even if they’re not inclined to ever accept the message. We got to play what we love to play and meet with them after the concerts to talk a little bit about why we spent our own money to come over there.”

On the journey - and previous ones to Hungary in 2009 and 2010 - Roten said he learned that “people are pretty much the same all over the world. They have things they love, things they hate, things they wish they would have done with their lives. The need for the Lord is everywhere.”

Roten adamantly wants to convey that “God is a god of second and third chances; it’s never too late to start over.” But, he added, if “you’ll just follow his guidance, you won’t have any of those regrets.”

That’s his message when Recycled plays a “True Love Waits” concert Friday at His Way Fellowship in Gateway. The church meets in a metal building, he said, and most of the members have needed second and third chances.

Founder John Ledenham “really has a tough ministry,” Roten said, “but it doesn’t matter to him who comes in. He loves them all just the same.” HIS WAY

Ledenham, pastor of His Way Fellowship since it opened eight years ago, said it’s always been “a mission to reach folks that fall through the cracks in traditional churches.”

“Most of our congregation comes from a background of some kind of addiction - drugs, alcohol, something,” Ledenham said, “either in their personal or family background.”

He’s no different.

“I grew up in church,” he remembered. “My dad was a deacon, a trustee, a Sunday school teacher in a small church (in Washburn, Mo.), so I got to know the positive side and the negative side to church life.”

At 16, Ledenham chose a job and a car over church and Christian fellowship, and worse choices followed.

“Some of the guys I used to go skate with and hang out with had access to drugs, and I got into that and alcohol,” he said. “I got out by God’s grace.”

Ironically, Ledenham said, it was his then girlfriend, now wife, who had not been raised in church, who led him back.

“Somehow we got together, and she started asking questions she thought I might know the answers to (from) growing up in church, so I’d go ask my dad,” he remembered.

“He said if I’d come to church I could find out for myself.”

When his wife’s grandmother passed away, the couple “started going to church to find some answers- and we got some.” Soon Ledenham had quit his job catching chickens and started chasing sinners. He became a youth minister, then an associate pastor, then founder of His Way, with the support of Brother Ben Thompson and Garfield First Baptist Church.

A NEW WAY

Situated across from a pawn shop on U.S. 62, just before it splits to go to Eureka Springs or Seligman, Mo., His Way Fellowship is “like a Walmart church,” Ledenham said. “That’s the easiest way to say it.”

Although it’s Southern Baptist, “anybody can come. Everybody’s welcome,” he described.

“We don’t get dressed up: If you can wear it to Walmart, you can wear it to church. Most of the time I preach in jeans in the winter and shorts in the summer. And I got a uniform company to make me some uniform shirts with ‘His Way’ on one patch and ‘Pastor John’ on the other.

“The people I’m trying to reach are working class - or, in this economy, not working.”

Ledenham said he wanted His Way to be different from what he saw in his youth - “church people who would say one thing and do another once the Sunday meeting was over.”

“I didn’t want it to become a place where people were one way on Sunday or Wednesday and different the rest of the week,” he said.

“I just want them to come the way they are and make the changes God encourages.”

One of the newer programs at the church is a dinner on Wednesday evenings, open to anyone, even if they don’t stay for the service.

“I understand that not everybody is ready for that corporate worship experience,” Ledenham said.

The ones who have stayed range in age from “almost newborn” to their late 60s or early 70s, he said, totaling about 58 at Sunday and Wednesday services.

Programs like the True Love Waits concert are intended to help keep people on the right path, in this case by advocating abstinence before or outside of marriage.

“Whoever wants to come is welcome,” he said.

Religion, Pages 6 on 02/02/2013

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