Before Throttle, a Quick Prayer

With the race just minutes away, Pastor Tim Griffin walked along the starting grid at the California Speedway on Sunday to join Nicole Lunders at the window of her boyfriend’s red-and-black stock car.

They reached inside to clasp hands with NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, and all three bowed their heads in a moment of prayer seeking good judgment, patience and, most of all, a safe race.

“It means a lot to be able to do this just before a race,” Lunders said after giving Biffle a kiss for good luck in the NASCAR Winston Cup series race in Fontana. “It’s one last bit of reassurance for me.”

And it wasn’t an isolated prayer. Before the green flag fell for the start of the Auto Club 500 race, another in the series, Griffin and another chaplain, Ron Pegram, offered short prayers to each of the 43 drivers.

“I even pray for them to win sometimes,” Pegram said. “But I have to tell them I will say the same prayer 42 other times.”

It’s all a service of Motor Racing Outreach, a mobile church that ministers to race car and motorcycle drivers, their crews and family members, fans and the media. For NASCAR alone, more than 3,000 people work the racing circuit that will make 38 stops this year across the country.

“This is for people who work on weekends and can’t get plugged into local churches,” said Griffin, 44, who pastored two Orange County churches before joining the North Carolina-based Motor Racing Outreach four years ago. He now lives in Arizona.

With the stock car drivers heading into turns at 200 mph, the thought of God and death is never far away. At the most dangerous tracks, Pegram said, he can feel the fear in the drivers’ hands when he prays with them.

“At places like Talladega, Daytona and Atlanta, the hands can get quite cool,” said Pegram, who’s been with Motor Racing Outreach for 11 of its 12 years. “There’s just so much speed, and it’s so tight.”

Part of the chaplains’ job is to help racing families and crews deal with sudden death. Griffin was at the California Speedway in 1999 when Canadian driver Greg Moore died after his car smashed into a retaining wall during the Marlboro 500 CART race.

Griffin spent the afternoon at the local hospital, sitting and crying with stunned family and friends.

“It was a ministry of presence that day,” he said. “I just tried to be there for them.”

Sunday’s race came a day after two fans were killed when a car flipped into the stands at Perris Auto Speedway in Riverside County. That track is not covered by Motor Racing Outreach.

Pegram said that although most pastors get some time to reflect on what they’ll say to a terminally ill congregant or a grieving family, “when there’s a wreck on the track, I’m there from the moment of truth. It’s all instantaneous.”

Besides having to deal with the roar of the stock cars, 125,000 spectators and the threat of death at every turn, Motor Racing Outreach functions like many churches.

The nondenominational ministry offers Bible studies for men, women and children. On weekends, in the garages, it holds chapel services that draw up to 500 people, including about half the drivers, the pastors said.

And it brings to the track a fitness trailer and a community center for child care, Christian education and informal get-togethers. That’s where Lunders, Biffle’s girlfriend, recently held a baby shower for a friend. The organization “is just a constant in our lives,” Lunders said.

NASCAR lets the chaplains work all areas of the track, including the garages and pits. It’s the only ministry granted that kind of access.

“NASCAR has entrusted Motor Racing Outreach with its spiritual health and welfare,” Griffin said.

Because some congregants are high-profile drivers, the ministry also holds events in the communities hosting the weekend’s races. To draw large crowds, NASCAR stars are featured as guest speakers, and organizers hand out Christian-themed baseball cards featuring drivers such as Mark Martin, Michael Waltrip, Dale Jarrett, Jeff Green and Kyle Petty.

“This is a high-visibility ministry because drivers can use their platform to reach people,” Pegram said. “It’s like there’s a magnifying glass on everything we do.”