Next door to Mission at the Cross in Laurel, Miss., is a bike shop. There, residents of the mission — from former drug addicts and alcoholics to the homeless and ex-convicts — take damaged, broken-down motorcycles and completely rebuild them. Lest anyone miss the parallel between the motorcycles and the residents of the mission who work on them, the repaired bikes are referred to as “born-again motorcycles.”
Richard Headrick, founder of Mission at the Cross with his wife Gina, explains the connection: “The devil tears these guys down till there’s nothing left” but then “Jesus builds them back again.”
One need only browse through the testimonials posted on its website to affirm that the men who come to Mission at the Cross are, indeed, “torn down.” Stories of addiction, brokenness and emptiness abound. Their undeniable need, in the words of one MATC employee, is “a touch from the Master’s hand.”
“These boys come in there lost, distraught,” Headrick says. “They have no hope; they’re just floundering out there in society. And the whole purpose [of MATC] is to see them be restored.” MATC’s website (www.missionatthecross.com) declares, “If a person going through a hard time has the ‘want to’ to get back on their feet, get a job, kick their bad habits, restore their marriage, rebuild their home, get their kids back, or whatever their godly desire is, we have the ‘want to’ to help them do it.”
And the hope is that others will see Jesus in them. Headrick and his wife Gina opened the first Mission at the Cross in Sturgis, S.D., in 2007. The location in Laurel followed in 2008 and there are now locations in Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida and even Germany, with 700-plus men having participated in the program.
Richard Headrick said his aim in life is “to keep Satan ticked off.” Though not everyone who comes through MATC goes on to become the man God called him to be, the mission’s numerous success stories from the past eight years — each comprising how Jesus became cemented in the heart and mind of yet another man in whom Satan previously “had his hooks” — serve to glorify God and keep Satan “ticked off.”
“There’s nothing like being part of someone coming to know Christ and watching them learn to walk in obedience while the Lord restores their lives, their families, their jobs and all the other things that Satan has stolen and destroyed. This is what’s at the heart of MATC: restoration of the broken, hope to the hopeless.”