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Churches he tried to attend—two in Waco and one in Houston, where a security guard confronted him two steps onto the church grounds—all threw him out because of his appearance. In Waco he was living in a Geo Metro with an Apple computer in back when he heard about free meals under the bridge. He was hungry enough to check it out.

Today, 10 years later, he's a church leader living in an apartment owned by CUB's relief and development arm, Mission Waco.

Dorrell parks his pickup a few cars over from Kucker's and a couple of rows from a Mercedes-Benz SUV. The plump, gray-bearded pastor in shorts and a Baylor T-shirt greets folks with handshakes, back pats and hugs so hearty that at times they lift people off the ground. He mingles among indigents and Mercedes drivers alike with gestures of acceptance and welcome.

Dorrell's journey to the bridge began in the 1970s, when he was a missionary to lepers in Calcutta and New Delhi slums. There he had something of an epiphany. He believed the church is the primary agent of change in the world, but surrounded by India's abysmal poverty, he asked himself, What is the church doing to incarnate Christ?

"It's Jesus who sat at the well with the prostitute," he says. In contrast, many U.S. churches install burglar bars on their windows and hire bouncers to keep away people who look unusual. Or they move to the suburbs and isolate themselves from things Jesus called his followers to do.

"The church has got to rediscover its purpose in a postmodern culture, when absolute truth is no longer accepted by the mainstream," Dorrell says. "Unchurched people are looking for something that speaks genuineness to them."

Church Under the Bridge, he says, serves as a call for renewal for the church in America to be about the Father's business.

"In the church, I have crack addicts, prostitutes, criminals, but I also have materialists, power mongers and arrogant Pharisees," Dorrell says. "The gospel is just as much for them as it is the addict. All are accepted where they are."

At 9:30, Dorrell joins a circle of about 15 folding chairs in the sunny area between the northbound and southbound bridges to lead a Bible study for mostly homeless men. Dorrell's booming voice carries over traffic overhead as a box of doughnuts gets passed around.

About 100 feet away, Conrad Lahr sets up a circle almost twice that size, including a small loudspeaker and mike, for the Recovery Under the Bridge 12-step meeting for alcoholics and other addicts.

Lahr, 39, began taking drugs as a wealthy New York teen. In and out of rehab and homelessness, he lost his wife to prison and his kids to the state. Hopelessly addicted, on July 21, 2002, he prayed, "God, help me." That day he was driving I-35 north toward Dallas when he saw a Salvation Army sign in Waco. He took the next exit and doubled back, where he found the bridge gathering. He thought it was a block party and stopped.

Twenty minutes later, he knew he was supposed to be there. A week later, he was in Mission Waco's Manna House rehab, where he became a Christian.

Now he directs a Mission Waco halfway house and does freelance carpentry. On Sundays he leads the CUB recovery group. Last year he reconciled with his parents, whom he hadn't talked to in 13 years. His father offered him a $60,000 job as a driver, which Lahr turned down. "I'd probably be drunk," he says of what he'd do with a big salary. "I don't need money. This is my family now."

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April 2004, Vol. 48, No. 4