If Jesus lived on earth today, he’d be riding a Harley.

Or maybe a Honda, because the brand of motorcycle doesn’t matter to members of the Daviess County Chapter of the Unchained Gang, part of Unchained Motorcycle Ministry.

What does matter is a belief that Jesus was a lot like them when he walked in this world more than 2,000 years ago.

“The government didn’t like Him, the church thought He was weird, and He hung around people like you and me, not the goody-two-shoes Pharisees,” reads a pamphlet members hand out when they witness to other motorcycle clubs, drug and meth addicts, imprisoned inmates and any other lost souls they can find.

The eight members of the local Christian motorcycle gang work together to get that message across when they visit jails and prisons and attend motorcycle rallies and meetings looking for other bikers lost as they once were.

They go where many others might hesitate to go, and they go because they want others to share what they believe is very good news — that Jesus died for bikers, too.

“So many churches don’t ever get outside the walls of their church,” said Terry Padgett, president of the local chapter, who heard the message of Jesus Christ over 13 years ago from a member of the Christian Motorcyclists Association. “I got saved at a biker party.”

Back then he did some of the things typically associated with a rough lifestyle, though he said he wasn’t addicted to drugs or alcohol.

He was just empty inside, and looking for a better way to live.

“I was having some problems and going to parties, and a guy I’d seen from CMA listened to me at this party,” said Padgett, now 40 and married to Shelly, who also supports the jail ministry and the club’s fellowship. “He asked me, ‘If you die tonight, do you know where you’ll go?’”

Though Padgett didn’t know, he wasn’t quite willing then to drop to his knees in the middle of a party with more than 300 bikers in attendance, he said. But the next morning, on Sunday, he decided to go to a worship service held by CMA members where he remembers only about a dozen bikers showed up for church. At the end of the service, he said he got saved, and not long after felt called to minister to others who were still living like he had lived for so many years.

“If that guy hadn’t been there that night, I don’t know where I’d be today,” Padgett said quietly. “We’re at the jails and at the parties, and without us there’s no ministry there.”

On Thursdays, Padgett, his wife and several others host a Bible study in the Daviess County Security Center. Often when they go, however, they have no plans or agenda.

They just follow where the Spirit leads.

“Some of us may read or sit with someone and talk,” said Ryan Kimbel a “hang around” or relative newcomer to the group who finally earned the right to be called a “prospect” after being sponsored in the club by Padgett for the last six months. Because not just anybody can join the Unchained Gang, an offshoot of Unchained Ministries, Inc., a 30-year-old street and prison ministry founded by Carl Beadle in Dugger in 1975.