Rick Renner Takes on a Motorcycle Gang

From the very first week of our new life together in Fort Smith, Denise and I began opening our home for a weekly Bible study, and it seemed single adults were in our house nearly every other evening of the week as well.

We loved those singles and they loved us. And because many of them had free evenings with no children at home, we were with them almost all the time.

 In time, people began streaming to our house nearly every night of the week for fellowship and Bible study. It started with one study a week, then a second, then a third until we were holding Bible studies in our house almost nonstop! Then on Saturdays, we were conducting all kinds of activities for singles with children. Denise and I were giving all our hearts to what we were doing, and the singles in response were giving their hearts right back to us.

In addition to all the wonderful people who came to our dilapidated little two-story house in those early days of marriage, a few strange people came as well. Denise and I were so young and naive that we threw open the door to anyone — including one rough-looking character who showed up at our home one evening for one of our Bible studies. He was a member of a notorious motorcycle gang that had committed murders in the state. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the devil had covertly brought something sinister right into our living room and had launched a plan to distract us and redirect our attention from what God was remarkably doing among us.

 Never forget that anytime you’re doing something significant for the Kingdom of God, the devil will try to thwart the plan God wants to accomplish through your life. What Denise and I experienced at that early moment taught us that spiritual warfare is most definitely a reality we must all learn to face at some point in our lives. We learned that the devil, who is a very cunning strategist, seeks ways to sidetrack us to prevent us from doing any real damage to him. He often sets up distractions when we are on the verge of a major breakthrough. Denise and I witnessed this through personal experience.

The first night this gang member came into our living room, what unfolded felt like pure drama. He claimed that he wanted to repent of his life of sin and give his heart to Jesus Christ, and he wept and wept in front of everyone. But deep inside, I was suspicious that it was all just that — drama — and that his conversion was insincere.

 But when Dr. Bennett heard that a member of this notorious gang had been “saved” in our living room, he eagerly announced the good news to the whole church. I’d privately warned Dr. Bennett that I did not believe his conversion was real, but Dr. Bennett reprimanded me for being suspicious when he thought I should be supportive of this man’s conversion. Dr. Bennett even publicly told the church that this man’s conversion was a real-life “apostle Paul” type of conversion — perhaps the greatest single conversion he had ever witnessed in his ministry. Still, I knew deep inside something was very wrong, and I simply wasn’t buying the story.

In the weeks and months to come, I watched as doctors, lawyers, and wealthy members of the church surrounded this so-called “convert” in their attempts to help him transition from a world of crime to a new life in Christ. One person purchased him a car. Someone else put him up in an apartment and paid his rent, while others put together money to dress him in brand new clothes. But all along, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach because I felt it was nothing more than a scam to take advantage of sincere people.

 In the end, I was correct. With the skills of a journalist, I began to dig deeper into this gang member’s past to see what I could find out about him.

In the process, I unearthed information that he had done the exact same thing at other churches where he was also regally taken care of by people who were sincere, yet lacked discernment.

 Even more, I figured out that he was collecting money to funnel it to the motorcycle gang. He was a top-of-the-line charlatan! I went to the church leaders to expose the fraud so he would be stopped in his taking advantage of people. When the so-called “convert” realized he had been caught and exposed by me, he called me on the phone and said, “Rick Renner, you will regret what you have done. You have stepped across a dangerous line. You’re not just dealing with me anymore. Now you’re going to answer to the gang itself. When you least expect it, they will show up to take retribution on you and your wife in that lonely little house of yours at the end of the parking lot.”

 That “lonely little house” where we lived was so old and decrepit that no window in the house had working locks. Anyone could open a window anywhere in the house with no problem whatsoever. And the back door didn’t even have a lock! We locked the front door every night, always hoping that if an intruder ever tried to get in, he would only try the front door — because he could easily enter the house from any window or through the back door. So when this gang member told us that we were going to be attacked by the motorcycle gang, Denise and I were aware that we were living in a precarious place where it would be very easy to get to us.

We decided to ignore his threats, which we did, until one late night when we physically felt the house shaking by the deafening sounds of motorcycles outside. We rushed to the window to see what all the noise was — and we saw about twenty members of that notorious gang riding their motorcycles in endless circles around our lonely house at the end of the parking lot. They drove around and around, screaming atrocious and threatening words at us as we peered out the window.

That gang member had forewarned me that they would take retribution against us, and he was not kidding when he made that threat. But on that night, they apparently came only to give us a good scare, perhaps planning to return and make good on their words next time.

From ‘No Locks’ to ‘Fort Knox’ !

Because it was well-known that this notorious gang had committed heinous crimes and even murder, the church felt I needed to contact the police department to tell them what was happening. So I did that, feeling certain the police would tell us not to worry. But instead, they told me that we needed to worry, because if this group said they were going to murder us, it was likely that they would really try.

Because First Baptist Church needed more parking space, they had already decided to tear down the dilapidated house we were living in to make room for more parking — so at that critical moment, an executive decision was made to go ahead and move the newly married Renners directly across the street into a house with doors and windows that actually locked.

Very soon afterward, we moved into a remodeled carriage house that had been constructed before the Civil War to hold horse-drawn carriages. That house was so perfectly preserved from its pre-Civil War status that the rock wall under the staircase still had the original corncobs in it that were used as filler between rocks in the wall. The building had been converted into a small two-story house with walls that were about two feet thick and all the doors and windows locked securely. That house was so secure that it felt like we had moved into Fort Knox!

Nevertheless, the threats from that gang continued relentlessly. Denise and I felt trapped inside the house with no way to escape if the gang chose to attack us. So to help alleviate our fears, we decided to purchase a guard dog that would protect us from intruders. We were told the best dog for this purpose was a Doberman Pinscher, so we purchased a male Doberman, which Denise named Jerome after the famous operatic bass singer Jerome Hines, who performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

There was one problem, though. Jerome was the kindest, stranger-loving dog I’d ever owned. One night when the motorcycle gang actually pounded on our front door and our hearts trembled with fear — while we hoped Jerome would protect us, he instead postured himself at the front door, wagging his knobby Doberman tail with glee because visitors had come!

For months, the motorcycle gang continued to harass us. I called the Police Department regularly for help. In fact, I called so often that when they heard my voice, I didn’t even have to identify myself. The operator would say, “Brother Renner…are they back again tonight?” To their credit, the police began to make hourly patrols each night in our neighborhood to make sure we were all right. And after months of living with this unending harassment, it ended just as suddenly as it had started.

Resist the Devil and He Will Flee From You!

The devil had tried his best to scare us off, but it didn’t work. It was all nothing more than a demonic tactic designed to chase us off and to divert our attention from the ministry we were doing that was so rapidly growing. That early experience turned out to be a lesson that helped us many times over in our future years of ministry. As I said, we learned from this incident that Satan always tries to distract and divert attention at key moments of breakthrough and growth. We also learned that even if demonic forces try to scare us off, if we refuse to be moved, Satan would be the one who would eventually retreat.

 James 4:7 says, “…Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” We may not have done it perfectly from the very beginning, but eventually Denise and I decided we would not surrender to these attacks on our lives. Instead of living in fear, we decided to “resist” what the enemy was trying to do to us. The word “resist” in James 4:7 demonstrates the attitude of one who is fiercely opposed to something and therefore determines that he will do everything within his power to resist it, to stand against it, and to defy its operation.

This word “resist” means you have to be determined to stand against any assault the devil tries to wage against you. You have to dig in your heels, brace yourself for a fight, and put your full force forward in Jesus’ mighty name to drive him back and out of your life. Your stand against Satan must be firm, unyielding, and steadfast if you want to successfully resist his bombardments.

James 4:7 promises the devil will “flee” from you — and that word “flee” means to take flight. It is the very word used to depict a lawbreaker who flees in terror from a nation where he broke the law. The reason he flees so quickly is that he wants to escape the prosecution process. Remaining in the nation would most assuredly mean judgment. So rather than stay and face the con[1]sequences, the lawbreaker flees for his life.

 Knowing this meaning of the word “flee” tells us that the devil knows he is a lawbreaker and that if a believer stands against him — in other words, if the believer resists him by using his God-given authority — the devil will eventually withdraw and look for a way to escape prosecution. That is precisely what James means when he says the devil will “flee” from you!

 An expanded interpretation of James 4:7 is as follows: “Stand firmly against the devil! That’s right — be unbending and unyielding in the way you resist him so he knows he is up against a serious contender. If you’ll take this kind of stand against him, he will tuck his tail and run like a criminal who knows the day of prosecution is upon him. Once you start resisting him, he’ll flee from you in terror!”

 Through that early experience in our marriage and ministry, Denise and I learned the lesson that if we would dig in our heels and refuse to surrender to the devil’s attacks, eventually his diversions and distractions would dissipate. In many years of ministry — including later, in the lands of the former Soviet Union — we knew that if we would remain steadfast and refuse to surrender, the devil would inevitably tuck his tail and run!

That first lesson was an emotional one for Denise and me, but it was one that has stayed with us our whole lives.

 ‘Singled Out’ — a Ministry for Single Adults

 When those ludicrous attacks ended, Denise and I were able to really focus on our ministry. And because I was now making a mammoth salary of $100 a week, I stopped working at the bookstore and devoted my attention fully to the single-adult ministry at the church. The singles were thrilled to have attention and willingly gave themselves wholeheartedly to what God was doing among them.

The enthusiastic crowd of singles packed the little white house at the far end of the church parking lot. Every week the class grew larger and larger until it could no longer be contained within the walls of that structure. Dr. Bennett was elated with the growth, so he approved our single-adults class to move to the original fellowship hall of the old education building across the street from the main sanctuary.

 I decided it was time to put my advertising and marketing education to work in order to make the single-adult department grow even more. The ministry needed an official name — a “branding” that would give it distinction not only in the church, but in the whole city. Many felt the singles at the church had been looked upon as second-class citizens — and that’s why they met in the little white house at the far end of the parking lot. Because they were widowed, divorced, or had never married — and the original group had quite a number of troubled people in it — the church generally didn’t know what to do with them. And as is often the case with singles in some churches, many of those single adults felt like the “misfits” in the church.

Churches at that time had respectable singles classes for “College and Career” ages, but only a few had significant outreaches to other single adults who were older or who had been hurt by life. One staff member from First Baptist Church recalled, “That was in the early 1980s, and during that decade, a singles outreach would have been frowned upon. But Rick had a certain boldness about him to start things, and because God had called him to start it, he did it.”

I wanted to get rid of that “single” stigma forever, so in 1981, I renamed the singles ministry “Singled Out” and even designed a logo to match the name of the ministry. It was my intention to let every single adult know — whether younger, middle-aged, or older — that they were not misfits in God’s Kingdom. I remembered my own struggles of feeling like a misfit and out of place as an adolescent. It was a feeling I would never want another human being to experience no matter what his or her age or status in life.

Weekly I pounded into these singles’ minds that they had been “singled out” by Jesus Christ! Rather than let the name “single” be something negative in their eyes, Denise and I set out to turn their singleness into a positive message that they were “singled out” by Jesus to do something significant. We watched singles from all over Fort Smith come to take part in the “Singled Out” ministry as it began to exponentially grow and explode.

But singles wanted more than just the time allotted during one Sunday School class on Sunday mornings. Actually, Sunday School classes on Sunday mornings felt religious, stuffy, and unattractive to our singles. So in addition to starting the “Singled Out” outreach, Denise and I launched home groups for singles within the “Singled Out” ministry.

 Home-group ministry was a novel idea at that time because most churches were so focused on a traditional Sunday School structure. I knew I was taking chances within the existing structure of our church, but deep down, I felt singles would respond well to home groups, so we launched them. One staff member from that time recalled, “In the eighties, small groups had not yet evolved, but Rick basically pioneered these small groups for our singles.”

One of our single-adult leaders from those days said, “Rick’s forte was getting out there on the front lines and forging ahead into unknown areas. God used him in incredible ways like that even from his early days. He always had a kind of apostolic mantle upon him, and he wasn’t afraid to forge into new areas. And Rick’s God-given characteristics were such that people wanted to be associated with him and to help him. There was just a genuineness about both Rick and Denise that attracted people. Another thing that really made me want to draw near to Rick was his humility, wisdom, and insight in the Word.”

The singles loved the concept of home groups because it felt more intimate and gave them more opportunities to serve in various roles. To train leaders, Denise and I opened our carriage house to the top home-group leaders, and every Tuesday night, they gathered in our living room for a time of worship and teaching. Then they would replicate everything we did in our group in all their respective groups around the city.

A large group of singles were learning the Word of God, and I had taken ten or twelve leaders as my own disciples. We were teaching them in our home and showing them how to move in the power of the Holy Spirit. God’s hand was on Denise and me and on the work that was growing all around us. One man from that time recalls, “We were hootin’ and hollerin’ in the Baptist Church…God had shown up and people were even falling under the power of God in our meetings.” He added, “But even then, Rick was teaching us deeply from the Greek New Testament. What he taught us at that time became the spiritual foundation for so many people’s lives.”

Janey Spencer recalled, “Rick and Denise reached out to all kinds of people that our church didn’t know how to reach. The Renners lived close to the church, and their home became a gathering place for people who were seeking the Lord. It was a place where people could go to fellowship and learn. Rick’s personality and his zeal for the Lord really attracted people. A love for the Word was the strongest thing about Rick, and he really desired to follow that and the Lord, wherever He would lead him.”

The noise of this newness in this department in the church caused singles from every nook and cranny of the city to participate in our ministry. What started with a sad-looking group of forty individuals had morphed to several hundred single adults — and we were just getting started!