Church at Churchill
By Ruth Schenk | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
As the chaplain at Churchill Downs, Ken Boehm has met the rich and famous—movie stars, rock stars and celebrities.
That’s fun, but his most memorable moments are those recalled when looking back at the ministry on the backside. He recalls the Monday night he met a groom sitting in the back of Christ Chapel during a worship service.
The sermon that night was “Second Chances,” and Boehm used an Etch-A-Sketch to demonstrate how God forgives our sin and allows us to start with a clean slate when we ask
Him to forgive us.
It’s a message that hot walkers, grooms, jockeys and trainers yearn to hear. In a world plagued with alcohol, drugs, divorce and complicated by seasonal employment, the need is
huge.
When the service ended, Boehm made his way to the back of the crowded chapel and asked the man if there was anything he could do to help. The man nodded.
“I tried to hang myself tonight,” he began, and pulled back the collar of his shirt to show Boehm a purple ring of flesh around his neck. He explained that he’d written a suicide note,
made a noose, put the rope around a pipe in the ceiling, slipped the noose around his neck and let go. The pipe bent under the weight and as he was choking for air, the man’s
toes touched the ground.
Minutes later, still shaking from the failed suicide attempt, he heard the call to come to church over the backside loudspeaker.
He walked down the gravel road, past the horse barns to take a seat in the chapel.
As he pulled the rope with the noose out of his pocket and handed it to Boehm, he said, “You saved my life tonight.”
Boehm corrected him.
“Jesus did that 2,000 years ago,” he said.
Along with the rope, the man gave Boehm the suicide note he had written that afternoon.
“I’m sorry for any mess I may leave behind. I’m sorry for not doing my wife and children right. I’m sorry for the bad life I’ve led—not respecting my parents. I’m sorry for my
misleading and lying ways. I’m sorry for turning my back on God and everything I believed in. I’m sorry for not believing in me. I want my pain to end. I don’t want to go to sleep. I
miss my life and I miss my wife. I’m sorry I screwed it all up,” the man wrote.
He signed the letter, “Nothing.”
The next day, Boehm called 20 men, including Hall of Fame jockey Pat Day and Derby-winning trainer Elliott Walden, a member of Southeast, to pray for that man for the next 30
days.
The man later went forward after a service to accept Christ and be baptized. He told Chaplain Ken to keep the rope and the note.
A surprising place to find salvation
Churchill Downs is not always thought of as a place of transformation.
Amid the pageantry, thrill of racing and beauty of the thoroughbreds is a backside culture of thousands of workers, including trainers, exercise riders, farriers, jockeys, grooms and
hot walkers who dedicate their lives to the industry.
Around Derby time, the place bustles like a small city. Roads on the backside are dirt. Transportation often is via bicycle. The barns house 1,700 elite horses, plus several hundred
horsemen and horsewomen. There are administrative offices, a recreation hall with pool tables and washers and dryers beside some stalls. The place is pristine, neat and
meticulously organized amid a distinct, but not overwhelming, fragrance of manure and hay.
Religion has a firm presence on the backside at Churchill Downs.
For years, part-time chaplains led worship services in the recreation hall on the backside, setting up folding chairs around pool tables and putting a lectern in front of the betting
windows.
But Day and Walden wanted something more.
They know needs on the backside. Since most work at the track on Sundays and have no transportation, the men decided to take church to the workers.
Partnering with the Racetrack Chaplaincy Program, they hired Boehm as the first fulltime chaplain in 2003.
Leighton Cruse, a hot walker at Churchill, has attended Christ Chapel since the days services were held in the recreation hall. In a world where winning, working and succeeding
is fleeting, the church is something he can count on.
“I’m not the example of someone being successful and living for the Lord,” he said. “I have a certain brokenness to me, and I’ve seen a lot of living here on the backside. What we
need here is hope. That’s what Christ Chapel gives us. A lot of people don’t even realize we’re back here, but the needs are everywhere. A man hung himself in the tack room.
Another racked up gambling debts and committed suicide. There are health issues, injuries, addictions, marriage and family problems.”
Message makes a difference for Cruse
Cruse has seen his share of despair. After breaking his ribs, Cruse lost his job at the track and spent six weeks living in his car. He has been lonely, sick, injured and
unemployed. He admits to a string of bad choices.
He began attending services at Christ Chapel on Monday nights.
Walden said the ministry is making a difference in hundreds of lives.
“God is breaking down traditional religion and replacing it with real relationship,” he said. “Most of the backside workers have been exposed to traditional religion with the formality
that comes with their heritage. The chaplain comes in and replaces it with a real person who is there to talk to, learn from and get help for physical and spiritual needs. They are
seeing Jesus through this ministry.”