The following article has been republished from our archives as an online companion to the "Redemption Song" feature in our July 2019 issue.
Pastor Geronimo Aguilar (right) and Ronnie “Rsen” Ortiz of the Richmond Outreach Center (Photo by Adam Ewing)
It’s 5:30 on a Saturday night, and men in yellow-and-orange vests are directing cars in a rapidly filling parking lot. Leather-clad bikers park while teenagers huddle in groups outside the gymnasium. Inside, there’s a snack bar selling nachos, soda and hot dogs, as well as a counter with T-shirts, wristbands and CDs.
This is the weekly build-up to Six O’Clock Roc, the Saturday service at The Richmond Outreach Center, or The ROC, as it’s known to its congregation. Around 6 p.m., The ROC Band takes the stage and launches into a doctored version of Maroon 5’s hit “This Love”: “His love has taken control of me. / He dried my eyes so many times before. / My heart was breaking in front of Him. / He gave His life so I don’t have to cry anymore.”
Burly men wearing vests with “Bikers of Christ” and “Jesus Saves” patches, husbands and wives in oxfords, twenty-somethings with “Satan Sucks” T-shirts and baggy jeans, and denim-clad families toting young children all file in, taking their seats in the bleachers and in folding chairs on the gym floor. The band launches into “He’s My Lord and Savior,” played to the tune of The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination.” The crowd dances and sings along.
This isn’t your typical church service. After a few more tunes, Pastor Geronimo Aguilar, or Pastor G as everyone calls him, opens things by saying, “Saturday night used to be way different for Pastor G. I used to party hard. ... Now I party hard for Jesus. We throw a good, righteous party for Jesus every Saturday.”
The crowd goes wild.
t’s 5:30 on a Saturday night, and men in yellow-and-orange vests are directing cars in a rapidly filling parking lot. Leather-clad bikers park while teenagers huddle in groups outside the gymnasium. Inside, there’s a snack bar selling nachos, soda and hot dogs, as well as a counter with T-shirts, wristbands and CDs.
This is the weekly build-up to Six O’Clock Roc, the Saturday service at The Richmond Outreach Center, or The ROC as it’s known to its congregation. Around 6 p.m., The ROC Band takes the stage and launches into a doctored version of Maroon 5’s hit “This Love”: “His love has taken control of me./He dried my eyes so many times before./My heart was breaking in front of Him./He gave His life so I don’t have to cry anymore.”
Burly men wearing vests with “Bikers of Christ” and “Jesus Saves” patches, husbands and wives in oxfords, twenty-somethings with “Satan Sucks” T-shirts and baggy jeans, and denim-clad families toting young children all file in, taking their seats in the bleachers and in folding chairs on the gym floor. The band launches into “He’s My Lord and Savior,” played to the tune of The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination.” The crowd dances and sings along.
This isn’t your typical church service. After a few more tunes, Pastor Geronimo Aguilar, or Pastor G as everyone calls him, opens things by saying, “Saturday night used to be way different for Pastor G. I used to party hard. ... Now I party hard for Jesus. We throw a good, righteous party for Jesus every Saturday.”
The crowd goes wild.
An Unconventional Calling
Each week, a diverse group of 2,000 people heads to the South Side near the Midlothian business corridor for The ROC’s nondenominational Christian Saturday service. The congregation averages 80 new visitors per week. “We have people come here from the West End in $60,000 vehicles and homeless we pick up,” Aguilar says.
Just as the Saturday service isn’t what you’d call traditional, Aguilar, 36, doesn’t look like your typical pastor. The shaved head and tattoos might seem intimidating if it weren’t for his compassionate brown eyes and big, slightly goofy smile. He wears jeans and a black sweatshirt with “Soulwinner” scrolled in a gothic font across the front, fairly typical church attire for the avid biker, who still mounts his Von Dutch low rider regularly. “We call people who wear a shirt and tie first-timers,” he jokes.
Aguilar, who’s originally from Anaheim, Calif., had a rough time growing up. “Everyone on my father’s side of the family was involved in gangs or drugs or locked up in jail,” he says. His father left when he was 3, and his mother was murdered in front of him when he was 8. Aguilar went to live with his maternal grandfather, but soon dropped out of school, joined a gang at 15 and started selling and using drugs when he was 16.
By the time he turned 17, Aguilar was depressed and feeling like his life was without purpose. One day when he was particularly down, he wandered past a church in his neighborhood and decided to go in. “I just felt, well, I’ve tried everything else, why not see what church has to offer?” he says. He began talking to the pastor. “Before that I thought church was a bunch of goofs and nerds and jerks,” he says, “But this pastor [had been] in a gang, he’d done drugs.” As the conversation continued, Aguilar realized that the pastor was actually his father, Phil Aguilar, who’d left 14 years ago and had found God while in prison. That day, the two men prayed together. Aguilar began volunteering at his father’s church, Set Free, and reforming his life.
Phil Aguilar’s Set Free church started in Orange County, Calif., in 1982, and today there are Set Free churches worldwide. Among its other ministries, Set Free runs a detox program, a biker ministry and discipleship homes. Set Free’s past is not without controversy, including charges that the church is a cult. Phil Aguilar was also targeted in a civil suit in Orange County that claimed he allowed the sexual molestation of three boys. Phil Aguilar and Set Free denied all charges; many of the allegations were dropped, and the cases were settled outside of court. “My dad’s been through some hard times. ... He’s a great guy and I probably wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for him,” Aguilar says when asked about the allegations in his father’s past.
Despite the controversy, Aguilar continued to assist his dad and became an ordained minister through his church, although he never did return to high school.
While working for Set Free in the early ’90s, Geronimo Aguilar teamed up with his friend Ronnie “Rsen” Ortiz (Rsen means “fire for God”), who had overcome a similar background, to create upbeat Christian music. In 1995, they formed In 4 Life, a hip-hop gospel group. “We traveled to every part of the country using music as a tool to catch young people’s attention and share the gospel,” says Ortiz, who now goes by Pastor Rsen when he’s working as The ROC’s youth director.
Lively Christian music is a mainstay during the Six O’Clock Roc. (Photo by Adam Ewing)
As they traveled around the country, Aguilar and his bandmates began to spend about seven months out of the year on the East Coast. Eventually, they decided to relocate there. Aguilar, who at the time was thinking along the lines of New York City or Miami, had come through Richmond several times on his way to bigger destinations, doing some work with churches in the area. People from the churches suggested he move to Richmond, so he began to pray about the idea, settling in Richmond in 1999 along with a group of 19 friends who wanted to continue working with him. His first year here, Aguilar and his wife were gone for about nine months touring with In 4 Life. Then they decided to pass the group on to other members (it still exists today) and focus on the city in which they lived.
“[Richmond is] very divided between black and white, rich and poor, West End and South Side. I always tell people the churches here remind me of gangs. We set out to have a place where churches could work together. We have more than 24 churches who send people here,” Aguilar says.
Multiple Ministries
Aguilar and crew volunteered with Victory Tabernacle Church in Midlothian, where Aguilar served as outreach pastor for almost two years before purchasing his own space.
That first location was an 8,000-square-foot warehouse on Midlothian Turnpike without air conditioning. Aguilar put up a basketball hoop and started an after-school program. He and his friends also bought an old school bus, hoping to accommodate people who were either disaffected with organized religion or had transportation difficulties. “We went into Monroe Park, where we knew people were on drugs or homeless,” Aguilar says. “I took people into my own home, and then we saved up and bought a house for people to live in.”
In July 2004, The ROC outgrew the space and moved to its current location at 6255 Warwick Road. The 20-acre property has 55,000 square feet of buildings on-site, making it large enough for the center’s 110-plus ministries, at least for now. Aguilar is currently raising funds to build a multipurpose space that could seat 2,500 to 3,000 people for church but also function for indoor sports and other events. Funding for The ROC’s programs comes from various sources. Two church-run Love of Jesus Thrift stores provide 52 percent of the funding, with the rest coming from the Love of Jesus Auto Shop and contributions from individuals, churches and businesses.
“I took people into my own home, and then we saved up and bought a house for people to live in.” —Pastor Geronimo Aguilar, The ROC Ministries
The Whosoever Bus Ministry, which picks up kids around town and brings them to The ROC for Saturday services and after-school activities, is one of the church’s best-known programs. Rick Brown, who lives in the West End and has two sons of his own, began working with the bus ministry when it involved about 75 kids. Today he’s the bus ministry’s director, and it averages between 800 and 1,000 children for Saturday service. In addition to picking children up from neighborhoods like Gilpin Court and Southwood, the bus workers spend time in those neighborhoods every Friday.
The ROC also has its own private school, the Elijah House Academy, with students in kindergarten through eighth grade and tuition that’s based on family income. There are currently 130 students at the school, which is in the process of being accredited by the Association of Christian Schools International and was honored by the Valentine Richmond History Center as a 2006 Richmond History Maker for “creating quality educational opportunities for the Richmond Metro area.” Starting in 2007, the school will add a grade a year for four years, eventually accommodating kindergarten through 12th grade.
Brandon Shank, student ministries pastor at Clover Hill Assembly of God, has worked with The ROC and Aguilar on several different sports camps and says that though The ROC is large, Aguilar remains personal. “He’s not untouchable,” he says, noting that at the sports camps, “you always see him. He’s riding around on his golf cart or just out talking to people.” He adds that what The ROC does would be almost impossible to replicate, comparing The ROC’s programs with a revival his church holds. “They’re going out into the city and busing people in,” he says. “These are the people that don’t show up at revivals.”
Lt. Harvey Powers teamed up with The ROC in October for the Richmond Police’s Shop With a Cop program — children in need were paired up with a police officer to pick out back-to-school clothes and talk about the dangers of gangs. The ROC helped identify kids who would benefit from the program, and they bused the kids to the Sheila Lane Wal-Mart where the shopping took place. “They are very in touch with their faith but very able to relate it to kids,” says Powers, who expects to continue partnering with The ROC.
The ROC runs several discipleship homes where adults who are struggling with problems such as depression, drug addiction or alcoholism can live during treatment. Aguilar still allows people to stay with him in his own North Side house, too. His wife, Samantha, who sings and teaches dance at The ROC, says she and her three daughters don’t mind having strangers living with them at any given time because the people are out working and soulwinning — telling people about The ROC — for most of the day.
Samantha says that the hardest part about taking people into your home is continuing to have faith in them. “You don’t always get perfect, responsible people in your house, but it’s the one out of 50 that changes their life that makes it worth it.”
Aguilar admits that his heart does get broken. “We’re not working with the Sunday-school crowd,” he says. “In a normal church someone might fall off for two weeks because they’re going out and playing golf. Here, you’re not going to see them for five or 10 years because they’re back in jail.” But, like his wife, he says the changes he witnesses make it worth it. “I like to be able to see someone come here broken and be a small part of their life changing. ...We call it soulwinning.”
Transforming Lives — and Tattoos
Tim Spradling, known more commonly as Bam Bam (“Born again man, Brethren amongst ministry”), is one of The ROC’s success stories. A biker from Arizona, he was divorced, he didn’t get along with his son, he’d been in and out of jail, and he’d done all sorts of drugs. He fell in love with a woman who went to The ROC, but he was struggling with so many of his own problems that they broke up. Deep in depression, Spradling tried to commit suicide. “I took enough pills to kill three elephants,” he says.
After spending five days in the hospital, Spradling was preparing to move back to Arizona when his girlfriend called him and urged him to go to The ROC. She took him there, and he decided to move into a discipleship home with Pastor Allen Caldwell. Spradling credits the unconditional love he received from The ROC’s pastors and congregants with inspiring him to change his life. “It doesn’t matter what you look like, what you smell like, what you wear. If you cannot feel the love when you walk into that room, you are dead.” Spradling spent about 48 days in Caldwell’s home before moving back out on his own.
Bam Bam, whose real name is Tim Spradling, puts a positive spin on old tattoos through the Roc Ink Ministry. (Photo by Adam Ewing)
Spradling started the ROC Ink Ministry, morphing tattoos into positive images for those who’ve reformed their lives and doing tattoos for little or no cost. “I tell people not only am I going to ink their skin, I’m going to tattoo God on their heart,” he says. Since starting the tattoo ministry, Spradling has gotten plenty of faith-based tattoos himself. “I’ve probably gotten 90 percent of the tattoos on my body since I’ve started the tattoo ministry,” Spradling says. He has “faith” tattooed on the back of his right hand and “wisdom” on the back of his left.
Spradling eventually married his former girlfriend and has repaired his relationship with his 23-year-old son, Jason, who recently moved to Richmond to be near his father. Spradling attributes his success to The ROC and the people who run it. “I would lay down my life for them,” he says. “I’m not going to drink a cup of Kool-Aid, but I’d take a bullet and give my life for them.”
Aguilar’s latest project is the ROC School of Urban Ministry, which started last fall. Volunteers are remodeling the Eastern Star Home of Virginia on Chamberlayne Avenue to house and educate 30 adult students. Right now, the students are just taking classes there until the remodeling is finished. “The program is one year long and is designed to train preachers to start ROCs across the country,” says Jason Helminger, a former Henrico police detective who now lives in Mechanicsville and is dean of students at the school. Students spend half the day in classes and the other half volunteering in The ROC’s various programs. They will graduate with a bachelor of Christian education with a major in urban ministry. The program is too new to be accredited, but the staff is planning to develop it into a four-year college. There are already ROCs in North Carolina and Costa Rica.
Aguilar certainly keeps busy himself, usually working 70 to 80 hours per week. “You have to completely give your life over to other people,” Samantha says.
She adds that Aguilar makes time weekly to take his family to do something special. “He takes us to the movies or Chuck E. Cheese’s or King’s Dominion,” daughter Brooklyn interjects.
Although he works hard, Aguilar is modest about his accomplishments. “I’ve got the best thing in life and I’m not going to hoard it,” he says. “When you’ve got something good, it’s easy to share.”
