It was my first night driving for Uber. I was a little nervous, I had never taken an Uber, I didn't know how it worked. Do we talk? Not talk? I was hoping for talk, I talk to everyone, I'm a talker, I fear silence. I talk to people in line at the grocery, I have personal conversations with the librarian, I ask people about their marriages when sat next to them at a wedding reception. Normally I get away with it. You see, I have been a pastor for almost 20 years and usually when you tell people that you get one of three reactions.

1. Fear of being evangelized. Avoid eye contact, change subject.
2. Immediately start telling me about their sick grandmother or their recent divorce
3. Curiosity, genuine questions, real talk.

I take reaction #1 as a challenge, I endure #2 and I live for #3.

I decided to Uber to meet the "real " people in my town. Pastors can live in the church bubble, I wanted to get outside of it. Plus extra money is nice. I have kids, kids need stuff.

The first three rides were pretty boring, it was a Monday night. It was people going home from work at Walmart, a ride home from the bus station. We made small talk about the new grocery store in town, or their job at a factory. But then it got late, and the game changed completely. After about 11 pm Uber becomes a ferry home from the bars, an escape from a bad boyfriend, people on the way to buy drugs... and everybody talks.

I picked him up about 11:45. He jumped into the front seat of my van and yelled "Where the %&#ing ladies at?" Take me to where the ladies are at brother! It's my %&#ing birthday! It was a Monday night in the suburbs, the ladies were home asleep. The ladies had jobs, families and responsibilities and I didn't think they cared that it was his birthday.
We settled on a bar in a neighboring town about a 15 minute drive away. He had good information that the ladies would be there.
I've learned over the years that most people like to talk about themselves. So I asked him how his night was going, and he went on a rant about the lack of women in our area, overpriced drinks, and then, strangely, about how lonely he was. So I asked him about loneliness and he told me about how his mom had cancer and he spent a lot of time worrying about her and that some of his friends had dropped out of his life because (he thought) they didn't want to deal with the hard stuff.
I told him about losing my mom to cancer and feeling hopeless. I told him I was a pastor and that I talked to a lot of people who were struggling. He started to weep, and asked me if I thought God was real and If He cared about us.
I told him that I did and that I thought God wanted him to know that He loved him and that he could come and talk to Him whenever he wanted. Just then we arrived at the bar. It was a weird moment, He wasn't sure what to do. He just sat in my car silent for a few minutes. Finally he asked me to pray for Him and I did. He hugged me and got out of the car.

As I drove off to my next ride I thought to myself, "Wow , that was one in a million!" But of course it wasn't, turns out we live in a world full of hurting and broken people, in fact not long after that I picked up a prostitute who had just finished "work"...but that is a story for another time.

Thanks for reading, I hope to occasionally share other stories of an Uber driving pastor