Wine To Water by Doc Hendley, Watauga County Founder & President of Wine To Water & One of the Top 10 CNN Heroes of 2009
(Wine To Water: A Bartenders Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World - excerpt pages 17-19) I was raised in one of those perfect families that most people only hear about or see on TV. My dad, he’s a gentle-tempered preacher man. Not the fire-and-brimstone type, but the Church has always been a huge part of his life. Mom, also a devout Christian, was a dedicated mother who stayed home to watch after me and my older sister, Kristy, and three brothers, Todd, Bo and Billy. My parents named me Dickson, but as a young kid my sister couldn’t say my name, so she called me “Dick-Doc.” Thank God that name didn’t stick. Instead, ever since then my family and friends have simply called me Doc. When I was growing up we moved around a lot, from Augusta, Georgia to Chicago to (almost) Africa as missionaries-that’s another long story-and back to the South again to Greensboro, North Carolina, where I spent the bulk of my childhood. While my sister and brothers were deeply committed to our religious upbringing and my parents’ passion for church, I never really drank the Kool-Aid the same way they did, I guess. Sure, I believed in God and went to church on Sundays, and did the things like handing out meals with my siblings down at the homeless shelter a couple days a month, which I actually enjoyed, because I felt like we were making a tangible difference. But still, everyone in my family knew I was different. I distinctly remember when I was about twelve being on a family trip to Myrtle Beach, SC with all of us piled into our Chevy Suburban. We were sitting at a stoplight with some gospel station blaring on the radio when a man
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on a Harley-Davidson rumbled to a stop alongside us. He wore cowboy boots and riding leathers and rode alone. To me, he represented everything cool and independent, and was the total opposite of the people surrounding me in that car. I yearned to become that guy. I never liked all of the rules that people were tossing at me at church, school, wherever. Rules were stifling. They were for other people. I understood that other people needed those kinds of rules or boundaries, but I saw them as chains that tied me down. And while my brothers and sisters, and most kids my age, for that matter, were busy hanging out with friends, going to birthday parties and the mall and crap like that, I was happiest watching old John Wayne westerns or exploring the woods with my BB gun. My parents were mostly tolerant of my rebellious attitude (it was pretty harmless, after all), so as a young teenager I was allowed some of the freedom I craved. I camped out in the woods often, and hunted squirrels and rabbits and such. As long as I stayed out of trouble and made it back in time for church, they were fine with me. I started this article with that excerpt from my book because it illustrates how, from an early age, I was a nonconformist. Therefore, I didn’t do well in strict church settings, where it seemed to me that the whole emphasis was on trying to make ourselves “better” people. In my mind, that meant how do I become a better rule keeper, which didn’t sit well with me. My feeling was why don’t we concentrate our efforts on what we can do to make other people better instead of focusing so much energy on how can I become a better Christian. It seemed to me like everyone had this cookie cutter mold of what a good Christian should be and I certainly didn’t fit that mold. Dirt Bags and Authentic Christianity Because that kind of Christianity was a
turn-off to me, I’m glad I was able to experience a radically different kind of Christianity from my uncle John out in Montana. After dropping out of college, I moved out to Montana to work on a horse ranch that was right down the road from where my uncle lived. He was a Christian, but he was also a rugged individual who didn’t fit the mold of what I’d been used to. He started a Bible study that met in a bar of a casino on Friday mornings. The group called themselves the Dirt Bags and they were more authentic and real than most Christians I had met, so it began to change my perceptions a bit. When I left there, I came back to work with a Christian organization called Young Life. But there was a problem. I was still my non-conformist self and it got me in trouble. I had to meet with the area director to address my behavior and she did a very wise thing. She shared, from her own experience, that something that changed her life was simply studying the Bible for herself. She had gone to a Bible School in New Zealand that offered a one-year course of in-depth Bible study. As a person who has always been intrigued with the Bible, even when church stuff turned me off, I agreed this was a good idea. So, I sold my Harley Davidson Motorcycle and went to New Zealand. The Bible Became Real to Me The school was great for studying the Bible, but it was very “rule-oriented”, which meant trouble. I broke curfews and butted heads with the administration, but the Bible became very real to me. One time, when I was reading about Jesus on the cross and how He willingly became separated from His own fellowship with God to bear the sins of the world, it registered with me on a deep level. I was so moved I ran out of class and found a place to be alone. I felt dirty as I thought about my own sinfulness and selfishness. It was in that moment that I opened my heart to God in ways I never had before and I know there was an inward
