Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Schwartzbart.
Aaron, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was pretty much of a homicidal maniac with a steering wheel up until the age of 30. My daily commute was 90 MPH on Canoga Avenue in 35 MPH rush hour traffic. Much to everybody’s surprise, I met Jesus Christ very unexpectedly in about 1991 and virtually overnight I became more of a friend to the community than an enemy.
Boeing spent $25k putting me through Talbot seminary over the course of 8 years. None of us knew whether I was going to stay in the space program or go full-time ministry. I founded MotorGospel Ministries in 2001. In 2012, I gave up my six-figure rocket scientist’s salary to work for free six days a week saving lives and/or souls.
Has it been a smooth road?
As all real race car drivers know, racing is like 99% hard work and 1% glory. A famous fictional racer once said he lives his life 1/4 mile at a time. The reality is more like living our lives 1/16 of a turn at a time on a wrench up inside an engine bay where you need a double-jointed wrist to get your hand up in there. I’ve worked many 20 hour days on three hours sleep. In my chaplaincy, I have officiated at about five deaths at the track. It is a wonderful and rare thing to have a passion worth dying for but it is tremendously sobering to try to be there for the loved ones that potentially have lost everything when a driver dies. I have experienced anti-Christian bigotry and even slander on rare occasions but it doesn’t slow me down any. One of my operating policies is to live my life in such a way that even if somebody talks smack, nobody who knows me will believe it.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with MotorGospel Ministries – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
I have won four championships in the John 3:16 race car. I instruct at tracks throughout the western United States, teaching people to do 150 to 200 MPH in bumper-to-bumper traffic legally and much more safely than in the streets. In cooperation with LA City Council Member John Lee and the LAPD, MotorGospel Ministries sponsors about 30 anti-street-racing outreach events per year at neither cost to the taxpayers nor the LAPD. I am VERY excited about kids like Angel Rodriguez who was twice arrested for street racing and then sentenced to community service with MotorGospel Ministries where he raced legally against his arresting officer at Irwindale Dragstrip. Angel is incredibly fast at the track and he doesn’t street race anymore.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
It may sound unusual coming from a pastor but I love the creative energy of Hollywood and Sunset Strip. I can’t agree with everything that (e.g.) Guns n’ Roses stands for but they occupy a place and time in musical history that couldn’t be orchestrated (no pun) by corporate suits. What I like least about the city is the same thing I like the best and that is the phoniness and the messed up values associated with a culture that is all about make-believe.
I also want to shout out Eli Broad, City Council and the LAPD.
For all the imperfections that may be associated with the above, they make DTLA an incredibly vibrant scene.
Image Credit:
Caliphotography, Neil Newman, Tere Schwartzbart
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