BRANSON – To say that chaplain and evangelist John Ray McBride has had a tough life would be an understatement. To say he’s recovered well through God’s grace would be also.
At five years old McBride saw his mother murdered in California.
“From five I was thrown about to different aunts and uncles,” McBride says, “and eventually to a stepmother that raised me until I was 16. At 16 years old my stepmother kicked me out. I was sitting on the curb with a bag of clothes.”
“So, I got a job as a cook but I was an angry, angry person. I kept drinking every day and doing drugs. Eventually, when I was 27, I ended up going to prison because I’d been in and out of the county jail so much.”
John McBride
While in jail awaiting transfer to prison McBride was isolated, on suicide watch, and detoxing from heroin. A Gideon knocked on his cell door each day for three days to ask if he could pray for McBride.
“I didn’t know what prayer was,” McBride says, so he cursed the man and told him to go away. On the third day the visitor slid a New Testament under the cell door.
McBride started reading the Bible because it was something to do while he waited. “I think it’s an adventure book. I think it’s exciting. I get to John, chapter eight, and it’s Jesus’s words: ‘Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.’”
“I thought to myself, ‘I’m a slave to everything that put me in this cell. I’m a slave to the guy who killed my mom. I’m a slave to the hate over him. I’m a slave to this heroin. I’m a slave to the anger.’”
“I kept reading. It said, ‘Whoever the Son sets free is free indeed.’”
“I believed what (Christ) said right there. I fell down on my face and I cried out and I said, ‘God, I don’t know what to say but I need you to save me. I don’t want to die like this.’”
The gospel changed his life immediately. “I was excited. I knew something amazing happened.” He said the first example was when he started feeling empathy for others.
While in prison from 1998 to 2003 McBride took Bible and theology classes. After his release he moved to Missouri because he feared that staying in California would land him back in prison.
He began a painting business, married, and started attending church. However, life again turned dark when his wife died of pancreatic cancer in 2014.
McBride cared for her for a year. It was his caring manner toward his hospitalized wife that led someone to ask him to consider serving as a hospital chaplain.
“So literally right after my wife died I instantly put a tie on and went to my first volunteer chaplain (duty). I was a hospital chaplain for a year. I’d go from room to room and say, ‘Can I pray for you?’”
“I learned that it wasn’t evangelism in the hospital as much as it was pastoral care and comforting and healing. The ministry of presence is what I learned in the hospital.”
Following that experience God called McBride into evangelism. He also met his current wife, Jenny, about the same time at First Baptist Church, Branson, and adopted her daughter.
Another spiritual turning point in McBride’s life was when he asked God to help him forgive the man who murdered his mother. “I said, ‘God, how do I forgive my enemies?’ I truly haven’t forgiven this man. Can you help me do that?’”
He says God first helped him understand why he needed to forgive the man. God told him, “My Son died for him just as he died for you.”
“I got off my knees that day,” McBride says, “and after I understood why I needed to forgive him, it helped me forgive him.”
McBride has been in ministry for 20 years and a member of the Fellowship of Missouri Baptist Evangelists since 2017. He now shares the story of his redemption in hospitals, churches, halfway houses, street ministry, assisted living facilities, and teen organizations. When he’s not painting or speaking, McBride – an avid fisherman – is on a lake or stream.
McBride speaks for the Gideons several times a month, teaches a Bible study in his church, preaches in a Branson assisted living facility one to two times a month, and works as a street chaplain with Life360 House – a Springfield organization that helps troubled men and women gain self-sufficiency and become productive in society.
“I call myself more a chaplain because I’ve done a lot of nursing home and hospital ministry. That’s where my heart’s at.”
However, he says one of the benefits of being an evangelist and speaking in churches is the opportunity to supplement the work of local pastors.
“I’ve had people come up to me after a service,” McBride says, “and they’re afraid to go to their pastor. They might feel guilty. They can confess something (to me) they might not confess” to the pastor.
He says it excites him to pray with people who might dedicate their life to Christ after a service, or rededicate their life, or just need to speak with someone.
“I’m excited. If it has to do with Jesus,” he says, “I’m excited.”
“I just want to step into what (God’s) doing. That’s why I do so many things – chaplain, nursing homes, street ministry, church events. Wherever He calls is where I want to go.”
McBride can be contacted by email at johnnyraymcbride@live.com.