Stories

For 20 years, Richard “Richie” McLellan started his mornings the same way: He would wake up, silence his alarm clock, drink a bottle of beer, and let his feet hit the floor. 

“[I] didn't have a life,” he said. “Just drugs and alcohol.”

He got drunk for the first time at nine years old and was first arrested at the age of 12. His father, grandmother, and three uncles had all died of alcoholism, and if Saddleback’s motel ministry had not found Richie, he would have been next. 

“If it wasn’t for [the volunteers]  being diligent each week, coming to visit, I would’ve been dead,” he said. 

THE FIRST LIFE

Richie grew up going to church sporadically, but did not have a faith of his own. But after experiencing a friend dying in his arms due to gang violence at 17, he started attending on his own.

He stayed sober for a couple of years, but when his church and his marriage both broke apart, he managed the pain by turning back to familiar coping mechanisms.

“I told myself, ‘What’s one beer going to do? I’ve been sober a couple of years,’” he said. “So, I took that one beer and for the next 20 years I was drinking, using drugs, and didn’t have a care in the world.”

Those next 20 years produced three DUIs, an alcohol-related bicycle accident, and a series of lost jobs.

“I wanted more than I was getting out of a bottle,” he said. “But [I] didnt know which way to turn.”

One Sunday, he stepped outside of his motel room to smoke a cigarette and saw people setting up chairs. He asked them what was happening and they told him it was a motel church. He initially thought they were undercover cops, but after sitting through a few services, he realized they were telling the truth. 

“Before the motel ministry, I never trusted anyone,” Richie said. “I didn’t even trust my own family members. But I trusted them.”

Ryan Argue, one of the motel ministry volunteers, remembered Richie usually showed up drunk and continued to drink throughout the service. He was usually loud and obnoxious. 

“I remember spending so much time with him, thinking, ‘God is great, but this guy would probably be an extreme case of grace and mercy, and a miracle would have to happen if it was to be that God would  get ahold of him,’” he reflected. 

One of the volunteers asked if Richie thought he had a problem, and he said “No, I have a problem with those who think I have a problem.” However, he continued attending and helping out at the services, because he could tell they cared about him even though they had nothing in common. 

“I felt like a friend, not like a project,” he said. “That’s what I was longing for, not just someone who was passing through. A true friend.”

Richie recalled drinking about 12 bottles of malt liquor and a pint of vodka every day. He inevitably ended up in the hospital in 2016 with internal bleeding  from excessive drinking. The doctors told him he was lucky to be alive, and to consider himself on borrowed time. Any sip of alcohol he took could be his last. 

THE ONE LIFE

 “Right there in the emergency room I rededicated my life to the Lord,” Richie said. He remembered praying and begging God to help him stay sober, and that’s when the motel ministry volunteers showed up at his hospital room with a brand-new Bible for him. 

He spent eight days at the hospital, where he detoxed. The motel ministry came alongside him every day during his hospitalization, even up to the day he left.

“It was kind of fearful getting close to that door because reality was going to hit me right in the face,” he said. “‘Am I gonna stay sober or am I gonna relapse?’ And my friend from the motel ministry reassured me that ‘Christ is with you. There is nothing to worry about.’”

The next day, that same volunteer brought him to Celebrate Recovery meetings. He started attending on his own soon after. He could think clearly, see clearly, and was able to hold down a job. 

“I felt that I was truly loved,” he remembered.

He started serving in the same ministry that served him a month later and started attending Saddleback Anaheim. He is thankful for the chance to serve alongside the people who served him in the community he used to be a part of. He said he often gets to share his faith with people who trust him because of his similar past, and walk alongside them in their journeys toward God and sobriety.

“Richard’s testimony is really a tribute to God’s faithfulness, that he can move mountains, that he can take Richards of our community or family members or situations that we experience and he can turn them into miracles,” Argue said. “He’s the expert at taking brokenness and using it to make a masterpiece.”

Richie serves in order to give back what was given to him. He can be found volunteering in the traffic ministry every Sunday, ready with a genuine smile and a story for everyone he meets.  He said his ministry is more about being “a missionary in your own backyard” to individual people in need and less about the number of people he reaches.

“If I can just touch that one life, then I did my job,” he said.