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They file into the church wearing black leather vests and steel-toed boots, sleeveless T-shirts and scuffed chaps, Harley-Davidson ball caps and ripped denim. A dozen souls in all, they clump down to a basement room filled with coffee fumes and pub games.

There's no rule about wearing Sunday best at the Kawartha Bikers Church in Peterborough, Ont. For one thing, as any hog enthusiast knows, Sunday is for riding, not churching. And second, biking leathers are considered finery among this crowd.

Once they encircle a chipboard table, sink into plastic chairs and snag handfuls of popcorn, they're ready for the gospel according to Dave.

"We're gonna start at one and one today," Pastor Dave Neals says.

"Oh boy," interjects one congregant. Hoots of laughter fill the room. "We're going to be here a while. He's starting right from the beginning."

When the Kawartha Bikers Church, based in a windowless room in the Christian Victory Church, first opened its doors to the region's bikers five years ago, it joined just two other biker churches in the country.

Now, in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Niagara Falls and Durham, Ont., grizzled bikers fill small rooms like this one in Peterborough for weekly outings of pool, music, foosball and a little gospel.

Some of the congregants are veterans of the country's most notorious biker gangs. Many have at one time rejected - or been rejected by - conventional churches.

"The hardest part is getting 'em past these doors," Mr. Neals says. "A lot of them have spent their whole lives avoiding these doors."

But the clubhouse atmosphere of the biker church is luring these leather-clad outsiders in from the open road.

"I'm a little hyperactive," says congregant Bill Whiston, 40. "It's usually hard to sit down for this long. They tend to be more on my level here than the regular church."

The first biker churches started in the early eighties in the United States as evangelizing missions for bikers. Dozens of chapters now exist across the country.

The movement took somewhat longer to ride through Canada. The first Canadian biker church started in Winnipeg a decade ago. It was followed five years later by the Capital City Bikers' Church in Ottawa, which today boasts a congregation of 90.

The Ottawa founder, Pastor Rob Dale, spread the idea to towns throughout Southern Ontario. One night at a bikers' getaway in Deseronto, Ont., Mr. Dale pulled aside Mr. Neals, a registered pastor, and persuaded him to start his own biker church in Peterborough.

Mr. Neals is no conventional preacher. He wears a black T-shirt with cut-off sleeves that reveal substantial, well-tanned biceps. He pauses between passages of scripture to stroke his long, grey goatee.

The Bible he prefers was written for homeless kids and strikes a decidedly colloquial tone: "Day One: From nowhere, lights flood the skies and night is swept off the scene. God gives us a big thumbs up and calls it a day."

Growing up in Peterborough, Mr. Neals attended United Church services with his parents, but stopped going at 16, the year he discovered biking. "I used to sit in the back pew with my friends and look at Playboys," says Mr. Neals, who works as a lift operator at Minute Maid by day.

He dabbled with the church again in his early 20s until a few churchgoers made it clear that his rumbling bike and leather coat weren't welcome. One day, after a service, he walked to the coatroom to find his helmet and coat heaped in a garbage can.

So he and his wife, Karen, abandoned organized religion altogether, preferring to put "the devil in the back pocket and putting God out in the left field." They rode with outlaw gangs, drank, cursed and lived a generally ungodly life, according to Mr. Neals.

But, eventually, they found their way back to Christianity and helped found the Eternal Riders Motorcycle Ministry, an organization of pastors who are invited to preach at rowdy bikers' ride-ins across the country.

"They're all nice guys," says Mr. Neals of the biker gangs he spends his weekends among. "They just really like to party. They tend to drink pretty heavy Friday and Saturday. By Sunday, they're at the point where they want us around."

The Kawartha Bikers Church is designed to emulate the clubhouse of an outlaw biker gang - minus the booze and drugs. When Mr. Neals finishes his 15-minute sermon - a time limit on the speechifying is about the only rule here - the churchgoers gather around a pool table and crank up rock music.

"I grew up in the Catholic Church, but I sure prefer coming here," says Jimmy Lamore, 65, seated near an upturned biker's helmet that doubles as a collection tray.

Mr. Lamore spent much of the past three decades roaming the country by motorcycle. "There was a point in my life where I was pretty wild. I didn't care for this that or the other thing."

He joined the Kawartha Bikers Church in its first year. "It's been good for the spirit," he says.

The sermons steer away from preaching the evils of sin, and instead emphasize the value of fellowship.

"You can't tell them how to lead their lives," Mr. Neals says. "You can't change their ways. You can't force it down their throats. You have to invite them in. Let them be them."

The church's landlords have been largely supportive of Mr. Neals and his biker congregation despite its sometimes controversial associations. Two years ago, when a local Hells Angels member died in a car accident, the head pastor at Christian Victory agreed to have the funeral at his church.

Hundreds of Harleys and badge-wearing gang members packed the parking lot as police kept a watchful eye on the proceedings.

"The message of Christ is unconditional love," says Mark Murack, senior pastor at Christian Victory. "We were happy to have them."Canada's newest biker church will open in Vancouver this October. Pastor Terry Mahoney, 60, picked up the idea in Ottawa and has spent much of the summer drumming up interest at biker parties throughout the Lower Mainland. When he finally opens the church, he expects a full house.

"There are a lot of people out there who share this common interest and common background," Mr. Mahoney says. "They choose to dress a certain way, shave their head, show off their tattoos - that's their culture. We don't try to change that. We tell people to come as they are. If we opened the church and suddenly it was filled with normal Christians, then we would consider it a failure."

Already he's recruited a devoted core of parishioners, some of whom have spent time in prison. Like his Peterborough counterpart, Mr. Mahoney rolled alongside hardcore bikers before he fully embraced Christianity.

"I wasn't a drug dealer or anything," he says. "But I was a heavy drinker and got wrapped up with street fights and that."

And while some Christians might hesitate to mix with a controversial crowd, Mr. Mahoney insists there's nothing more spiritual.

"Jesus hung out with the sinners and the whores and the tax collectors and the rowdies," he says. "Why shouldn't we?"