'Journey' to another continent fueled zeal for men's ministry

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

For someone who improbably found his faith while doing volunteer work for the Peace Corps in West Africa, Gabriel Nehrbass, 37, isn’t shocked by anything that has happened as a result of what he calls his winding journey in search of Christ.

Nehrbass grew up in New Orleans, the son of parents who met at the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, but who did not attend church regularly while rearing two sons. Not long after receiving his First Communion, his parents divorced.

“To be frank, when my parents divorced, I stopped going to church completely,” Nehrbass said. “I was raised in the public school system. I went to the very good ones. However, culturally, I really bought into whatever was the prevailing culture when it came to things Christian.”

Which meant a high degree of skepticism toward any religious beliefs or claims.

“I was very wary of it,” Nehrbass said. “I thought Christianity was very judgmental with labeling people and condemning them and restricting their freedoms.”

Yearning for something more
As a college student, there was something that always seemed to be nagging at Nehrbass – “a dream of serving in a greater capacity” – but it was something he couldn’t identify. Two weeks after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he was on a plane to Togo in West Africa for intensive French and agroforestry courses. After three months of preparations, he began working in a Togo village of 350 people who had no access to electricity or running water.

They lived in mud huts.

“But what I found there – I found my faith there,” Nehrbass said. “There wasn’t a smart phone in the village. There wasn’t electricity. But what was there was a very strong faith. When people are on the brink of survival and death, the other stuff, technology, any other replacement for God, just doesn’t cut it. If your family’s stomachs being filled depends on the rain and the proper maintenance of your farm, you don’t have a lot of room not to be a believer.”

The struggles he witnessed were searing. One farmer, tormented by what he said were demons attacking him, drank agricultural pesticide before realizing he had made a fatal mistake.

“I had to watch this man writhe to death,” Nehrbass said.

And then there was a giggling 2-year-old, playing soccer one day but then dying of common diarrhea a few days later.

“The problem was that the village healer embraced traditional methods of healing that did not include oral rehydration,” Nehrbass said. “I saw the kid when he was happy and playful. I did not know the child was ill until I found out he was already dead.”

Gideon led to God
Unlike Americans, the Togolese talked constantly of the faith and Scripture. One day, an Assembly of God preacher dropped off a Gideon Bible – with the New Testament written in English, French and German – to Nehrbass in his mud hut.

“I was really irritated because this was a personal thing – ‘How dare he try to impose that on me?’” Nehrbass said. “But it did seem to be an important historical document that influenced a lot of human history, so I said I owed it to myself, for my own knowledge, to read it this one time just so I could say I read it.”

Nehrbass also said he was trying to improve his French so that it might serve him well in graduate school. So, he would read aloud one chapter in English and then repeat it in French.

“Jesus was the man I had always sought in my life as a role model, and I couldn’t even believe it,” he said. “For the first time I was drawn in by this man who lived with the poor, who spoke nothing but the truth, who was not judgmental, as I had mistakenly thought Christianity was. He was the man who would never let anyone down, and I longed for that role model. That’s when I became a Christian.”

Over the next several years, Nehrbass investigated various Christian denominations. After graduate studies, he served as a humanitarian aid worker with Save the Children from 2009-2014 before returning to New Orleans.

His search for God led to his confirmation on Dec. 6, 2009, at Holy Name of Jesus Church in New Orleans. It wasn’t until he and his wife and family were back in New Orleans for good that he began to feel another tug on his heart – to evangelize other men.

He recalls being in church for Mass in 2017 and seeing men in the pews with their small children but not appearing to participate in the liturgical prayers or hymns. That was a far cry from his experience in Togo, where religious expression surrounding the bigger questions in life was paramount and elders were respected for their wisdom.

“I thought it was odd that a lot of the guys in church wouldn’t say their prayers,” Nehrbass said. “This isn’t to point the finger at anyone; it’s just that I was surprised.”

The “uncomfortable experience” also included a vision: The faces of the hungry children he cared for in Ethiopia and Somalia were superimposed on the men’s faces.

“I asked, ‘Why are you showing me this?’” Nehrbass said.

While God did not speak at that instant, Nehrbass said upon prayerful reflection, it was as though God was telling him, “We’re all at a feast at the Mass, and yet some of us seem to be starving.”

That prompted Nehrbass to think he was being called “to bring men together in a place where they could be authentic and open with one another and that they could also be challenged.”

That was the impetus for the “Journey” prayerful discussion group for men, which started in 2017 at St. Francis of Assisi Parish and is now headed by Nehrbass at Holy Name of Jesus’ adoration chapel at the corner of LaSalle and Palmer streets.

Every Friday morning from 6 to 6:55 a.m., Nehrbass leads a group of men who gather at the adoration chapel and also via Zoom to read the upcoming Sunday Gospel, pray, reflect and confidentially discuss. At a recent Journey event, the talk centered on Jesus’ message falling on deaf ears because people knew he was the son of a carpenter from Nazareth and could not possibly be the Son of God.

That led to a discussion of others who are normally invisible – such as the homeless on street corners. The group felt driven to prepare monthly breakfasts for the poor served by the Rebuild Center.

“And it can be even in our own families, with our spouse, when we do not fully listen,” Nehrbass said. “Our spouse can become invisible.”

The Journey group provides coffee for those who attend in person. Those who join via Zoom are emailed the link just before the session begins.

There is a core group of five to 10 men, but the Zoom attendance has grown to as many as 30. Everyone is welcome to join whenever they are able, Nehrbass said.

For more information, contact Nehrbass at [email protected].