On a Thursday in 2003, Tony Bergmann was scheduled to appear at court in San Diego to decide if he should go to jail. Some "friends" knew about the court date, and Bergmann was sure they would show up to “rearrange his face.”
The day before his scheduled court date, Tony Bergmann prayed to God to help him out of the mess his life seemed to have spiraled into.
“So I said, ‘God’—I did one of those 911 calls—‘God, you know, get me out of this, and I’ll come back,’ which I had every intention of doing so,” he said. “And clear as day as we’re speaking here, I heard in what I call my ‘Knower’…. I knew it was God telling me, ‘Don’t go to court on Thursday; go on Friday.’”
He listened.
He showed up at the courthouse on Friday, but his ‘friends’ were nowhere to be found. He was told to report himself straight to the county attorney, and he thought he was being sent straight to prison. Instead, the attorney’s assistant said they decided they didn’t have enough information to prosecute him.
“Praise Jesus!” he exclaimed in front of the assistant. Bergmann did not expect what happened next.
“She looks at me. She says, ‘Are you a Christian?’ I said, ‘Yes, ma’am. Just not a very good one.’ She says, ‘Can I pray for you?’ There’s nobody there, but I always do this,” he said, miming looking all around him. “I’m thinking, ‘This is a courthouse, right?’ She says, ‘Yeah.’ ‘You want to pray for me?’ She goes, ‘Yeah.’ So (we) hold hands, and she prayed for me.”
From that point on, Bergmann started to turn his life around, and he made Jesus a central part of it.
He ended up at a small rescue mission, but it didn’t quite feel right for him. He began driving trucks. During one of his drives, he made a stop in Gering to visit his adopted grandma. Little did he know that was the moment God planted seeds for what he would do next.
In January of 2009, Bergmann was back in San Diego thinking God was setting him up for ministry.
“I go back to San Diego to implement this grandiose vision that I had, which I could see but it just wasn’t tangible. And three months later, I’m sitting there. I’m thinking, ‘Well, God, you said—like a little kid again—to come here and do ministry.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, you got to go to Scottsbluff.’ And I said, ‘Holy crap, Lord, have you been to Scottsbluff? I’ve been there. Have you been there? So you want me to go there?’ And I just argued with him up and down.”
Eventually, he caved, and it wasn’t long after he moved to Scottsbluff that he was introduced to the then Potter’s Wheel Ministries director Ken Trevithick. It was just at that time that Trevithick was actually considering closing it down, because he didn’t have anyone to take his place.
Bergmann stepped in.
At the time, Potter’s Wheel Ministries was only the men’s sober living program and the prison outreach. Bergmann had ideas to help grow the ministry and reach more people, but it didn’t necessarily mean he knew how he was going to do it.
“My job is to figure out what God would have us do, and he reveals to me how we’re going to do it,” he said. “God provides what we need.”
Today, Potter’s Wheel Ministries continues its men’s sober living program and prison outreach, but has since added a food pantry, two thrift stores, family services, an eBay store and distribution center.
It’s a pretty big operation, and Bergmann has had people tell him they think he’s just doing it to put money in his own pocket. As someone who lives among the people he serves, he assures them that’s not the case.
“I haven’t made this kind of money since I was in 10th grade,” he said. “It’s about giving back where somebody at the rescue mission (in San Diego), they wanted to give up on me, and there was somebody there that cared enough to take me under their wing…I wish I could go back and show them, look what your investment has produced…So, (it’s) my way of giving it back.”
Bergmann, who was adopted out of Mexico at the age of nine and lived on the streets of San Diego after both his adopted parents died within six months of each other when he was 17, said he can relate to a lot of those he serves and where they are coming from.
For Bergmann, it’s all about relational care. It’s more than just figuring out what someone needs; at Potter’s Wheel, they want to know why to better understand the challenges people face and find ways to address those challenges. It’s about the person and his or her story.
“We care about, we want to know about the person,” he stressed. “How did you get here? How did you arrive at your needs here, and how (can we) equip you to not have those needs in the future, if at all possible?”
It’s something that Bergmann said he could have used when he was growing up on the streets. He needed someone to care about him. He didn’t realize at the time, but there was someone: Jesus.
“I’m just a guy practicing obedience to my Lord and Savior Jesus,” he said. “That’s it.”
He now uses his life experience to care for those in need and remind them that Jesus is in their corner, too.
“I see the Jesus in you, so I’m going to tell you all about it,” he said. “I’m telling you, there’s hope for you.”
*Originally published in the Star-Herald on Nov. 8, 2020.
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