"You're looking at a blessing," Terry tells the crowd, many of them dressed in leather and patches. "You're looking at a miracle."
Religious rhetoric aside, the fact that Terry has been on the straight and narrow since completing his sentence at Federal Correctional Institute Morgantown in 2004 is impressive on its own.
According to a 2002 recidivism study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 64.2 percent of those sent to federal lockup for drug trafficking are back behind bars within three years of their release.
"Looks like he's been gone from here four or five years," said FCI Morgantown public relations officer James Robinson, "so, he's doing good."
Doing good. That's what drives Terry now. He's left a lot of drug-inflicted damage in his wake that he needs to repair, there's a lot of forgiveness to seek.
He's already redeemed himself to his wife Leann and daughter Chyna, 10, simply by returning to them, working an honest job each day and coming home each night, fulfilling his obligations as a husband and father.
His parents and brothers, too, have forgiven him for years of neglect and worry, glad to have Terry back in his place at the family table.
Two out of three people who have been where Terry has been do not even make it that far, but for Terry, there is more work to do. Sharing his cautionary tale at churches and schools is a big part of his payback plan, a sort of self-imposed community service sentence to counteract the misery spread by the cocaine he sold.
"I'm not trying to be a miracle worker or beat anyone over the head with it," he says. "I just tell what happened to me and what could happen to them and try to steer them away from that path."
Biker Sunday at Geneva Community Church seems tailor-made for Terry's story. Pastor David Eastham has fashioned his flock from those outside the Christian mainstream, and there is a sense that many in the audience can relate to Terry's travails from personal experience.
"We're just people who were lost," Eastham says early on in the program, and later he refers to being "drunk in the spirit" and "smoking some new stuff now, snorting some new stuff now."
The Wells Family warms up the crowd with some high-energy, karaoke-backed rockin' gospel about "not dancing for the devil anymore," inspiring hand claps and shouted amens.
Lincoln County native Mike Reichenbach, former commander of Kentucky State Police Drug Enforcement Special Investigations, takes the microphone to introduce Terry. Reichenbach supervised the 18-month undercover investigation that busted Terry and 27 others in one of the biggest cocaine trafficking operations ever uncovered in central Kentucky.
"In my job, I developed a hatred for drugs and drug dealers. I sent Terry to prison out of pride," Reichenbach tells the crowd. "Now, he's one of my heroes."
'I gave up everything that I loved'
Physically, Terry doesn't look the hero part. Barrel-chested but short with rounded features, he wears a simple collared shirt and jeans.
He doesn't dress up his presentation much, either. With dozens of such appearances under his belt, he is no longer nervous on stage, but he is hardly a polished speaker. He doesn't rehearse, uses no dramatic pauses for effect or repeated catch phrases to drive home his point. He just gets up and talks, something he's always been pretty good at.
"I've been in knife fights and gun fights and I've OD'd numerous times. I've done every drug out there except heroin, and that's because I didn't know where to find it. I was one of the biggest cocaine dealers around, part of one of the biggest rings around."
And then he chokes up.
"I gave up everything that I loved. I have the best family there is — I absolutely came from the best — and I let them all down. Once I did cocaine, it was over for me."
Terry doesn't try to hide his emotions, just lets them flow. The audience nods along, some dabbing at their own eyes as he recounts the morning that the police knocked on his door to serve the arrest warrant and take him away.
