A little after five A.M. on December 11, 2017, a gray Volkswagen Passat inched through the darkness of Tijuana toward the brightly lit Customs and Border Protection port of entry at San Ysidro, California. It was in the SENTRI lane, the special passageway for pre-approved, low-risk travelers who have passed a stringent background check.

The driver, a stocky 54-year-old man with shaggy blond hair and a goatee, seemed as low-risk as they come. John Lee Bishop had established himself as one of the most successful pastors in America. His mega-church, Living Hope, was one of the country’s fastest-growing congregations. With over 8,000 members, it occupied an 85,000-square-foot former Kmart superstore in Vancouver, Washington, a working-class suburb just up the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. Locals called it “the Kmart Church.”

Bishop’s mega-church was a kind of blue-light special for those who other churches left behind: gay teens, junkies, the homeless, anyone who felt excluded. Bishop understood “the unchurched,” as he called them, because he started out as one himself, a social misfit damaged by an abusive childhood and turned off by organized religion. With his long hair, ripped jeans, and laid-back demeanor, he looked like Sammy Hagar, whom he was sometimes mistaken for, and preached like a Vegas showman, nearly getting mauled by a 350-pound tiger he brought onstage for a Noah’s Ark service.

Bishop and his church were also known for their good works: feeding the homeless, holding a prom for developmentally challenged teens, loading semis with supplies for survivors of Hurricane Katrina. When the late Billy Graham, the legendary Baptist minister, was in declining health, one of the few pastors he invited to visit him was Bishop, whom he personally blessed. “We thank you for the great ministry you’ve given him already,” Graham implored God, as he cupped Bishop’s hands, “and Lord we pray that it will only be the beginning.”

Now, as Bishop reached the border checkpoint, he flashed the Customs agent a smile. What were you doing in Mexico? the agent asked. Finishing up a religious mission, Bishop replied. Where are you headed? Chula Vista, Bishop said. A church.

Operating out of routine, the agent climbed down on his back and slid under the car. Then something caught his attention. Getting up, he crowbarred the trunk and began ripping apart the car. One by one, agents pulled out small, tightly wrapped packages of weed—in the dash, the bumpers, the wheel well, the rear seats. There were 105 packages in all, weighing nearly 300 pounds.

Bishop saw the flash of a gun and was ordered to his knees. His arms were pulled behind him, cold cuffs snapping on his wrists. He could feel the stares of passing drivers bearing down on him, along with the eyes of God. It felt like that verse from scripture: “And the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled.”

What the fuck? he thought to himself as he knelt, head bowed. Why did I do this? What was I thinking?

John Bishop baptizes a congregant during Easter services at the Rose Garden, in Portland, Oregon, 2007. By Rick Bowmer/AP Images. Bailey Rose Sturdevant, 6, is carried by her mother after another baptism during the Easter service. By Rick Bowmer/AP Images.

Growing up in Vancouver, an industrial town of paper mills and aluminum smelters, Bishop seemed more destined to be a drug runner than a man of the cloth. When he was four years old, his father, a truck driver named David Lee, died after he got drunk and drove his Corvair into a tree. Bishop’s mother, Carol, got remarried to an abusive drug dealer who beat the two of them. “I would watch her nose get bloodied and I couldn't do nothing about it,” Bishop recalls. “I’d start to run up to her and he’d just push me down.”