It takes a special skill to get someone literally wearing armor to open up to you in tears with snot on their face. That is exactly what “Pastor Rob” is known for.

Robert Lindenberg founded Peak Community Church in Peekskill in 2015. After nearly ten years at the helm, he reached, as he put it, “a pastoral burnout” and needed a rest period. This month marks a year since he stepped down as head of the church.

He has also been a volunteer police chaplain since about 2016, providing an outlet to law enforcement during critical incidents, applying psychological first aid to officers who may have trauma. Lindenberg receives calls from the Peekskill Police Department, the Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and Office of Emergency Management. 

When responding to a critical incident such as a structure fire, he will hang out behind the yellow tape, set up a table with water and snacks, creating a physical space where team members can defuse. Telltale body language of an officer in extreme stress includes physical twitching or a thousand yard stare.

“The first line of help is being a safe outlet for them to talk,” Lindenberg said. “We’re all pressure cookers and life throws different things at us and the hotter we get, the more pressure builds up.” He noted the best way to handle financial, health, or family crises is to release that pressure: “I call it verbal vomit.”

Law enforcement officers see humanity at its worst on a daily basis; gaining their confidence was not an easy task, Lindenberg said, and he considers it a privilege they have allowed him into their fold. 

“Officers are a very close knit group, and they’re very skeptical,” Lindenberg said. “And so when you’re the new guy… you have to build that trust factor… I think that’s true with any team but especially with law enforcement because life and death is on the line.”

To acquire that trust, it took Lindenberg about three years of what he called “intentional loitering.” He would go inside the muster room where they received orders, hang out, write a sermon, and take up space. Little by little, through conversations at the station and on ride-alongs, he was able to get officers to open up. 

“Then you’re there and people know you,” Lindenberg said. “I get calls which don’t come from headquarters. They come from their personal private cell phones. Once you’ve developed a relationship, they’re quick to refer you. If they know someone who’s struggling, they would be like ‘Yo, we got a guy in our department. He’s our chaplain, but he’s really good to talk to, man..’ And they share my number, and next thing you know I’m [in] Yorktown… Carmel… Kent… Peekskill .” He even started ministering to the NYPD, as many New York City officers live in the Hudson Valley.

Lindenberg has supported the Peekskill Police Department during all kinds of crises, including when one of their own died by suicide. Greg Jones, a school resource officer, Community Policing Unit and D.A.R.E officer took his own life in 2022. 

“Greg Jones was one of the first police officers that opened up to me on one of my first ride-alongs,” Lindenberg said. “I built a good relationship with him. He wasn’t just a peer, he was a friend.”

Although Lindenberg is Christian, he ministers to people of all faiths. “If you happen to be Jewish or a Muslim or Hindu, then at that moment, I would help facilitate your worship,” he said. “‘Okay, what do you need? Do you need a prayer rug? Do you need some prayer beads? I’ll go out and get that for you.”

But Lindenberg had not always been a man of the cloth. He had twice been a man behind bars: once for distributing drugs in 1995 and again for attempted assault in 2007.

From prisoner to pastor

Born as the sixth and only boy to a Dominican mother and German father, Lindenberg had grown up in a religious family. He was the altar boy in Corona and Jackson Heights, in New York City’s Queens borough. Although he had had a religious childhood, Lindenberg did not yet identify as religious or spiritual by any sense of the word.

 In fact, Lindenberg’s proclivities ran to the more physical, “chasing skirts and liking parties.” After dropping out of St. John’s University, Lindenberg ran the family hardware business for three years, until the lease expired and he was forced to close the business. There weren’t many viable options for a college dropout: he ended up working at a Spanish after hours club in Corona Queens owned by his uncle. He also became a “street side pharmacist.”

“Of course the perils of sin is that it quickly spirals,” Lindenberg said. “What starts out as fun and lucrative — you’re making money while you’re having fun and this is all good — quickly spirals down into a dark, dark world.

In  1995, Lindenberg was indicted and arraigned at the Manhattan Criminal Court on six violent felony charges, facing 25 years to life in prison. He eventually pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon in the second degree. After being held at “The Tombs”(Manhattan Criminal Court)  for about thirty days, he said he went through a “hard cold turkey detox” literally feeling the drugs coming out of his pores.

 He recalled praying, “Allah, God, Buddha, architect of the universe, whoever you are, if you just show me your face, if you show me you’re real, I’ll serve you even from behind these walls.” As he was lying in his prison bed that night, he discerned a presence. “I looked over my head and in the cell was the image of a man standing all dressed in white… The light emanating from behind him was so bright… And in my heart of hearts, man, that was Jesus Christ.”

Hours passed, daylight came, and the atmosphere had changed. But when Lindenberg looked over to where he had seen the vision, nobody was standing there. He threw water on his face and rationalized it as his subconscious dealing with the severity of the situation. 

Later that day, a corrections officer stopped at his cell and informed him his name was on a list for Protestant church services, despite Lindenberg never signing up. 

Confused Lindenberg, went up to a detainee and learned it was a religious service where everyone would be lined up over at the gate, then taken to the chapel. As the group walked toward the chapel, they heard singing and clapping, reminding Lindenberg of the church choir he heard as a child. “And I got these butterflies in my stomach. I got this lump in my throat. As we’re walking down this single line, man, I’m fighting tears, bro, and I’m like ‘Yo, I cannot let these dudes see me cry’.” 

Lindenberg came into a makeshift chapel with stained glass windows painted on the cinder block and a smiling and singing Puerto Rican detainee. Upon stepping inside, Lindenberg said he felt like he was hit with an uppercut which took the air out of him. 

He described that in this pivotal moment, he actually dropped to his knees and was overcome with tears. “It was an ugly cry, like boogers and glasses on the floor.” 

He remembered every illegal act, every drug deal he had done. “All of that shame and all of that guilt, coupled with the image of Jesus Christ and myself,” Lindenberg said emotionally. “And I felt so much pain and so much hurt coupled with so much love and forgiveness. When I got up off the floor, I felt like I was 20 pounds lighter. And even though I was facing 25 [years] to life, I never felt freer. ”

Lindenberg was later transported to Rikers Island at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center. There he met prison chaplain, “Reverend Rodriguez,” a short Puerto Rican who Lindenberg said would line up detainees, place his hands on their foreheads, and have them fall to the ground in prayer. Lindenberg described seeing some of the most hardened criminals in the prison experience a moment of deliverance. 

“When you’re on Rikers Island and you’re seeing Bloods and Ñetas and Latin Kings, dudes that are dog killers, and they’re falling out? ” Lindenberg said.  “I wanted to know what is that, why is that happening?

With nothing but time while “sitting on the island,” Lindenberg furthered his own spiritual journey: he dove into scripture and interpretation with guidance from Reverend Rodriguez. He was overwhelmed by how the 66 Canonical texts of the Bible, although written distinctly by many authors over 1500 years, melded together into one spiritual narrative. 

Chaplain Rodriguez, upon realizing Lindenberg was bilingual, began asking him to translate. While Rodriguez ministered in Spanish, Lindenberg would interpret in English, not yet realizing he was a preacher in training.

The facility had an organization called C.O.’s for Christ, which saw about 150 detainees participate in services, as well as several corrections officers. On days where Chaplain Rodriguez could not make it for services, a correction officer would send down Lindenberg to lead the group.

Lindenberg was released in 1998, but returned to prison in 2007 after a physical altercation. During his second stint in prison, Lindenberg completed a course offered by Global University and became a credentialed minister. 

Upon release he later took courses in law enforcement, drug addiction, broken homes, anger issues, alcoholism, and suicide.

Lindenberg felt drawn to ministry in an inner city and recalled reporting to his probation officer in Peekskill.

“I wound up having these certifications, but no outlet outside of law enforcement. I felt drawn to coming into Peekskill and I wound up planting a church in Peekskill.”

Lindenberg founded the Peak Community Church in 2015, often seeing about 130 people attending services. When the pandemic shut the church doors down in 2020, he still found ways to minister to the community’s needs, officiating at 18 funerals for free. 

Police Chaplaincy

In December 2015, then Peekskill Mayor Frank Catalina decorated Lindenberg with a Proclamation from the city for being at the right place at the right time. (A few weeks earlier Lindenberg had actually saved someone’s life at a dinner at the Elks Lodge  which Catalina also attended.) 

At that meeting, in another instance of “right place, right time”, Lindenberg was introduced to then police Chief Eric Johansen. The two spoke about what a police chaplaincy program could look like.

Lindenberg envisioned a uniformed chaplain who could get into cruisers for ride-alongs, and act as a third party and outlet for the department. Johansen was all in.

“He said, ‘Rob, I know what you’re talking about and we need it. If you can build it, you can have it, you can do it,’” Lindenberg recalled. “And I was like, ‘well, it’s not all that easy, you know. I have a little bit of a history. I have a little bit of a past. He says, ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. If you can build it and you can do it, I will support it.’”

Lindenberg wrote the standard operating procedure for the chaplaincy program in Peekskill. Through coordination with the Vineland Police Department in New Jersey, he developed  the requirements and training a candidate should have. After Johansen’s departure in 2018, the program continued to receive support for subsequent Chiefs Halmy and Dylewski. Ironically, it was Lindenberg’s past which made some officers connect to him more. 

“They felt more comfortable to open up to me once they realized that I had a past, that I wasn’t always a preacher, and I understand the struggles,” he said. “They were more susceptible to kind of open up and let me know, ‘Oh my goodness, I have a family member right now who’s locked up. Oh my goodness, I have [someone] going through this right now.’”

Lindenberg said he feels hope when he sees people who were in similar shoes to him. They remind him of a passage of scripture stating  God’s gifts are given without repentance. This means, he said, every person has gifts inside them, even if they struggle to identify them or believe them to be a lie. But, Lindenberg said, there is no one outside of the redemptive hand of God.

“When I was in prison, my promise, I said, ‘God, I’m gonna walk through whatever doors you open for me, and I’m gonna stand back from whatever doors you close for me,’” Lindenberg said. “‘So if I go from the crack house to the White House, it doesn’t matter, I’m gonna let Him guide me. And I truly believe that this is a message for the city. We can all do so much better. We can all be so much better.”