Forgive me, driver, for I have sinned.
Yellow-taxi driver Joseph Djan, 52, may seem like an ordinary hack, but he’s also an evangelical pastor from Brooklyn, offering a bit of salvation along with a lift to his passengers.
“You could say that my cab is a church on wheels,” Djan told The Post.
“When some people come in my cab, they are in dire straits. They feel guilty about something that has gone wrong in their lives,’’ Djan said. “And they just want to start talking.’’
Djan said riders start confessing and seeking advice after hearing the Christian hip-hop he plays on the radio and learning he’s a minister.
He said a closeted gay man once opened up to him after hailing him at 29th Street and 11th Avenue in Chelsea.
“He heard my Christian hip-hop and while talking about it, it slipped out that I was a pastor,” Djan said. “His mood changed instantly. He told me he wanted to tell me something that had never told anyone before.”
The customer said he was gay and asked Djan if he was a sinner — then said he felt guilty living a lie.
“I told him that we all keep secrets. We all have to come out of the closet in some way or another. He was so relieved.”
The driver and rider exchanged numbers. The passenger later told Djan that he started living his life in the open after the ride.
If his customers aren’t Christian and want different music, Djan said, he is respectful and will put on what they want to listen to.
But those who share his faith are often eager to get a dose of spirituality in his cab.
“There is a saying that you don’t have to go to church to be religious,” said the married father of three.
“I would prefer they go to church on Sunday. But we can have church right in here!”
Djan came to the United States from Ghana in the early 1990s and said he became a pastor after a spiritual transformation while studying at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
The big-hearted cabby tries to help people get their lives back on track, and gives the homeless food and clothing. He even takes them back to his church, Holy Track Outreach Ministry in Crown Heights, to bathe and gives them a little money.
He leases his cab from McGuinness Management, a Greenpoint garage.
“We have 20,000 drivers and 20,000 stories, but every now and then, you come across someone that is truly doing extraordinary things,” said Michael Woloz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents his garage. “This is why New York taxi drivers are the best in the world.”