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Preachers to partiers: Give it up
By EILEEN SCHULTE CLEARWATER -- The Rev. Charles Fisher gripped the microphone, put it to his mouth and screamed at the north Greenwood tavern Saturday evening. "You got to put them drugs down!" he yelled. "You, over there smoking the weed. I seen you walk across this parking lot with your bag and selling it. You better put it down, because you will answer in heaven or you will go to hell. You're not going to escape hell. Get down on your knees and repent!"
Still, no one at the bar fell to his knees. No one repented. No one put the drugs down. Instead, an older gentleman in a yellow cap lit up a joint, inhaled deeply and watched Fisher impassively while a police car cruised slowly by. Two men sat on a wooden bench, sipped liquor from bottles wrapped in dirty paper bags and snickered. The regulars at the tavern, nestled between a police substation and a barbecue place in north Greenwood, are used to Fisher. They see him and the Rev. Cleveland Montague every Saturday night, weather permitting, preaching and begging them to come forth and be saved. "This here on Saturday night is holy night, this is a holy place," yelled Fisher, referring to the parking lot. "Don't walk across it with your drugs. When we're here, this is holy ground. Don't come unless you're ready to turn it around. Is there anyone who wants to get out of their situation?" No one. Undaunted, Fisher preached on. Fisher and Montague see this nondescript gravel parking lot not just as a holy place, but as a battleground in an ongoing showdown between two superpowers: God and the devil. * * * Fisher, 33, an ordained minister who attends Bible Church of God not too far from the tavern, and Montague, 70, an ordained minister who attends Abundant Life Church of God in Pinellas Park, have been preaching on the lot in front of the bar for about nine months. "The Lord God sent me here," said Montague, a retired Jamaican-born cabinetmaker. "I blast the word, I send it out. I preach Jesus. Some come weeping. The spirit of God throws them down. Lots of things happen. They cry out." He said he doesn't just preach to addicts, but to "the homosexuals, all who are not saved." "There is a new world coming. Jesus is coming," Montague said. "If a person does not accept Jesus Christ in the new world to come, (they will be doomed). He sent me to tell people to accept him before he returns." A inebriated man with a Jamaican accent sidled up to the Bible Church of God's old white van and started talking to Montague, grabbing his hand and shaking it. "God's blessing you!" Montague told the man. The man thanked Montague and told him it was good to see him. Then he walked across the parking lot and disappeared into the night. "Once, he looked like a frog," said Montague of the man. "He was demon-possessed. The demon is being cast out. There are demon-possessed people and they don't know they are possessed." Fisher kept up a steady stream of preaching. He said he was like the people at the tavern not long ago, homeless and smoking crack and pot before "going from being high to a new life with Jesus Christ," he said. "I've been to jail on two DUIs, theft by deception. You find all different ways to get high," said Fisher, who now sells security systems. "Mom and dad were putting alcohol in my bottle when I was a baby. At 17, I was putting needles in my arms," he said. Fisher says he loves his new life as street minister. "We are planting a seed in them," he said.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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From the Times North Pinellas desks |
