Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

The hostile congregation

They preach, and the revelers taunt. They invoke God; the partiers invoke Satan. It's an uphill climb for Ybor City's street evangelists.

By RODNEY THRASH, Times Staff Writer
Published February 16, 2006

[Times photos: Brian Cassella]

Larry Craft, a recovering alcoholic who spent years in and out of jail, says he understands the Ybor crowd he’s preaching to. “I was that weirdo,” he says.

	Krystal Hampton and German Castro share a kiss along Seventh Avenue in the shadow of Ybor City’s street preachers on a Friday night in late January. Behind them, an evangelist’s son, Josiah Craft, 15, holds a placard that says, “Death is hell without Jesus.”
	Kevin Deegan urges passers-by to change their sinful ways. Preaching on Seventh Avenue, the evangelists say, is a commandment from God.
	Young women stroll down Seventh Avenue in front of Centro Ybor, barely taking notice of the evangelists.

YBOR CITY: It's 11 p.m. on the Friday before Gasparilla. Larry Craft stands on a street corner where preachers aren't expected.

He presses a bullhorn to his lips. His sermon begins.

"The grave is full of your age," says Craft, 45. "You're going to get to go to hell by just continuing on in your life just the way that you are."

He has positioned himself on the sidewalk at E Seventh Avenue and N 16th Street, the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah as far as he's concerned. All around him, he sees sin - the drunken men stumbling from bars, the half-naked women swishing down the pavement.

"Have you made a place in your life for Jesus Christ?" Craft asks them.

"Satan," someone in the crowd shouts back.

"Spawn of the devil right here," another yells.

Craft remains calm. He's not flailing his arms. He's not whooping and hollering. He's not running up and down any aisles. He just keeps preaching.

"Are you out here to glorify Jesus Christ tonight?" he says. "Are you out here seeking God tonight?"

There is no call and response, no shouts of amen and hallelujah. With this congregation, there is a call and antiresponse. Some of the jeers are unprintable.

"Go to hell!" someone says.

"Jesus ain't real," says someone else.

Craft doesn't flinch.

***

He says he just came from Gulfport, Miss. He has no home, not in the usual sense of the word. Home, he says, is a 45-foot bus. For the past five years, he has traveled the country full time, preaching on sidewalks like this one.

He's here on this night by design. "We have some key events that we try to hit every year," he says. Gasparilla is one of them. He says he heard about the annual pirate invasion during a visit to Tampa three years ago. He knows the crowds spill onto Seventh Avenue.

A half-dozen other evangelists are posted here along the hub of Ybor's entertainment district. Some are from Tampa. Others are from obscure places like Pike, N.Y. Craft recognizes some but not all of them. Different preachers come every weekend. They read passages from the Bible and hoist signs, some of them graphic.

"DEATH is HELL without Jesus," reads one placard.

People curse, taunt and stare at Craft and his colleagues. Yet the street preachers return to this corner every Friday and Saturday night. They say they don't have much of a choice. Preaching on Seventh Avenue, evangelists say, is a commandment from God. To do otherwise is to disobey him.

"The Bible tells us to share the Gospel with every living creature," says Larry Keffer, whose Tampa-based Biblical Research Center ministry has been preaching in Ybor for the last year. "If we're supposed to do that, we're supposed to go where the people are."

And the people - the ones who are starving spiritually, they say - are here.

"What's being promoted is sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, the exploiting of women," Craft says.

He doesn't expect a Benny Hinn televangelism moment, with the wicked, sick and lame falling backward, claiming that they are healed and saved. If it happens, great. If it doesn't, that's fine, too. His only job is to spread the Gospel. He leaves the saving part to a higher power.

***

Craft does not look like the traditional suit-and-tie preacher. He wears stonewashed jeans, scuffed hiking boots and a muddy green jacket. The back of his jacket is stitched with a passage from 1 Corinthians.

Christ

died

for our

sins

was buried

& rose again.

Craft, a recovering alcoholic who spent years in and out of New York jails, believes he can relate to people in Ybor perhaps better than anyone.

"I was that weirdo," he says. "I was engaged in drinking, sex, bound for hell."

He moved to Texas in 1981. He figured if he could change his environment, he could alter his ways. Two years later, he met a man whose sermons provided him clarity, purpose and a relationship with Jesus Christ.

"I'd never heard the Gospel," Craft says. "Might have changed my life earlier."

He has been preaching for 16 years. His home church, Old Paths Bible Baptist of Rochester, N.Y., provides financial assistance for his cross country evangelism. He also picks up jobs wherever he stops to support himself and his two teenage children, who travel with him. He's intensely private about his family. He says he homeschools his son and daughter. He refuses to say any more; he will not talk about their mother's whereabouts. Such personal details, he says, are irrelevant.

"No more questions," he says. "End of story."

Charles Barkowski Jr. , a pastor at Craft's church in Rochester, confirms that the church supports Craft's missionary work. Barkowski says Craft is married and that his wife usually travels with him and the children.

Josiah Craft is 15 years old and lanky. On this Friday night in Ybor, he carries a sign that is taller than him.

"Repent . . . Believe The Gospel Mark 1:15," one side reads. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," reads the back.

Joanna Craft, 17, passes out pocket-sized brochures with titles such as "You Must be Born Again" and "The Gospel of Jesus Christ To America." Most people walk past her as if she were invisible.

"They're not rejecting me," she says. "They're rejecting God."

Nearby, her father begins another sermon about idolatry.

n n n

Voices rise in song and testimony.

"Jesus," the street preachers cry. "Jesus!"

From the crowd, a shout rings out.

"Christ failed!"

It's a man's voice.

The heckler, Craig Robart, strides across the Seventh Avenue pavilion, a woman on his arm. Robart is 44, lives in Plant City and wears glasses and a black leather jacket. He says he's heading to the Castle, a goth nightclub, "to party and have a good time."

Perhaps, at one time, he believed in the supernatural. But these days, he says, he doesn't believe in much of anything.

" 'Cause if you look at the state of the world today," he says, "there is no God."

He walks away.

***

By 2 a.m., the hum of bumper-to-bumper traffic fades. The sidewalks begin to empty. There's no one left to preach to and no more pamphlets to distribute. Most of the handouts are on the ground, ripped into pieces.

The street preachers huddle. They decide to call it a night. For Craft, there's more to do. He sees a world "bent on sin," and he wants to do his part to change that. His itinerary will take him to more Seventh Avenues, more bastions of wickedness.

"If nobody shares the Gospel," Craft says, "nobody will be saved."

Rodney Thrash can be reached at (727) 893-8352 or rthrash@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 16, 2006, 08:27:35]