Street Stories - A Ringside Seat To Over 4 Decades Of Taking Jesus To The Streets Of The World

Sure, I thought. Here I am. Joe suburban Christian, and I’m going to go over there and tell them how much Jesus loves them. I might as well speak another language. It seemed like I had dived into the city, and surfaced in a new world, an underworld. Here before me was a place I had heard of but never seen: the world of the prostitute. It is a world found in nearly all of the earth’s major cities. There are enormous and unimaginable hurts in this world. That night in Hollywood, however, as I sat in this place and saw lipstick on men and girls who laughed as they stood on the street corner, I completely missed the tragedy in this world. It seemed only dangerous and utterly alien. I said something like this to Bobby. Now, Bobby is no slouch himself. He might sound like the evangelist he is – he has a southern drawl that would put any TV preacher to shame – but that voice comes out of a guy who likes to wear his hair short, sticking up all over in the best punk style, and who favors black parachute pants, black leather jacket, black wrist band, and black tee shirt, with green and red high top sneakers for accent. He dresses like this because he considers himself a missionary to this underworld and he is trying to relate to the culture. He tells me what any good missionary would say, “Sure, these people have problems. But how are they going to change unless somebody tells them something different ?” With that ringing in my ears, I followed Bobby out the door.

On the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine, there is Howard Johnson ’s restaurant, a pizza joint, a

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