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

Bobby Chance stands in front, playing the guitar, and when at last he allows a hushed silence, he picks up on this feeling. “Lord,” he says, “free us from the fear of man that entangles us. ” That’s it. It seems such an impossible thing. To think that these people gathered here, this collection of ordinary churchgoers and students, could go out into the vast turmoil of Hollywood and make a difference. But as they pray, and as their initial hesitancy flares into passion as they intercede for that hooker or that addict or that derelict they know by name, I can see that the miraculous has already taken place. God is changing Hollywood. He is bringing life where there was death, and he is doing it through these people. Bobby Chance looks the picture of confidence as he hovers over the flock who now team up, stuff tracts in their pockets, and depart. But he still remembers his own awkwardness when he first witnessed on the street. He was walking out of a 7-Eleven and there in front, on the curb was a girl crying. This was three years ago, back in Dallas, and Bobby, his wife, Dot, and their three daughters (ages 2, 4 and 6) were on their way to Hollywood. It hadn’t been easy to leave. They had just finished planting a lawn in front of their new house. Bobby loved his job as a corporate salesman. But he and his wife had heard Charles McPheeters, the Founder of The Holy Ghost Repair Service, speak. (Charles has since died of cancer, and his wife Judy is now Director.) Both Bobby and Dot knew those were words God wanted them to hear. “I began to understand,” says Bobby, “the compassion in God’s heart, for he was crying and weeping. My problem was that I was riding on other people’s commitment to God. When I got my own vision and my own burden, it was uncontrollable.”

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