Pubdate: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company Section: National Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Rick Bragg FLORIDA MINISTER DEFIES DRUG DEALERS, DESPITE THREAT ON LIFE JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Aug. 18 -- The Rev. John Guns is 5-foot-3 and thick, like a steamer trunk in a blue pin-striped suit, but he moves light and fast across the dais at St. Paul's Missionary Baptist Church. An electric organ moans, a drum booms and Mr. Guns begins to proselytize. "We are the people of God," the minister shouts, and lifts up his congregation even as, one by one, the worshipers drop on their knees. "Lord, we ask you to bind the Devil right now," Mr. Guns says to people who pray for rent money, groceries, lost sons, or to live one more day free of crack cocaine. "Quiet your spirits," he says, as they press their foreheads to the carpet or raise their hands to heaven. "You had enough gas to get here. Let God get you home." "Yes, Lord, yes," the congregation says. Some ministers give sermons. Mr. Guns, in this simple white church in northwest Jacksonville, came to preach. The son of a preacher, he always loved his calling. But he has never loved it so much as now. God, he believes, has sent him a test of faith, not of lust or greed, the kind that has toppled so many preachers, but the kind that makes a man watch his rearview mirror and pray that the headlights will not follow him home. After he spoke out against drug gangs in a blighted neighborhood a month ago, word began to circulate in the hair salons, housing projects, barber shops and clubs that the dealers would pay $25,000 to have him killed. Mr. Guns had to decide to push on or bow his head and shut his mouth. Mr. Guns, a 37-year-old husband and the father of a little girl, chose to push. He led a march through the poor, mostly black Ken Knight neighborhood -- where the threat is believed to have originated -- and held a tent revival, where he brought four people to the Lord. Now, the pastor is raising money for a women's center to help, among others, mothers addicted to the crack the dealers sold. Even as common sense and self- preservation shook his knees, he defied the dealers. "I'm just a preacher," he told himself when he first heard about the bounty on his head. "I don't want this." He just wanted to return to his church, where the Devil took many forms but none so real as this. "I just wanted to preach." But then he would have been a paper preacher, a man with a microphone who extolled others to a faith he did not trust himself. "If I buckle, my calling, and my mission, is a farce," Mr. Guns said. The threat has substance, the police, the city's mayor and the people who live and work in the Ken Knight neighborhood say, and it is being investigated. "The police keep an eye on him," said John Delaney, the mayor. So do his church members. The maintenance man patrols the hallways and parking lot, searching for drug dealers. Older women stand sentry at the sanctuary entrance, a palace guard of flower-print pantsuits and well-thumbed Bibles, watching. Police cruisers drive by. Just down the street, the Washington Heights area of the Ken Knight neighborhood seems tired and worn. A homemade sign tacked to a power pole says: "Car loan to 29 people with bad credit. Call 805-9909." In a red-brick housing project, a sun-faded sedan sits on four flat tires, and will for a long time. It was not so bad, some people said, before a gang began using the projects and concrete-block houses as a base to sell crack. It was around 1994. "I hate it, I hate it," said Gerline Gordon, 55. "I got a son on it." The drug gang, the Waterfront Boys, was not an outside evil that showed up one day. Ms. Gordon watched some of the dealers grow up, as the drug became an economic mainstay in a place short on jobs. Some people even had their rent or power bills paid by dealers, in exchange for their good will. The dealers even passed out Christmas gifts. The gang slowly poisoned the community, and people pleaded with the sheriff to shut it down. In July, after years of investigations and more than 1,000 pounds of powder and rock cocaine distributed in the area, federal agents and the Jacksonville police raided the neighborhood. Twelve men, including the alleged ringleader, Linwood Smith, have been charged with drug-related crimes. Mr. Guns praised the effort in an article in The Florida Times-Union, but warned that the problem would only return if the community was not revitalized. And so every day, more than 20 full-time members of the church staff run programs to help this community. Counselors find beds in treatment centers for crack addicts, screening them in the church offices. The church's Northside Affordable Housing Opportunity Community Development Corporation helps families buy houses. The St. Paul Community Empowerment Center runs programs to teach children suspended from schools and to help adults find work, schooling and counseling. "A 21st-century church," Mr. Guns said, must fight the Devil "in a multiplicity of ways." Within days of the drug arrests, word began to circulate around the city that a $25,000 bounty was being offered for Mr. Guns's death. The drug dealers apparently believed, wrongly, that he had been involved in the investigation, Mr. Guns said. He has spoken out against the drug, he said, but has never named names. But many people in the neighborhood said the drug dealers still see Mr. Guns as a threat. He offers not only salvation, but also a means to get off crack, to live decently. "If your light bill is paid and you have food on the table," Mr. Delaney said, "it's easier to think about God." Kenneth Adkins, the church's minister of community development, heard about the bounty in the Perfect Ten barber shop on Norwood Street. A patron there warned him. Callers to the church warned the pastor and his staff. Some people said it was just a bluff, a rumor, but most in the neighborhood took it seriously. "If someone says they're going to burn your house down, you better go get a hose," said Dewayne Scott, 35, who works in a small grocery in Ken Knight. It would be wrong to say that, when Mr. Guns heard about the threat, he never doubted what to do. He did have doubts -- even as he marched, even as he preached. "Let the Devil know he should have killed me," he said, in his tent revival. "Because I'm still here." Later, when the crowds were gone, he thought to himself: "You are so stupid. Shut up." But in the pulpit, on the streets, Mr. Guns never wavered. He had promised, through the power of his church's programs, to fill that void left by the drug dealers. It was much too late to back down now. "I didn't run," Mr. Guns said. "I couldn't." Help and support came from unexpected places. White pastors marched with him, and invited him to preach in their churches. White business owners were suddenly interested in the church's programs. "It galvanized us," said the Rev. Ted Corley, pastor of the Mayfair Baptist Church on the city's south side. Such a threat, Mr. Corley said, sliced through race and class. It has been weeks, and nothing has happened. Mr. Guns sleeps in the same house with his family now -- something he was afraid to do after first hearing of the threat. He believes he has been spared. He believes, more than ever. He believes. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager