COLUMN ONE : Battling the Demons of City Life : Tiny storefront churches wage war on drugs, gangs and despair. Against such formidable enemies, pastors say, victories are rare but sweet.

“Then Jesus said unto his disciples, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’ ”

--Matthew 16:24

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Sinners congregate every evening on South Figueroa Street in the inner core of Los Angeles, looking for rapture.

Gang members and hustlers come in search of drugs or sex. In the numbered rooms of dingy neon motels, women serve up a communion of flesh, giving nearly all their earnings to their wrathful god, rock cocaine.

Eugene Hobbs has come to find them, to save them. Rolling through the night in a trash-littered pickup truck, the 43-year-old preacher scans the street under a low-slung leather cap. A former pimp and gambler, Hobbs wears a biker’s mustache and his hair is slicked back to the collar. His smile is like sheet lightning.

A year ago, he opened a church in a converted auto garage. Prostitutes make up much of his congregation, when there is a congregation. Hobbs buys them hamburgers and coffee and urges them to attend Sunday worship. He knows their hardship. They sometimes even sleep at the church, laying out blankets on the pews, in those tortured dark hours when they are fighting their demons to go straight.

“How you doin’, sweetheart?” Hobbs calls out as the truck veers to the curb. He hands a church flyer out the window to a woman dolled up in black leather, with a diamond stud in her nose.

Recognizing the pastor’s name, Samantha lets loose a delighted laugh. Her friend, Mary, a church choir member, also works these streets. Samantha vows that she, too, will attend Sunday, and allows Hobbs to lead her through prayer.

“I rebuke that cocaine demon,” Hobbs has her repeat. “I rebuke that demon of prostitution. . . .”

“You got me lying now,” Samantha protests, her voice rising. “I’m going to leave you and go make some money.”

The exchange lasts a few moments, then Hobbs hugs her and moves on, looking for other lost souls to woo to his makeshift house of prayer, a place that is accessible by a roll-up service bay door and lighted by bare fluorescent tubes.

Hosanna Community Church--the women say HO- sanna, as in the slang for whore --is just one of several hundred tiny sanctuaries of God wedged into storefronts and low-rent cubbyholes throughout the Central City, along such gritty urban thoroughfares as Broadway, Central, Figueroa, Main, Normandie and Western.

Unglamorous but proud, they are scattered sometimes four or five to a single block, often for mile upon mile along depressed retail strips--an urban montage of cracking stucco walls, security bars and spare crosses raised toward heaven. Their signs, many hand-painted, beckon with inspired grandiloquence: “The Alpha and Omega Missionary Baptist Church,” “The Miracle Faith Apostolic House of Prayer,” the “I Am That I Am Church of Eternal Salvation.” Many are windowless; others occupy weed-filled lots. Splotches of graffiti tend to come and go like stigmata.

Hunkered down in neighborhoods marred by gang murders, assaults, broken homes, drug addiction and joblessness, the storefronts represent the front lines in a long and bitter war of the spirit, a war against the evils of a troubled metropolis. Poorly funded and often plagued by debts, these obscure ministries scrape to survive against formidable odds, reaching out for the fallen, giving away food, clothing and love, applying salve to wounds that larger churches cannot, or will not, heal.

“Little bright lights that keep the communities going” is how Joan Clements, a vice president of the World Opportunities International food bank, thinks of the storefront churches.

For the most part, the storefront clerics see their ministries in sharp contrast to the stained-glass elegance of the larger cathedrals. Although the big churches attract the finer families and best-trained pastors, the storefronts draw many of their parishioners from society’s unwanted: the homeless, the mentally ill, the marginally employed, the AIDS-afflicted.

Often, the preachers are outcasts--or former outcasts, now heeding the whispering of God in the unholy streets. They are men such as the Rev. Forest L. Person, a onetime car thief and heroin addict who said he heard his spiritual calling to the Lord while on an LSD trip. Person now serves up Skid Row meals from his Greater Upper Room Church of God in Christ Apostolic on South Hoover Street.

Or Bishop Robert E. Manuel, an ex-pimp and drug dealer who presides at the Emmanuel Church of Christ Apostolic Faith Headquarters on South Central Avenue. Manuel tells of seeing God’s will in many glorious visions--one of which has inspired his ambition to take over an entire city block.

Or the Rev. Willie Jackson, an illiterate former drug trafficker who has expanded his ministry by offering $10-a-night rooms at a renovated apartment house on West 78th Street, where guests are required to hear 24-hour Scripture readings. The commercially recorded tapes are played over speakers affixed high on the walls, with no easy way to lower the volume.

The abundance of tiny churches is far from random. Rather, it is a creation of powerful economic, social and historical forces, beginning with a glut of available, low-cost shop fronts. The ministries spring to life where the monthly overhead sinks below the cumulative generosity of the worshiping faithful.

Demographic changes in Los Angeles have given rise to scores of churches founded by Asian and Central American denominations. But in many neighborhoods, storefront temples remain a cultural stronghold of blacks who migrated to Los Angeles in great numbers throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, fleeing the racial oppression of the South.

With them, they brought the ardent beliefs of the Bible Belt--most notably, the fundamentalist doctrines of the Southern Baptists, a Christian faith geared toward church autonomy and missionary work. Those philosophical underpinnings became catalysts to the bloom of many small, self-run ministries.

“When we were in slavery, we could not go anywhere, (could not) do this or do that . . . but they allowed us to have church,” says the Rev. Chris D. LeGrande, whose Great Hope Missionary Baptist Church is the largest of 13 small sanctuaries on a half-mile section of Compton Avenue in South-Central. “So for the black person . . . the church is very powerful. There is something in our roots that takes us back to the church.”

Critics maintain that storefront churches have proliferated too far, that they would accomplish more by merging, pooling their meager resources. Even many storefront preachers complain that there are far too many con men among them: false prophets exploiting tax loopholes and porous government regulation to reap the harvest of the offering plate; charlatans who borrow personal cash on their tiny temples, obligating their faithful to make good on the debts; glib and flashy showmen who drive Lincolns or Cadillacs by exercising a flair for fiery oratory.

But as the Rev. Person reasons, the same God who created light also made the night. So in the inner city, the holy and the wicked dance together in a timeless ballet, full of tragedy and wonder: the bold flickering of life in a modern-day Babylon.

The righteous preachers walk a hard road rutted by futility and desperation. Hope becomes as tenuous as angels’ wings; still, there are times when it soars so gloriously that they tell the stories over and over--how a life was changed, how through a small church’s tenacity and sacrifice and just because it was there, the world became a little better.

It happened to Kevyn Watson, a crack addict who was reeling from a street fight on a Wednesday night several years ago. In wine-soiled pants and a T-shirt, a drunken Watson was strolling Normandie Avenue at 49th Street to look for more alcohol. He found an open storefront and ducked inside, thinking it a liquor store.

“It was a little hole in the wall church,” he said.

An evening worship was in progress inside the red-trimmed Christian Tabernacle of Love, Faith & Deliverance. The disoriented Watson became angry and abusive, but the pastor, Bishop Hartwell L. Jones III, refused to let the congregation send him out.

Taking pains to calm the newcomer, Jones made him feel welcome. After services, the pastor even gave him a few dollars.

A week later, Watson came back, angling for more cash. He returned again after that. And again. And before long, the pastor gave Watson a white double-breasted suit. Watson entered a drug rehabilitation program. He found a job. He gave up the streets. He and his wife found a place to stay, then had a baby.

In four years, Watson’s remunerations to the church have far exceeded what the kindly pastor gave him in those early weeks. The former addict talks proudly of the place he holds at Christian Tabernacle, No. 1 on the tithe list.

“Every dollar I make, I give a dime to the church,” Watson said. “I’ve been in a hole, and the church has gotten me out. I’m grateful to God.”

Finding God Amid the Bloodshed

The violence of the city casts the shadow of death over many storefront ministries. Under a crude wooden cross on South Central Avenue rests the gray-white Universal Missionary Baptist Church. The neighboring Los Angeles police precinct, 77th Street Division, recorded 144 homicides last year, top in the city.

“To me, the demons out of hell have gotten into these people,” said the Rev. Zephaniah Clark, who conducted a eulogy in April for slain gang leader Dwayne (Big Hawk) Capers, his nephew. The pastor remembers with anguish how so many of the 500 mourners seemed to be high on drugs or alcohol.

“A little boy, not 12 years old, said he had a gift to leave (for the deceased),” Clark said. “He took it from under his cap, and it was a (marijuana) cigarette. He left it at the head of the casket.”

Like many storefront preachers, Clark tries to reach those youngsters. So many will not hear him. So many turn away from the voices of the storefront preachers.

Former Crips gang leader Michael (Ice Mike) Rowles talks with heartache and frustration as he stands at the altar, a minister now, praying at another in an endless stream of funerals. This one is for 15-year-old John Karem (John John) Terrell, who was shot to death by gang members as he was about to board a bus Nov. 23.

The grief inside a packed St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is so intense that some mourners faint. Others sob hysterically. Terrell, described by relatives as a happy and respectful young man, a church member and avid basketball player, lies in an open casket.

“I see this young man, John John, and I look at myself and say, ‘Lord . . . which one of us will it be tomorrow?’ ” Rowles said. “If our life is not in touch with the Lord, then we’re walking like a walking time bomb.”

Rowles, 31, and his cousin, Stevie Earl, 27, are two improbable players on the side of righteousness. For more than a decade, Rowles controlled high-volume narcotics trafficking and directed bloody street warfare for the Main Street Mafia Crips. He had developed a bitterness toward God. His mother raised 15 children in a leaky garage. He did not have toys or money.

Rowles grew up brawny as a fireplug and charismatic--”one of the godfathers--or the godfather--of that (Crips) set,” said Officer Morris Batts of the Los Angeles Police Department’s special gang unit.

Earl belonged to a rival Bloods set. He took part in street robberies, vandalism and drive-by shootings.

Neither youth appeared headed for much more than an early grave or life in a penitentiary. But fate, or God, intervened. Rowles met a young street minister, Cleophus Green, who tried to steer him toward Jesus. More and more, the gang leader began to recognize the horrors of violence; police estimate that he may have attended well over 200 funerals, many times as a pallbearer.

Then, two years ago, Rowles’ mother lay dying of cancer. Her last wish was that her children begin attending church.

After her burial, Rowles found himself one afternoon at the corner of 106th and San Pedro streets, contemplating the evils he had committed there. A friend came by, an ex-gang member who said he now served God. They prayed together. The next week, Stevie Earl joined them. Every Thursday afternoon, they met. The crowd grew to 10, to 20, to 25.

The winter rains came. By then, Rowles had come to know the Rev. Jesse Lee, the founder of a narrow storefront church on Crenshaw Boulevard. Lee’s young sanctuary, the Holy Temple Four Square Community Church, had only a few members.

So a year ago, Rowles and his whole street corner crowd of former gangbangers moved into the storefront, becoming that church’s congregation. Rowles became a minister-in-training, working for God and the Rev. Lee.

He has decided to devote his life to the ministry.

It is another Sunday there now, a brilliant fall day, and Rowles is dressed for paradise in a purple suit, a jeweled gold cross dangling from his neck. He is up on stage, telling his story, and then he starts jumping, gyrating, waving his arms.

Stevie Earl stands watching in the aisle, sporting a black leather jacket and two diamond-stud earrings.

Earl is grinning--then laughing. The way Rowles is carrying on, there is only one conclusion to be drawn.

“The Holy Ghost got him!”

Preaching on a Shoestring

Although caring for the destitute, the drug addicts and the city’s violent gang members is an important mission of many storefront preachers, survival requires them to reach out in another direction--for working-class families, people with the spirit--and the money--to help the church grow.

To some worshipers, the storefronts offer more than just music and Gospel wisdom; the tiny congregations become extended families. They share marriages, births, dinners, graduations, divorces and deaths. They fight, forgive and pray for one another. If a member takes ill, everyone visits the hospital.

As worshipers die or move away, or as finances go sour, some storefront churches wink out of existence, giving way to others that spring up. Some cater to congregations from Shreveport, La., or Mobile, Ala., or other Southern cities. Other churches rely heavily on brothers, sisters, aunts and cousins to fill their pews.

Younger clerics usually hold down weekday jobs. Their seniors often labor far into their twilight years, even until death forces a change in the pulpit.

The Rev. Eddie Ray Thomas is 78, but he spends long days administering the food programs and financial affairs of the Greater Mt. Calvary Baptist Church on South Main Street. His followers are few, but loyal. Margaret Etta Bonville has attended since the church opened 33 years ago.

“Sometimes we may have two people,” Bonville said. “Sometimes it may be just me. But we don’t worry about that, as long as God is there.”

The sanctuary is inelegant--just seven rows of pews, harsh fluorescent lights and at least four shades of carpet, all patched together. Corners are cluttered with thrift store merchandise: used TVs, a refrigerator, several ceramic dogs and reindeer. The walls are emblazoned with quotes from Scripture.

Two of Thomas’ nieces drive all the way from Fontana--two hours, round-trip--to hear his baritone sermons. One niece, Eddie Rae Thomas, is named for the preacher. She was the family’s 13th child, born mentally retarded and suffering seizures. No one expected her to live. Now she is 39 with a young son of her own.

The pastor watches her sing a solemn hymn at the altar and invites everyone present to see the miracle that he sees.

“Look at God,” he says softly.

At storefront after storefront, cries of “Hallelujah, Jesus!” and “Thank you, Jesus!” add punctuation to life’s myriad turning points. No matter how small or crumbling the edifice, faith brings hands together, faith causes lips to move.

Retired schoolteacher Cynthia M. Addison takes her 6-year-old grandson, Erik, to Gabriel Missionary Baptist Church on South Hoover Street. Erik, a hemophiliac, also makes periodic trips to Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles for bouts of internal bleeding. Sometimes, his condition becomes so severe that Addison calls the Rev. Junius Moses Casimier in the wee hours to ask for prayer.

“Rev. Casimier is a very extraordinary man,” Addison said. “A lot of ministers guide you spiritually. He guides you emotionally too.”

The loquacious Casimier is amply aware of his own virtues. Why, some worshipers are healed of their medical ailments merely by entering his pink brick and stucco sanctuary, he says.

“I have the gift of laying hands, and others get healed in the name of Jesus,” the 65-year-old preacher said. “I’ve been hit over six times in automobiles and not been scratched one time. I have a special angel watching over me. I might be in the market shopping, and in front of me cans just start falling off the shelf to make me aware that my angel is around.”

Casimier laughs; he is so richly blessed. He can communicate with the dead. He can make prophesy. He recounts his healing miracles by citing a “Brother Benjamin,” who fell from an eight-story building, and a “Sister Love,” who stopped by one day seeking prayers for her injured hand. Not that her hand was healed--it wasn’t.

But unexpectedly, Sister Love regained the sight in her blind eye.

Casimier does not know where these beneficiaries have gone. Crowds have dwindled. Fewer than a dozen worshipers show up most Sundays.

The city has grown rougher over the years. Youths on the street are hostile when the pastor tells them they are bound for hell. On a night in August, an armed intruder tried to grab Casimier’s wallet after breaking into his secure apartment complex near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The pastor dropped to the concrete, spinning wildly to keep his wallet out of reach, before the gunman finally fled, shooting and killing a young woman just outside the apartment gates.

“I was rolling like a top on that concrete and putting the name of Jesus on him,” Casimier said. “By the grace of God, and with those (police) sirens coming too, he left running.

“That’s the power of Jesus. I’m a miracle to be alive.”

A Sanctuary for Reflection and Rest

Just seven worshipers grace the tattered green pews of Hosanna Community Church. Although that is a considerable improvement over a prior Sunday, when his 8-year-old nephew represented the entire congregation, the Rev. Hobbs is disappointed.

In spite of all his solicitations a few nights ago on the streets, not a single prostitute has kept her vow to attend the services.

Ascending the pulpit in flowing blue robes, Hobbs preaches on the evils of broken promises. The tail end of his sermon is interrupted by a disoriented transient who wanders in, his pants unzipped and nearly falling down.

Climbing down to pray for him, Hobbs implores God to “cast out (his) demonic spirits, cast them to the pits of hell.” The man, who calls himself Clarence Butts Jr., is a 49-year-old drug addict. When he notices that people are leaving, an intense fear fills his eyes.

“It looks like everything’s closing down,” the transient says desperately. “Everyone’s going away.”

“God ain’t going away,” Hobbs says with a grin.

And so the days come and go. On another night, the church becomes a haven for two prostitutes trying to go straight. With nowhere else to stay, Donna and Charlene pull bedding from a closet to sleep on the pews.

It is nearly midnight. Hobbs waits for them to settle in while leafing through his Bible, talking about the seven years he worked as a pimp, how he used to cruise Sunset Boulevard in a white Mercedes-Benz. He came to care deeply for the restless souls who sell their bodies to support their drug habits.

“If you’ve never been around it, you couldn’t deal with (them),” Hobbs says. “They’ll spot you right off . . . and they won’t listen to the Gospel from you.”

That has become Hobbs’ burden, his labor of love. Almost invariably, the women he brings in later drift away, but he is there to welcome them back--any time, and without admonishments.

“He doesn’t care how we’re dressed, hooker clothes or whatever,” says Donna, 38, whose satin blouse exposes scars on her neck and arms left by a man who, she says, tried to kill her. “His attitude . . . is like, ‘The Lord loves you anyway.’ ”

Charlene, 39, a doe-eyed woman in tights, longs to be with her children. One is grown, and the other four are in foster homes. She confesses that she hates the streets, but cannot seem to break away.

“It seems like Satan works on you 10 times as hard,” she says, her voice cracking. “Problems start happening. You have more awareness. Like before, I never worried about my kids that much--I was always high. Now, when I’m sober, I worry about my kids. . . .”

She breaks off, tears spilling down.

Donna begins to cry too. “It’s a daily battle,” she says. “Every day. Every minute. We’re doing it right here.”

In the nights ahead, those emotions would pass and each woman would be back out on the boulevard, waiting for strangers, changing their cash for crack cocaine. But for a few hours, at least, they would sleep secure in this tiny house of the Lord, under the big white cross that Hobbs keeps on the wall, encircled by his hand-painted inscription:

“The light shineth in darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.”

Next: The Struggle to Survive