Behind The Pavement Prophet
A vignette of a Bristolian street preacher
He was applying lip balm when I first approached him; after an hour of pacing back and forth, with his hands behind his back, clutching a small leather bound bible. While he preached he kept his head tilted up. He spoke with volume, a rising and falling tone, words seemingly directed at no-one but whoever happened to hear. He occupied a spot on the edge of Bristol’s shopping district, surrounded by towering retail, his walking line set in the middle of a rectangular space. Benches at either side, he always begun at midday, hoping to catch people on their lunch break. It seemed an appropriate place to preach anti-materialistic ideas; maybe to address those who shop to fill a void- a void that Jesus could fill.
A common religious street presence would be that of the Jehovah Witnesses. They stand beside their portable bookshelves, quietly smiling, waiting to be approached. Their outreach methods are in contrast to Tony’s; who appears to ignore those who pass, and instead allows his voice to bellow. He improvises, momentum in his sentences, as he attempts to connect the epic of the bible to our every day struggles. He produces metaphor after metaphor to illustrate how the Kingdom of Heaven works, what we must do to grant ourselves entry, and what sin is to God. It’s peculiar to see such bold performance without an audience, the most frequent acknowledgement coming from smirking teenagers passing by.
Tony is over six foot tall, large physique, and wears dark jeans, boots, with a chequered shirt unbuttoned at the top. He has an approachable, oval shaped face, with glasses. When he finished preaching I walked up to him and explained what I was doing. He heard me out with a patient, reassuring smile- there was a warmth to him. He spent another quarter of an hour telling me more about the bible, how there was a depth to each of us that we don’t see reflected in the mirror, and that it wasn’t a coincidence that my name was a biblical name. The way he spoke had direction, he wasn’t preaching anymore but he still had a rhythm. He agreed to let me write about him, with an interview at some point, and we exchanged numbers. During the following weeks the date was set; I was to attend one of their Sunday gatherings.
Sixty now, Tony migrated from Jamaica to Bristol at the age of nine. With no father around he was raised in a household of women. His family were Jehovah witnesses, but he wasn’t all that interested in religion during his youth, always finding some excuse to evade Sunday service. Although, he greatly admired his Grandmother; she was kind and committed to her faith. “My grandmother who I grew up with was a very nice person- and I mean really nice, you know? She was a Christian as you would say. She lived it, she didn’t just speak it. She lived it.”
When working out which service I was going to attend I spoke to a Pastor Bruce. As we arranged when I’d be picked up, he insisted that he give me an introduction to the Gospel, I assumed to give context to the upcoming Sunday. At times during that hour-long phone call he’d get audibly excited to share particular passages with me. Even though he had been studying these scriptures for decades the fire for what truth he found in them was still there. It was also Pastor Bruce who picked me up on the morning of that Sunday. White hair with pale complexion, he had a square head and shoulders with a hawklike face, the suit making him look like a hearse driver. On the journey over he shared testimony of his life; told me of Adam’s wrong doing, the guidance in the bible, and why repentance and baptism are paramount. His language was thick with phrase and vocabulary characteristic of the gospel. On our way we picked up Tony, who lives with Pastor Bruce, who loaded bags of equipment into the boot. Pastor Bruce continued his talk in the same intensity, while Tony sat quietly in the back.
Tony had only been born-again for around three years, and it had been his most significant spiritual shift yet. He had been attending church before that, but became disillusioned when he felt they didn’t really know the bible. Then, while on his way to fix his bicycle, he chanced upon Pastor Bruce and a group from a different church in town. They prayed for him then, and an unfamiliar physical sensation came over him. This set him on his route of baptism, repentance, and the intense study of the scriptures that comes with being evangelical. There was a core transformation, which altered his mindset considerably. “That person, I’ve been delivered from. That person is gone- and I don’t want to go back to him.”
Becoming ‘born-again’, is when someone experiences a ‘spiritual rebirth’, in which there is a regeneration of the human spirit through the holy spirit. When Christians mention the ‘holy spirit’, they are referring to the doings of God, as a spirit, on earth. The ‘born-again’ term is particularly used in Evangelicalism.
Evangelicalism isn’t a denomination, but a movement within Protestant Christianity.(Not to be confused with ‘evangelism’ which means to publicly preach the gospel) The historian David Bebbington provides four components which help sum up how the movement is distinguished. One of those is ‘conversionism’, in which a person must make significant change in their behaviour, and steer away from sin. The initiative is marked by baptism, a declaration of faith in Christ, and admission of the immoral life they had lead with the intention to change for the better, which is called ‘repentance’.
At college, Tony studied Engineering, mainly because he thought it sounded good. He passed the course but despite his efforts, his search for work was fruitless. One time in town, he stumbled across a recruitment office for the RAF. A career in the military was contrary to his nature, he would never have chosen it. But his situation was dire, so he enrolled. He specialised in electronic communications and spent ten years in the RAF. His profession required a strong understanding of both logic and scientific methodology, which would typically be the two things someone would use to challenge a fundamental belief in the bible. This coexistence in his world view shows how spirituality to some is much less tangible than our immediate reality.
After driving south, through unfamiliar suburbs, we arrived at The Park Community Centre. We picked up a key from reception and walked through a school-like building, out into a courtyard, and then back into a ground floor building where their space was. It was about as big as a classroom, with basic kitchen facilities in the corner, and stacked chairs and tables. Pastor Bruce and I began to put out rows of seating while Tony begun setting up electronic equipment in the corner. Today’s gathering was going to be streamed to Youtube for whoever couldn’t attend, which included a Sister Debree, who lived in America. The way of life encouraged by the bible may be conservative, but this body seemed quite comfortable to take advantage of contemporary tech. Missionaries of previous eras would never have imagined the word of God would be spread with tools such as live-streaming. When I say I’m impressed at them keeping with the times, Tony said something along the lines of it ‘making sense’, that after-all, God invented the internet. When I looked at him, the smile on his face told me he was joking, and I couldn’t help but grin back. When we finished arranging the chairs, there were two groups of seating facing a wall where a projector screen stood, with a gap in between them acting as an isle. I took my seat at the back and waited.
Nowadays, Tony writes and publishes articles on the internet, which he then receives advertising money from Google. He concentrates on the health market, in a niche aspect called ‘embarrassing health conditions’. Finding out he was a writer, I was curious to hear what he read, hoping to get an idea of what interested him outside of his faith. “The Bible. Just the bible. If I look at the newspaper it’s to read the sports section.” He let out a giggle with this confession. At first I thought this sort of isolation could leave you vulnerable to being disconnected from society. But it actually makes sense, if you want to become more focussed on something, then you might try to reduce what you consider distractions. In his life before he consumed a range of media, and partook in many ‘worldly’ activities. “I was a man of the world, you are a man of the world, because you are not born again. So as a man of the world I was more into my comic books, movies, fast cars, loose women, um — you name it! Worldly in all of it, in everything.” The idea is to instead shift your attention to what is ‘heavenly’. “When you’re born again, you’re desiring to get away from that, leading a different life completely.”
The second of the four aspects of evangelicalism, is ‘biblicism’. This means a strong emphasis on using the bible, both the Old and New Testament, as a point of reference for how they should live. Thorough learning of the bible is seen as a sure route to further understanding of God, Jesus, and man’s mission. Unlike other sects of Christianity that would put experience, interpretation by the Church, or reason at the forefront.
After a short while, people begun to arrive. The first was another pastor, who after saying hello went over to help Tony in the corner. Next was a Pastor Francis, a black man in his 70s, short with lean build, wearing a well-fitted suit with slightly pointed black shoes. He had an intensity to his eyes, and I got the impression he had the most authority in this body, by the way he was treated during the day. While Tony continued setting up, Pastor Bruce took his place a few rows across from me, and begun to preach. He closed his eyes, gently begun to swing from side to side, chin slightly tilted up with his arms wide, palms open. “…for that is the whole purpose of man; to be transferred from the kingdom of sin to the kingdom of God.” After a few minutes, Pastor Francis joined him, taking his place in the other group of chairs. They would take turns preaching, and while the other spoke the other would every so often drop an “hallelujah”, “thank you Jesus”, “Jesus is lord”. At high points Pastor Bruce would do a few hops, his torso loose. “thank you Jesus because you are good and you do good…” This scene continued for some time, and while I was looking at the back of Pastor Francis, my eyes drifted to the view over his shoulder and out of the window; in the courtyard a group dressed in neon-gym wear lifted kettle bells in the heat of the sun.
Over the next half an hour, people arrived in ones, twos, and threes- as the pastors continued their thing. I realised that Pastor Bruce hadn’t opened his eyes for a while. I tried to imagine what sort of meditative state he’d slipped into. Another ten minutes of preaching and they concluded with “All God’s people say, amen and hallelujah.”
The service seemed to candidly pick up pace. The structure shifting between preaching, gospel singing, and sermon, as more people arrived. Apart from the Pastors, people dressed casually. The only conformity was that the women covered their hair with headscarfs, but the headscarfs were of all different kinds of thread, colour, and pattern. The title of the songs were projected onto the screen, sometimes including the chorus, but it seemed that most of them knew the songs well. They really took ownership, people singing their own parts, some wandered around the room slowly not confined to their seats, an apparent freedom of expression. What must now be a group of around thirty, created a lovely harmony, and I was moved by the extent that they seemed to let themselves go. Every now and then someone would shout a line of the song, which added texture to the noise, and came across as heartfelt and raw. This environment seemed nurture a place where people feel comfortable to let go on inhibitions, contrary to the self-control required to lead a life ‘free from sin’.
“NOT MY WILL LORD,
BUT YOUR WILL LORD,
LET YOUR WILL BE DONE.”
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“JESUS CONQUERED SATAN,
JESUS CONQUERED DEMONS,
JESUS CONQUERED PRINCIPALITIES,
JESUS CONQUERED POWERS…”
(This one was much more catchy than it looks on paper.)
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“I GIVE THANKS UNTO YOU LORD,
FOR YOU ARE GOOD, YOU ARE GOOD,
FOR YOU’RE MERCY ENDURES FOREVERMORE.”
The central themes in all the songs were basically;: how grateful they were, the extent of their love, as well as submission. I’m not sure whether that makes writing songs like that easier or harder.
During song an elderly lady with a white headscarf, sand coloured linen jacket, and a long floral dress occupied a space at the back of the isle. She whooshed the air slowly with her arms wide, reaching up with a gentle smile on her face. A mother in front of me put out a ‘beginners bible’ for her child in case she wanted a child-friendly scripture. On the front cover were colourful cartoon biblical characters, looking much like the cast of a sitcom. Children were allowed to run free and were not scolded for making noise. Most of them seemed to be as swept up with it all as the adults were. One kid took the open bible off a pastor’s chair and legged it, with the expression on his face as if he’d only just discovered what it was like to be mischievous. Although, he was surrounded by people who believed he was born with that mischief.
When I asked Pastor Bruce how people became Pastors, he told me that God chose his ‘shepards’. Although, I have since found adverts on the internet for pastoral positions, and it appears there is a job description like any other. It became typical for Pastor Bruce to answer my questions in these unhelpful but simultaneously revealing terms. The role of the pastor can vary from church to church, but it usually involves being a leader, both by example and pragmatically. They lead service and worship, conducting sermon and bible teaching. They are also there to provide counsel to those who need it, and therefore it’s important for them to know and understand the bible intimately. On top of this, there is likely administrative work to be dealt with.
One of the features of a gathering like this was ‘vision interpretation’. The pastors are there to provide their interpretation skills to help them understand the meaning. On this Sunday there were two visions shared. The first was an image of someone falling off a cliff, and there was a hand reaching down from above the cliff as if to save them. There was a back-an-forth about the specifics to whether the person was falling or whether they were holding on to the cliff. The second vision was of a branch, and again the Pastor would fire a few questions about whether it was a branch on it’s own, or whether you could see it attached to the tree. To explain the meaning he would find a passage in the bible, so in the case of the branch, he found a passage that figuratively used trees to convey an idea. Just before the second vision interpretation, he sat with his eyes closed in his chair, slightly leant forward, and whispered again and again ‘‘Thank you Jesus… Thank you Jesus…’’.
“I never wanted to do it. When I was worldly, before I was born again, me doing this? I would have laughed in your face.” It was a vision that prompted Tony take up evangelism. “One day someone had a vision for me. In the vision they saw me as the town cryer, I was standing in the middle of the town, a scroll was up in front of me like this, and I was reading from it.” This was then interpreted that he must go out into the street and preach the gospel. He wasn’t at all thrilled by this as he never considered himself a public speaker and the thought of it terrified him. But when Pastor Francis asked him to come down to the Broadmead Tesco, he didn’t want to say no.
Pastor Francis supported him on his first day, and preached for the first twenty minutes, while Tony handed out flyers, dreading his turn. Then, Pastor Francis stopped, looked over to Tony and nodded. “So I open my mouth and this noise came out like you wouldn’t believe. This huge booming voice, never had it before in my entire life, and it made sense.” Something came out of him which he believes was channeled from somewhere else. “The voice was speaking, and I’m listening to my own voice, and what it was riffing- I don’t riff, I’m not a riffer I’m a writer, I don’t speak publicly, I don’t- If you said to me, be the best man at my wedding I’d say can you find somebody else. That’s what I’d be thinking, I’d never say it to your face. I’m not a speaker, I don’t do that- but here I was riffing.” He laughs at the absurdity. “When it was over, I said to myself ‘I’m not doing any more of that, that’s too much’. I was back the next day doing it anyway.” Laughing again. “Day after that, day after that, day after that. The fear comes and it goes, because you’re afraid of people; they curse you, they yell at you, they say very unkind things to you- and after a while you’re convinced they’re not even listening to you anyway, then you just go home. Then one day the Lord said to me, in my spirit, ‘They hear ever word you say. Every single word. they can pretend they don’t hear it, but they hear it’. I was very blessed by that, and it changed everything, and now when I speak, I see people listening. They’re pretending, they got their backs to me, and they’re not moving, but they don’t want to be seen listening because it’s embarrassing. But I see them, and I know they’re listening.”
Tony takes the ground, and after muttering something purposeful, he bellowed “The Steadfast love of the lord never ceases!”. With this they all burst back into it as they clocked which song he’d gone for. Tony once had a dream in which he was lying on the floor of his bedroom, and he saw his own face in profile. Out of his mouth was shining a golden ray, as if from a spotlight, but there was an organic quality to the light, he could see things moving in it. He also admitted that he was snoring, and laughs how it contrasted the graceful theme. The golden beam disappeared into the ceiling and from it he heard a deep male voice, speaking in a melodious fashion, in a language he didn’t recognise. The next morning he had an itch in his throat, and this itch lingered for weeks to come. He thought he had a flu coming on, but as time went on he noticed that his singing voice had changed. Tony usually sings to himself, either in private or to sooth himself when he’s worried, and he could tell that there was a different quality to his voice. He also attributes the voice he has for preaching to this dream. There is a difference between dreams and visions, but all dreams in the bible are prophetic. It’s peculiar happenings like this, the gift of a new voice, that is a part of Tony’s spiritual experience.
When he explained his relationship with singing, and how he uses it to calm himself, I remembered that when he was gathering his bags just before we went into Cafe Nero for the interview, he was singing gently. This is the first vulnerability I saw in him. Admission of a past that one is not proud of isn’t the same as indication of being anxious in that moment.
Later on Pastor Francis turned his attention to the feed chat, where people were requesting blessing as well as acknowledgement of suffering. “Repentance for my grandfather who is inflicted with a number of illnesses…”. Modern technology allows the smallest church to televise gathering and sermon, and interact with their viewership.
The largest concentration of evangelicals are in the USA, making up for a quarter of their population. Some pastors rise to celebrity-level following, from which they start their own churches. Selling out massive venues, you can watch full length sermons on Youtube, in which the comments are filled with heartfelt admiration. The wisdom, character, and ability to communicate tends to be called ‘prophetic talent’. The scale of this religious-industry seems to distinguish itself from traditional modes of church attendance. Tony used to watch sermon by an international bible teacher by the name of Derek Prince, an Englishman who moved to America. The videos of his are from the 80s and 90s, and being Pentecostal he talks at length about demons, exorcisms, and miracle healing. The rhetoric of Prince in some sense rooted the interest that would then flourish into Tony’s joining of the church he is now with.
The day continued with Sermon, one in which pastor Bruce enthusiastically highlighted the absurdity of leading a sinful life when Jesus has already paid for your sins, and how it would be equally absurd to pay for your shopping twice. Before that he had been listing the things Jesus shed his blood for; you, me, and everyone you love and care about. This lines up with the third characteristic of Bebbington’s distinction; ‘crucicentrism’, the focus on Jesus’ sacrifice; He died on the cross for our sake, and that gesture provides reconciliation between man and God, in which our sin is pardoned and we have the opportunity to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Tony, having spent a large part of the day slouched over the laptop, checking the stream, adjusting the webcam, now takes the stage again. With kind words he introduced me to the body, and encouraged them to join him in prayer, to wish my success as a journalist. He said he hoped that one day he would see me on the BBC, reporting from some part of the world, and that of course, he hoped I would find Jesus. I wasn’t sure how to feel, the act of praying doesn’t hold much weight in my reality, but I decided it was coming from a good place, and therefore a nice gesture. I remembered being baffled by the intense certainty I saw in Tony’s face when later he said “James- things are going to change for you.”
The day was rounded up with something they call ‘food and fellowship’, which is pretty much lunch. A small buffet of home cooked food was laid out and we all sat down at a long table. Feeling exhausted from the day I was grateful for the sustenance, and wanting to thank the cooks I asked Pastor Bruce who made it. “The women bring the food, and the men bring the drinks.” Then he added, “But I’m sure if the men were asked to make the food, then we would.” The drinks in this case, were two types of squash.
We also celebrated one of the children’s birthday’s, with a few verses of a Jesus-riddled version of Happy Birthday. While I gobbled down my slice of supermarket cake, Pastor Bruce took this opportunity to ask me the solemn question; “Do you know what sin is?”. He then patiently explained- using the bible- his understanding of it. This was followed by an engagement from Pastor Francis who was sat on my left, the sharply dressed Elder of the church. After wiping his mouth and hands with a napkin he presented me with some well polished arguments for why it made unequivocal sense to give up your life to God’s will. He said all this with the neutral confidence of someone who hadn’t had his mind changed for decades. These attempts to show me what they saw repeatably fell flat, no matter how open minded I was trying to be, simply because we did not agree on founding premises. It made me wonder what the required traits were for a person to be more receptive than me.
The last trait to help us categorise Evangelicals is ‘activism’. Unlike other sects of Christianity when someone’s faith may be a more personal and reserved existence, being evangelical means you’re likely to take proactive stance to not only spread the gospel and the teachings of Jesus, but actually try to transform society. Something that astounded me about Tony is the amount of time and energy he was willing to give up if he was given the opportunity to raise awareness about the message in the bible.
Tony had discovered new parts of himself through this rebirth; he found out he could preach, something he never would imagined himself capable of. With new confidence in singing he now truly embraces doing it with others, which is an activity unlike anything else. More importantly, he feels he’s a more patient, compassionate person, with less resentment and anger bubbling below. We all rely on certain idea-sets to rein in unhelpful judgement we may put on others, and the overlap between me and Tony is that sometimes it comes down to: it’s not my place to decide other people’s worth.
My hope was that I would walk away from this article with a better understanding of why people have faith when there is a considerable amount of reason to doubt. I was sure that spending some time with Tony and his church would provide at least some explanation for how fully functional members of society can maintain such an outlook. Although it still baffles me, I do better understand what keeps people on the road to Jesus; focus, direction, answers, and a narrative for the world which speaks in simpler and more wholesome terms. For Tony, he is more at peace with himself. He accepts his past, believes redemption is possible. The act of preaching isn’t easy, especially in a scene disinterested in his rhetoric, but I imagine this only adds meaning, as Jesus’s road was one of adversity too.
I asked Tony what were the highlights of his time preaching. “You. You think I’m joking- for you this is an interview, for me it’s a blessing. Because no matter what you say, what you believe- you know more about Christ than you have ever known. You know more about Christ than most Christians do, because you talked to us. Will you come back to me born again? I don’t know. Forty years from now? Forty days? I have no idea, but I do know you’re a blessing.” — “For you this is an exercise in journalism, but you don’t know there’s more to it then that- but you will, sooner or later.” He laughed with a knowing smile on his face. Again, I’m left stunned by his surety.
