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.