SMACK DEALER TELLS MINISTER HOW TO REACH KIDS ON STREET

A heroin dealer gave the Rev. Eugene Rivers the best reason criminals,
rather than the church, are more adept at reaching troubled kids.

"I'm there when Johnny goes out for a loaf of bread for Mama," Rivers
recalls one dealer telling him during a tour of Boston's Four Corners
neighborhood. "I'm there; you're not. It's all about being there."

"What he was saying is that the church was not out there on the streets, and
he was absolutely right," Rivers said Monday from his home in Boston. "We
had failed to be there. We had failed to do the three M's -- monitor,
minister and mentor."

A fourth M -- murder -- took hold on a Minneapolis street Sunday in a
drive-by shooting that claimed the lives of two young men.

Rivers, who made the cover of Newsweek magazine last year and is a
much-requested speaker, is in Minnesota this week at the invitation of the
Minnesota Council of Churches. He visits at a time when the Twin Cities
community should be reeling from the apparent gang-related weekend slayings.

One victim may have been as young as 13 -- about the same age as Rivers when
he joined a gang in his native Philadelphia.

"A shame," Rivers, 49, says of the shootings. "Too frequently, it takes a
tragedy to get people's attention. We need to get past the outrage stage. We
need to get sick and tired of getting sick and tired."

Rivers, a Harvard-educated minister and former gang member -- realized from
his conversations with the Boston heroin dealer that faith needed to leave
the pulpit and the pews in crime-plagued neighborhoods. It needed to hustle
for young souls on the same dangerous street corners, parks and alleys as
the drug pusher, the pimp and the gang-banger.

In 1992, Rivers helped form a church coalition that, together with Boston
police and several social service agencies, helped reduce gang-related
killings and shootings by 71 percent in recent years. It branched into an
outreach network that includes alternative sentencing programs, job training
and continuing education.

Minnesota Council of Churches member Bob Hulteen says the purpose of Rivers'
trip is to discuss a 10-point plan Boston-area churches came up with to deal
with gang violence and other social ills affecting at-risk young people,
particularly those in minority groups. The hope is that religious
denominations across Minnesota can create a similar blueprint.