MILWAUKEE A midnight quest for saving souls

A pastor with a dark past now ministers on the streets.
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
MILWAUKEE -- The Rev. David King hasn't budged from his plan to walk the streets in the neighborhood where shots were just fired, witnessing to anyone out at the midnight hour.
He can't wait.
"I love it when they shoot," says the Rev. Mr. King, a lean man of 6-foot-4, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.
Mr. King calls them his "midnight raids," a ritual until the cold weather chases folks indoors. Every Friday, as long as the skies aren't stormy, Mr. King and a small group of followers hit the streets for an hour or two, bringing the word of God to the kids out partying, to the men and women drinking on porches or hustling to drug houses.
Late, Mr. King says, is when the devil gets busy. Late is when folks don't expect to run into a minister.
And there's a more personal reason to be ministering at midnight. The pastor finds himself staring into young faces that remind him of his own that became so haunted that at 2 a.m. one January morning, he stood on a bridge preparing to jump into the frigid Milwaukee River.
Uncertainty of life
The way he was living carried a risk, one he'd been reminded of before. You can never be sure when you'll have to answer to God, when all the chances to change will run out on you. The end might come from a bullet; it might come from a bad heart. You might not see it coming. All you can do is be ready.
And on this recent Friday in a church called Win-a-Soul Ministries, the pastor phones the Milwaukee police to let them know the streets where church members will be ministering, in case anyone wonders what they're doing.
The neighborhoods they'll be walking -- primarily two census tracts surrounding the church -- aren't the city's most dangerous, nor are they the safest (in 2002, two murders, eight rapes, 57 aggravated batteries and 95 auto thefts were recorded here).
The pastor herds a handful of others into a prayer circle, and with head bowed, he says: "As we go out into the street, we ask that you cover us in your blood. ... We ask that you be with us, that you strengthen us and guide us."
Knox and the others lift their heads.
"All right," the pastor says. "Let's rock."
The targets
Mr. King and his company go to a drug house where they had been previously, standing outside and talking to the customers. This time, they find no lights on inside and no one waiting outside. Mr. King looks almost disappointed. No souls to save.
Later that night, the pastor urges a young woman on Burleigh Street to fight off the temptation to get high.
"I don't think she enjoyed it after we talked," Mr. King says.
Still later, Mr. King spots a young man sitting by himself and takes a seat beside him. Nineteen-year-old Edward Phillips admits, "I don't go to church too much."
Mr. King gets down to business: "Aren't you tired of your lifestyle? It might not be a bad lifestyle, but without Jesus ..."
The pastor keeps after Phillips, offering his past as proof that change is possible. Mr. King describes how he kept drinking and using drugs even after he returned to church. Then he finally found God and gave up the drinking and drugs "to be the father God wants me to be, the husband God wants me to be, the man God wants me to be."
After 30 minutes, Phillips agrees to accept Christ.
"Yesterday," he says, "I did something I said I'd never go back to doing." The guilt is overwhelming; he cannot bring himself to say what he did.
"You got a fresh start," Mr. King tells him.
King's harsh past
For two years starting at the age of 9, Mr. King says, he was sexually abused by several men. He didn't tell his parents. He started smoking marijuana and crack. He fathered four children by two women. He would later write, "I was full of darkness."
Then his brother John died of a heart attack during a basketball game at age 24. Then Mr. King's wife left.
That was how Mr. King came to be on the bridge early Jan. 4, 1992. He was crying. When he looked into the water, he saw faces: his four daughters. He could not take his own life.
Instead, he took a bus to the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex and checked himself in. After he left, he went to church. On New Year's Eve, 1993, Mr. King, who had become a church deacon, asked God to forgive him. A few months later, Mr. King preached his first sermon.
New church, new idea
In November 1998, he started his church in Milwaukee. Win-a-Soul Ministries occupied a former bar with holes in the roof and floor. Sometimes, there were no more than a handful of people in the pews.
In the middle of a service in 2000, an idea came to him -- "God just put it on my heart," he would say -- and right there in church he told the congregation.
The Lord, he said, wants us to go out at midnight. They would walk the streets, witnessing to people and singing praise to God.
Mr. King looked into the eyes of his congregation. They seemed to be thinking: We're going to do what?
From the beginning, the pastor showed no fear. In three years of midnight raids, no one has ever taken a shot at him or made a threat.
The souls he saves at midnight may show up at other churches Sunday, or slide back into old ways.
"As long as we get just one," he says, "we've been successful."
In the last two years, Mr. King has broadened his work, helping to open three justice centers in Milwaukee, one-stop social service agencies that have provided food for nearly 1,000 people, jobs for more than 400 and places to live for about 100.