The Sunday Times reports…
“Perth transforms itself from Dullsville to Godsville every Friday night as bellowing evangelists flock to the busy city centre to praise the Lord and try to convert shoppers.
The Murray St mall turns into a mini Bible belt, and Hare Krishna followers often add to the open-air church atmosphere, parading through the CBD chanting, banging drums and ringing bells.
Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi has adopted a live-and-let-live approach.
“The City of Perth is and always will be welcome to all people,” she said. “People are free to ignore or engage with any groups who are in and around our city.”
Not everyone agrees with her philosophy. Merchant Coffee House assistant manager Jaina Sun said: “I don’t like them hanging around. It is bad for business and intimidates customers.”
Friday night preacher Rob Ferguson, 31, of Armadale, recently left a Baptist church and, like many others in the mall, is no longer associated with an established church.
He claimed most of the people preaching in the mall had left denominational churches because they no longer accurately preached the Gospels.
He described his preaching as a “normal Christian doing his obligated duties” and was open to others with a non-evangelical message to speak.
“Warren”, of Byford, is another unattached agent of God.
“I’m not here for the money and getting people to my church,” he said. “I’m not here for any of that, just to preach about Christ and the Bible.”
Standing on his one-step podium, Bible in hand, he shouted: “I’m a Christian and I’ve got things to tell you about God.” His warnings of death and heavenly judgment quickly drew a crowd of about 50, who yelled a mixture of abuse and support. Teenagers giggled.
Regular Friday night shopper Sharon Lyster said she was not impressed by all the soapbox evangelism. She said she witnessed an argument in the mall several months ago between a man on a box and a member of the public that was “a bit much”.
Farther east in the mall, more Christians use an amplified accordion and singing with guitars to tune the public to God.
“If I was sitting having a coffee I wouldn’t hang around,” Ms Lyster said.
Osborne Park shopper Tony Lynch, 64, was dismissive of the hymn-singing.
“It can be bloody annoying and hell for the retailers,” he said.
Rangers asked five-year mall preaching veteran and accordion player Kevin Horst, his wife and their friends whether they had a valid busking licence.
“It needed renewing,” Mr Horst said. “There’s a new system we didn’t know about.”
But Liberty Christian Centre member Rocky Cardillo said: “We’ve been here for years and never been asked.”
Thornlie Bible reader and weekly city shopper James Grieves, 21, asked what right the evangelists had to preach on the street.
“Warren” retorted: “If the public don’t want to listen, they can walk on. That’s the beautiful thing about freedom.”
Thank God it’s Friday
Some of the religious groups in the mall on Friday night:
Victory Life Church, an evangelical church based in Osborne Park that says it is training “an army of people who know they are in Christ”. Former tennis great and pastor Margaret Court is one of its leaders.
Applecross Liberty Christian Centre, led by Pastor Rocky Cardillo.
The Without Wall Ministry, which holds weekly “Revival Fire Meetings” in North Perth.
Potter’s House Church of Australia, which has about 500 WA members. Its seven-strong mall contingent from the Beechboro church _ all men in their early 20s _ were promoting the Bible as a harbour from addiction, depression and relationship break-ups.
There is also an assortment of solo preachers. One, father-of-three Rob Ferguson, said: “The main thing we seriously believe is there is a heaven and a hell, and anyone who has broken (God’s) laws will go to hell.”
From http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,27574,25220293-2761,00.html
So assuming it was you, was the argument really ‘a bit much’?
Well, assuming it was me, it was totally too much.
What happened was, Rob Ferguson was doing his usual antagonise-the-shoppers routine on the box, and at one point he said, ‘is there anyone here who disagrees with what I’m saying?’.
Of course, silly old me puts their hand up, beginning a 10-15 minute pretty loud theological argument across the Murray St mall in front of the Friday night shoppers.
It’s hard to summarise the flow of the argument, but my main contention was with their tactic of showing people that they’re going to hell because they break the law and don’t ‘repent’.
They spend about 99 per cent of their time on that, and they’ve totally lost people with their antagonistic approach before they briefly mention the Jesus thing, and then go back to telling people what dirty rotten law-breakers they are.
I have several beefs with that.
Firstly, that by their own definition, the street preachers themselves haven’t ‘repented’ because they still sin. They’re still arrogant (or to use the biblical word ‘haughty’) they gossip (they were gossiping about me among themselves, for example) they were being untruthful about some other things when questioned, etc. So they might not do sex,drugs, rock ‘n roll etc, but they’re still filled with pride, arrogance..blah, blah, blah, all the ‘godly’ sins in street-preacher circles.
They do eventually admit that they still sin, when you push them on this. So, I pushed him about it in front of the crowd; his judgemental attitude to the shoppers when he was still just as much as a sinner as when he supposedly ‘repented’ of sin.
My reading of the bible is that one is justified by faith and undeserved grace alone (because we are unable to follow the law, even after ‘repentence’) and any works we may do is a response to that faith but cannot contribute to our salvation (our ‘righteousness’ is like filthy rags..yarda yarda yarda)
What was amusing was when I initially put my hand up ..I was among the crowd and there were all these other spectactors around me, and about 5 minutes into the argument, I was standing alone in the middle of the mall arguing with this bloke with everybody watching the action. Everybody else had basically said to themselves…’you’re on your own here mate’.
People seemed transfixed on the argument because someone was actually bothering to take one of these guys ..using theology, not just the usual heckling.
But that someone in the crowd thought it was ‘a bit much’ wouldn’t surprise me, particularly someone who didn’t have a clue what on earth we were going on about.
I’ve stopped and listened to these preachers in the mall a few times, with half an intent to write up something here about it, but The Sunday Times beat me to it.
I also had a lively discussion one Friday night in there with a Potter’s House pastor who was leading an ‘outreach’ (singing/shouting at people/more singing). Curious as to what his policy was…I pushed him on the ‘gay thing’, and he said that my problem was that I wasn’t married.
I said to him that Paul had viewed marriage as a second-best option and that he’d wished everyone was unmarried like him.
The pastor said, ‘well, Paul had problems’.
I wonder if his congregation knows that he views Paul in such a dim light.
I’ve heard about it…but this was the first time I’d personally encountered this ‘you must be married’ pressure from a pastor and I just thought….’you dickhead’….