Here's a guy who isn't afraid to live the New Testament.

[_Molok]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 3.DTL&ao=1

Ten-thirty p.m. in East Oakland. Sirens and gunshots, the soundtrack of this stretch of Fruitvale Avenue, punctuate the air. Dozens of homeless people are gathered beneath a street lamp - some in wheelchairs, some drunk, some ranting furiously to themselves.

Then the Preacherman appears.

Everything stops.

"What are we here for, brothers and sisters?" the 39-year-old man with the neatly trimmed beard calls out quietly as he takes a spot beneath the lamp. He slowly pulls a small Bible from the pocket of his paint-spattered sweatshirt.

"To pray with you," a few call back. "Thank God you're here," others say. Some bow their heads and clench their eyes shut. Most simply stand and wait, silent.

"Amen," the Preacherman says. He opens the book.

And then, for the next half hour, there is church in the street at the corner of Foothill and Coolidge, where the homeless and even many criminals don't usually hang out this late at night.

The Preacherman is Vincent Pannizzo, but most who come to his sermons don't know his name. Or that he was working on a doctorate at UC Berkeley when he dropped out nine years ago to begin preaching. Or that he comes from middle-class comfort in New Jersey, did a three-year hitch in the Army and once dreamed of being a history professor.

To his street flock, Pannizzo is simply "the Preacherman," who shows up seven nights a week, rain or not, to gently sermonize and hand out sandwiches, blankets and the few dollars he makes through day labor.

Lucid and soft-spoken, he is not mentally ill, by all accounts. Even the police and shopkeepers who monitor his comings and goings say they find this remarkable. They assumed one must be crazy to give up a promising life to sleep in homeless camps and preach to other street people in one of the most violent, impoverished stretches of East Oakland.

"I've never heard of a street preacher like him anywhere in the country," said Michael Stoops, longtime leader of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "I've often thought that if you're going to minister to the poor, you should try living like them.

"And here is a guy choosing to do just that. Amazing."

Sometimes there are 25 people to listen to Pannizzo's sermon, sometimes 50. The moment he arrives, the drinking and crack-smoking and petty shoving halt. Even the corner drug dealers stop what they're doing and watch, respectfully, from a distance.

"What is it we do for the Lord, how do we pursue his spirit?" the Preacherman called out to his flock one recent night.

"With good deeds," the 51 homeless people gathered before him said, as one.

"Lord, we will take people's abuses over and over and never react violently, ever," Pannizzo intoned, raising his Bible high.

"Amen," the crowd breathed.

"Lord, help us against the cold, the poverty, the loneliness, and keep us on the right path so we can love our brothers and sisters," he said.

One man in the crowd suddenly thrust his arms high. "I threw somebody off a balcony!" he cried. "Oh, God!"

Without missing a beat, Pannizzo reached out and grabbed one of the man's hands. "Listen to John, listen to the word," he said, voice urgent, low. The man began to cry.

After 30 minutes, Pannizzo handed out a few dollars to each - about $50 total, from a deck-rebuild job that day - blankets and food. Then the homeless disappeared to their sleeping places. Pannizzo set off for his camp.

"I don't expect people to become saints listening to me," he said as he watched his flock shuffle off. "I just hope they walk away with seeds in them that someday will flower. I want them to live better lives."

It's not the spare change or the food that draws the crowd, his followers insist. It's the message: Love each other, abandon drugs and booze, don't despair in your poverty, keep faith in God, respect authority, try to lift yourself up. Don't judge each other.

[_Buffalo]

Meanwhile, LDS apostles are cutting ribbons for new business arms of the church and traveling first class everywhere they go.