news-record.com

REIDSVILLE — On one side of the busy downtown street, hell-and-brimstone preachers raise their voices and their Bibles, trying to save souls on the sidewalk.

On the other side of the street, a group of downtown Reidsville merchants is passing around a petition. They want the preachers gone.

It’s been this way on Scales Street every mid-day Saturday for four months in the rural town of around 15,000 people, just north of Greensboro. And so it was this weekend.

The pavement-pounding preachers are from Victory Baptist Church in nearby Ruffin, and they stick out on the street corner like a penny plopping in the collection plate.

“Repent, for the wage of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus,” shouted Tim Bibee, who admits he’s loud. He calls it “God-given volume.”

Ignoring the smattering of merchants observing from a distance, he waved his arms and his well-worn, King James Bible in the air, throwing his whole body into his delivery, while two fellow preachers, sitting on a brick wall, chorused “amens” and chanted “preach it brother, preach it.”

The three preachers, wearing T-shirts and jeans in the summerlike heat, range in age from late 20s to early 40s.

They took turns preaching and praying. Two other teenagers handed out Bible tracts in the small city-owned pocket park backed by a large, wall mural honoring the town’s tobacco and railroad history.

Across the road, standing in front of his store, Reidsville Bicycles, owner Bill Davis said he is praying, too. “I’m praying they won’t be here next week,” he said.

He’s gone so far as to stand in front of his shop holding up a sign that reads: “I’m sick of you.” And a week ago, Davis said, he got nose-to-nose with one of the preachers, shouting at him, telling the preacher that he is disturbing the peace.

“He just kept preaching like he was oblivious to me,” Davis said.

On Saturdays past, Davis has also cranked up his radio and tried to drown them out. The police stopped that. Another merchant set off his car alarm to disrupt them.

On Saturday, Davis started circulating the petition that he plans to take to the Reidsville City Council in a few weeks. It asks the council to curtail the preaching that he says disrupts business, causes a safety hazard to traffic and intimidates pedestrians and shoppers.

“My personal perspective is that they have every right to do that. But they don’t have a right to disturb the peace,” Davis said.

City Clerk Angela Stadler said the preachers do have a right to preach on the city’s sidewalks. City code does not address street preaching, and they don’t need a permit she said. As long as they don’t block the sidewalk or a business, obstruct traffic, or amplify their voices, they don’t need permission to do what they’re doing, she said.

In an interview at their church last week, the preachers addressed the criticism.

“We’ve done everything she’s (Stadler) told us to do,” Jeff Kaylor said.

“Jesus said for us to obey the law of the land, so we have to be legal,” Bibee said.

Scott Heffner, pastor of Victory Baptist, said he encourages members to go out and preach. They also preach a few miles south of downtown, near the intersection of Richardson Drive and Scales Street.

Heffner started Victory Baptist seven years ago with two couples and a senior citizen. Now they have 200 worshipping each Sunday in a prefabricated metal building on Oregon Hill Road. They also operate a school and a Bible institute, which Heffner said soon will become an accredited Bible college.

He said the street preaching is “old-time preaching.”

Steve Moore, who owns Southern Screen Printing, across from the park where they preach, calls it something else: annoying. He says several times they’ve told him he’s going to Hell as he’s walked past. Some people cross the street to avoid them.

Mary Nahas of the nearby Downtown Crafter’s Mall said the loud preaching is driving her customers away.

“I think there are better ways to reach people,” Nahas said. “It gives Christians a bad name.”

By the end of the 50-minute preaching session Saturday, 11 people had signed Davis’s petition.

Mae Neal, who owns S&E Beauty Academy, across the street from the preachers, didn’t sign.

“If they’re doing what God told them to do, who are we to talk against it?” she said.

Observing from a distance, James Festerman, the mayor of Reidsville, said there’s very little the city can do.

“They have a constitutional right, and I’m not going to suppress anyone’s rights,” he said.

As the preaching came to an end, three passers-by had stopped to listen, including Judith Moore, who said, “They tore down the walls of Jericho.”

“If the sinner is not going to church, we’ll come to the sinner,” Bibee said. And that’s why he’s not budging.

“A tree doesn’t give up and walk off. It’s planted,” Heffner said.

And so, he said, are the street preachers.

Contact Myla Barnhardt at 336-627-1781, Ext. 116, or at myla.barnhardt@news-record.com