A Night on the Town: Missionary-Style

First stop of the night: The Body Shop.
At Fifth Street and Broadway in Oakland, the freeway can be heard nearby. The night is clear, but crisp and most people are off of the streets. A group of people are parked right on the corner, however, and they unload what appears to be an endless supply of grocery bags brimming with food.
The county Coroner’s Office is just one of many government buildings in the area, the department of Public Health is right next door, and county probation department is just across the street to the south, and to the east is a police vehicle depot.
The streets are deserted in this part of town by 8 p.m. Except for the few night joggers getting their laps in around Lake Merritt and the stragglers who hurry home from a long day of work, the streets are mostly empty. Even the city’s homeless have found a nook or cranny to pack into for the night. Regardless of who ventures out during the twilight hours, no one stays out on the street long. Those that don’t have business to attend to dip into a nearby bar or restaurant and enjoy the cool Oakland nights in safety.
These city-owned buildings appear closed from the street, but venture into the alleyways and the life found there tells another story.
On the steps, the back doors, the loading terminals, the benches; it seems everywhere that could be remotely comfortable on the concrete has an inhabitant. The Body Shop is not merely where the dead are taken, but where the homeless go to sleep.
“Alright get me a ‘Scotty dog’ with some barbecue sauce!” Mike Mancini can be heard yelling to the remainder of the group still huddled at the parked cars. It’s Friday night and Regeneration Church is out performing its biweekly street ministry.
Scott Vorie, the progenitor of the “Scotty dog,” hands Mancini a hot dog and pours a healthy dab of sauce on it. Mancini hands the hot dog to a nearby homeless resident of the block.
Mancini walks off with the hot dog in hand and a grocery bag, he approaches a sleeping homeless man on an unlit section of the coroner’s building.
Vorie meanwhile approaches another sleeping resident of the block. He gently wakes the man up and asks him his name and if he would like something to eat.
The man responds affirmatively and responds that his name is Michael.
“Is there anything we can pray for you for, Michael?” Vorie asks after placing the bag of food at the end of the sleeping bag and giving the groggy man a hot dog.
Vorie leans over the railing to face the bundled up man, a group of fellow church members huddle behind him and on the steps close by.
After a brief prayer, Vorie hands the man a pamphlet and explains that on Sunday a hot breakfast will be waiting for him nearby at their church. He walks away, but not before asking the man if there is anyone else nearby who might be in need of food.
Street Ministry.
Food is secondary for members of Regeneration; selling the gospel to the downtrodden is their primary aim.
Tom Green, the leader of this ragtag group of missionaries explains that they use their Friday night excursions to encourage the homeless to take advantage of the church’s Sunday breakfasts which are followed by church service.
“It’s about letting them know there is hope in their lives,” Green said. “It’s not about the food. The food is just an entrance to the conversation.”
The homeless sleep just about anywhere in Oakland, but city buildings appear to be among the most popular. Regeneration began its street ministry, dubbed Crosstreets in 2001 in partnership with another church in Castro Valley.
Green runs many of the church’s operations, including its budget and sits on the council of elders, a sort of board of directors that guides church policy. He estimates that Regeneration along with another church in Castro Valley give out around 10,000 meals a year and he says that food takes up roughly two-thirds of the church’s budget.
Driving around
On any given Friday night, Regeneration’s more dedicated members pack into cars loaded up with food and their desire to preach.
They focus on three areas of Oakland: West Oakland, downtown, and East Oakland.
It’s another Friday night and another trip out into the world of the homeless. Tom Green is joined by his co-leader this time, Craig Woodworth. Woodworth is a large man with a scruffy beard. When he is speaking with the homeless, he blends right in.
A lot of newcomers tag along tonight, so Woodworth lays down some ground rules before they head off.
“You need to watch where you’re going.” He addresses the group. “And definitely do not separate. Remember, as strange as it is, you’re going into their home.”
“We’ve been doing this a long time,” Woodworth says, once he’s seated in his car, ready to go, “They’re our friends, a lot of them are our friends.”

Scott Vorie

Scott Vorie stands before a small group of men and women on a street just a few blocks east of Lake Merritt. A weathered bible lays open in his hands with tabs and markers protruding from its pages. A portable cooler with condiments dangling from the outside pocket is draped over his shoulder; inside are some two dozen hot dogs while even more are kept warm in a nearby car.

He’s wearing an Oakland A’s jersey and he stands with his legs awkwardly spaced apart as if bracing himself for the passage he’s about to read.

Vorie reads aloud a passage and the group, six men and one woman, bow their heads in prayer on the dimly lit sidewalk.

Tonight is a little different than most nights for the members of Regeneration, a new-age evangelical church located a few blocks from Oakland’s Lake Merritt. It’s only 9 p.m. and they are already heading out to spread their message. A group of high school boys are riding along tonight and they have to be home earlier than the rest of the group. Normally, the Bible reading goes well into the 10 ‘o clock hour.

Earlier in the evening, this small church east of the lake had its lights on and its door open and inside a small group of high school boys sit around a table joking and laughing.

It seemed odd that these young men would be sitting in this church given the late hour, 9 p.m., and the fact that it was a beautiful Friday night made it all the more perplexing. They were in fact waiting for other members of their congregation to finish preparing food across the street at their community center. They would be going out tonight, just not in the way one expects a teenager to at the beginning of the weekend.

Regeneration Church, a new-age, and rather new, evangelical church is situated just east of Lake Merritt in Oakland, Calif. Every other Friday night, dedicated members participate in Crosstreets, where food and gospel are distributed among Oakland’s disenfranchised. Regeneration is placed decidedly between East and West Oakland, a border that serves as a source of tension among rival gangs who fight for territory.

“It’s a way to express my faith in a real way,” Vorie explains his participation in Crosstreets.

Vorie has been with Regeneration almost since its inception in 2001. He runs a landscaping business that operates mostly in the Dublin/Pleasanton area, but still manages to make the trek to Oakland for mass on Sundays and Crosstreets.

“For me it comes down to Jesus, was he a real person? Did he exist? Did he die? For me, you have to start from there.”

Vorie has not always been as religiously devout as he is now. He grew up in nearby Fremont and said his family was never particularly religious. During college, however, Vorie saw the excesses of drinking and partying and decided that he needed something else.

Vorie first attended Regeneration after a friend recommended it to him.

“I didn’t find nothingness very attractive anymore.” Vorie said, “I guess I was searching for something more.”

The Professor

Seven blocks from Downtown Oakland the Interstate Highway 880 overpass hums with the dull roar of traffic as evening commuters head home amid the rush hour crunch. It’s only a quarter past six but the sun is already setting and the orange glow of its descent reflects off of the buildings.

The prospect of staying out after dark in a city notorious for gang violence and inner-city crime is daunting. Most people on the street appear to be hurrying to their destinations: the subway, the corner restaurant for dinner, into their apartment, anywhere presumably indoors.

Life remains, however, underneath the overpass.

The Salvation Army is directly across the street from the east side of the overpass and it too has closed its doors for the night. Across the street the underpass is fenced off, but a portion of it has been bent down where people have forced it into an entrance. Ivy drapes the fence and creeps up the cement of the freeway structure in some parts. On the bent portion of the fence the vines act almost as a cushion to the rough metal.

The silhouette of a small coffee table with a chair can be seen against the backdrop of the red taillights as commuters drive by. Maybe ten feet inside the fence; a pile of books lies on top of it. A large support beam that keeps the freeway elevated also serves as a partition from this coffee table and the “home” on the other side.

A bed, a desk, and clothing

Felix C. Williamson, better known in the neighborhood as The Professor, sits in a comfy chair in front of his desk. A burgundy sweater covers his collared shirt and red and brown tie. He face is clean shaven and a nice pair of reading glasses rest on the tip of his nose.

His eyes are focused on a blank sheet of paper and a pen is in his hand. A small portable radio, barely audible over the rumble of passing cars is tuned into talk radio. Beside him is a current issue of The New York Times and resting on a small table to his right is a mostly filled bottle of Maker’s Mark whiskey.

The Professor has lived underneath the overpass for the past five months after he was evicted from his apartment. And he’s brought his home with him. Piles of books crowd the edges of his desk: works by Jean Paul Sartre, a collection of stories by African American writers, and three dictionaries to name a few.

A comb, toothbrush, trimming scissors and other cosmetics sit in a cup on the same table as his whisky.

Williamson, 74, is by no means what one would expect to find living underneath a freeway, that much can be gathered from just looking at him. When “The Professor” speaks, however, it becomes all the more perplexing.

“The only problem I have is maintaining some sort of order around here.” Williamson said one night while looking through his books for a particular volume. “I have to concern myself with my own existence.”

The noise of traffic is deafening at first, but gradually the sounds of engines and car horns fades into background noise, an ambiance Williamson says, “you learn to ignore.”

“The Professor is not the first one to live out there,” Craig Woodworth said, a member of a local evangelist church that drives around Oakland every other Friday night to feed and pray with the homeless. “They are just 100 yards from help, it frustrates me.”

Woodworth is referring to the shelters at the Salvation Army that are just across the street from the underpass.

“He’ll talk about things in the past, but he doesn’t get to the heart. It’s essentially small talk.” Woodworth said of his many conversations with Williamson.

The Professor sits in his chair and slowly sips glass after glass of whiskey, his eyes concentrate on his work. Williamson spends his days reading and writing and on the weekends a local sheriff drives him up to San Quentin Prison where he ministers to the families of convicts.

What he does there is not certain, only that it is some form of counseling. Williamson refused to go into detail about why he goes to San Quentin, saying, “Look, I just don’t want to get into it.”

Visitors

Regeneration Church is located just four blocks south of Lake Merritt and roughly a half mile from where The Professor rests his head. Every other Friday night, members of this new-age evangelical church perform Crosstreets, a modern form of missionary work typically seen in third world countries.

“The first step is trying to get them to go to breakfast,” Woodworth said about the purpose of Regeneration’s street ministry. “A lot of them [the homeless] will say, ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ But I tell them, ‘What do you mean you’re fine? You’re living under the freeway.’”

Sunday mornings at Regeneration are hectic, a crowd of homeless people sit in a gymnasium rented out to the church. They sit around portable tables and church members talk to them about Jesus, getting into treatment programs for substance abuse, and encouraging them to join in the church service that is held shortly after breakfast ends.

Woodworth said that Williamson used to show up for Sunday mornings, but stopped about two months ago.

Origins

Williamson’s nickname is not undeserved; The Professor graduated from Morehouse University, an historically all male black college in Atlanta, Ga. He later went on to earn a graduate degree in theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. where he later worked as a lecturer for five years.

“I was extremely fortunate to have both parents graduate college, being a Negro born in 1935” Williamson said. “I was always around books.”

Williamson’s vocabulary reads from a dictionary, he speaks in a wandering train of thought however.

“The fortunate part of my life, aside from being born from my parents, has been moving around this thing called the planet Earth.” Williamson said.

The Professor says he was born in Harlem, N.Y. in 1935. His father attended college at Howard University in Washington and his mother attended a Presbyterian College in New Guinea, Africa.

Deep in Thought

Williamson’s bottle of whisky now has a substantial dent in it, his speech comes much slower, but doesn’t slur.

“I write about a myriad of things,” he explains. “From does God exist, to who gives a damn? It would take me too long right now to explore the depths of my mind.”

Williamson’s cleanliness is thanks in large part to nearby Catholic Charities which lets him shower there every morning. He also maintains a locker there to store some of his more important possessions.

His desk, his bed, and his books are left largely untouched by the other homeless people that live in the surrounding area.

“Books they aren’t interested in,” Williamson chuckles.

Quick Information on The Professor

Felix Christopher Williamson

Age: 74

DOB: Feb. 1, 1935

Place of Birth: Harlem N.Y.

Education: Morehouse University. Atlanta, Ga.

Graduate Theological Union, GTU, Berkeley, Calif.

Residence: Underneath the I-880 freeway at Franklin and 6^th St. in Oakland.