Stickers Proclaim Their Faith Loud and Clear

The decals are hard to miss: “Jesus Is God. Read the Bible,” they proclaim, in 3-inch-high gold letters stretched across car trunk lids, emblazoned on rear windows, or crammed into the rear portholes of utility-style vans. Some read “Jesus es Dios. Lea la Biblia” in red- or gold-lettered Spanish; a few advertise the same message in bright blue Korean characters.

And unlike the ubiquitous fish plaques, garden-variety Christian bumper stickers or even the increasingly common “Praying Calvin” window appliques, the yard-wide decals are impossible to ignore, particularly by drivers confronted by the inscription in heavy traffic.

“The big ones are something else, aren’t they?” asked Thomas Schultz, the 58-year-old evangelist who is single-handedly behind the decals. Known in the Koreatown and Los Feliz neighborhoods he frequents as Brother Tom, Schultz estimates that he has given away about 5,000 decals in those areas since a friend printed 8,000 of them for him three years ago.

“I’m sort of a one-man, underground campaign,” said Schultz, an unassuming, plain-faced man with gray hair and square, wire-framed glasses. “I wanted to put something out there that said in just one line that if you believe Jesus is God and you read the Bible” -- he snapped his fingers -- “then God can come to you.”

Schultz’s own car, a weathered gray Toyota Corolla, boasts four decals: three across the rear window, one in each language, plus a second English message affixed to the bumper.

On most mornings, the Corolla sits in the lot of the Denny’s on Vermont Avenue above the Hollywood Freeway onramp. Inside, Schultz parks himself, a battered leather briefcase, a cell phone, three leather-covered Bibles -- one in English, one in Spanish and one in Korean, all well-thumbed and annotated -- and a pile of standard-size bumper stickers in view of anyone coming in the door.

“I work out of my valise, my car trunk and my room,” said Schultz, who sported a yellow button-down shirt embroidered with his trademark phrase on the right breast, one of 13 a cousin made for him years ago.

Schultz, who was born in Illinois and grew up in Oregon, has been evangelizing since 1977, when he says he was visited by God as his marriage was breaking up.

“He told me to become a fisher of men, and I’ve been fishing every day ever since.”

He adopted vows of chastity and poverty and began doing missionary work for a variety of churches, though he says he was raised a Catholic and considers himself a “radical orthodox Catholic” on the model of the early, pre-Roman evangelists.

In 1985, Schultz came to Los Angeles, and after being sent away from several skid row missions, he decided to learn Spanish -- by reading the Bible in Spanish and preaching, he says -- and began working in the barrios west of downtown.

Today, he lives in a single room at a Presbyterian mission in Koreatown and preaches at local churches and, occasionally, at the Men’s Central Jail. He also leads private Bible study classes, writes Gospel studies, helps with missionary work in Tijuana -- and gives out his decals and stickers, sometimes to local youths who sell them for a few dollars apiece and keep the money.

The Denny’s, Schultz said, is his favorite hangout, but he visits a circuit of restaurants, including the House of Pies in Los Feliz, Mariela’s Tacos on 3rd Street and an assortment of fast-food restaurants.

“I work in restaurants because that’s where people come,” Schultz said. “People will come up to me and ask about the Bibles, or the stickers -- they’re like visual aids.”

He said he waits for people to approach him inside the various establishments because he doesn’t want to be a nuisance or get kicked out. But in parking lots or out driving, he said, he will stop people if he thinks they might accept a decal, usually because they already have some sort of Christian-themed decoration on their cars.

“I’ll stop those cars when I can, because it means they’re sympathetic,” Schultz said. “And 90% of them will take a sticker.”

He used to give the decals -- which come mounted as letter-transfers on thin waxed paper -- to people if they promised to put them on their cars themselves, but stopped once he noticed that few of them put the decals on themselves.

“If they won’t put it on their car right away, I won’t give it to them, because they won’t have the courage to do it when they get home,” said Schultz. “I’ll put it on for them, and I’ll do it right.”

One of the first people to accept the offer was Bertha Vargas, a 43-year-old mother of six and regular churchgoer who met “Hermano Thomas” at Mariela’s Tacos. Her white Ford van boasts the gold decal in English on the back window, along with several other stickers.

“This makes you think for just a minute, a second, however long you want to think for Jesus,” she said.

But not everyone who accepts the decals shares Schultz’s evangelical intentions. Osman, a 26-year-old immigrant who would not give his last name, said he had agreed to put a gold decal in English on the trunk of his dark-green Corolla because he had heard it would make police less likely to stop him.

“I like to speed,” he admitted, and pointed sheepishly to his license plate, which was jammed into its frame at an angle to hide expired registration tags. He said he did not go to church regularly, and could not remember the name of the person who gave him the decal.

Schultz was unfazed.

“Some people are blessed with this, and it gives them hope,” he said. “Other people don’t understand it. Let’s face it, it’s a controversial message.”

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