CITYSCAPES / HUGO MARTIN : A Calling to Reach Many Becomes a Life’s Mission

The way the Rev. Robert Pipes remembers it, God told him long ago that the vehicle for reaching more lost souls was sitting right in his church parking lot in Watts.

Pipes saw his 26-foot Open Road motor home and understood God’s message: If the people won’t come to church, take the church to them.

So he strapped a loudspeaker to the roof of the vehicle and began to cruise through the roughest housing projects in Los Angeles, spreading the Gospel to all who would listen--and to those who wouldn’t.

He’s been doing it every Saturday afternoon for nearly a quarter-century.

Pipes is a Watts institution: a fearless, 83-year-old preacher on wheels who drives the toughest streets in search of new followers, his amplified message booming off the walls of places like Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens.

But the message appears to fall largely on deaf ears.

Pipes has been hassled by police, pelted with rocks by drug dealers and chided by fellow pastors who fear he is putting himself in danger. Nor can he prove that his drive-by ministry has generated any followers. Over the years, only a few people have approached his motor home to learn more about him and his 30-member First United Missionary Baptist Church, on the corner of Wilmington Avenue and 105th Street.

But to focus on these shortcomings is to miss the point of his work, Pipes says. He is a foot soldier in the war against evil, and he does not second-guess the marching orders he gets from above. Did Noah question God’s commandment to build an ark? No, sir. He just built it and waited for the flood. And long, long ago, in 1965, did Pipes accept an offer to lead a church near Seattle with a congregation of 1,500 people? No, sir. God told him to stay in his humble church in Watts--and Pipes did.

“My job is to deliver the message,” said the Mississippi native with the big smile and slight Southern drawl. “I can’t make people respond. That’s God’s job.”

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His Saturday route starts in the 586-unit Jordan Downs housing project, continues to the 466-unit Imperial Courts and finally ends in the giant Nickerson Gardens, twice as large. He usually stops three to five times in each project, often in parking lots or where he sees a gathering of people, preaching on the evils of drugs and liquor and urging listeners to attend church, preferably his.

“Remember, God helps those who help themselves,” he said on a recent Saturday. “Do yourself a favor and go to the house of God.”

In Jordan Downs, he parked the white-and-brown motor home near a group of young men who were washing a car and drinking beer. As soon as his voice rang out from the loudspeaker, the gathering broke up and two of the young men, clearly upset, walked toward the motor home.

As they passed Pipe’s open window, one of the men shouted angrily: “Hey, I ain’t sinning.”

Pipes simply shrugged it off. “Lots of them don’t want to hear it,” he said as he gunned the engine to move to the next housing project. “We don’t let it bother us.”

He moved on to Nickerson Gardens. As he spoke, residents watered their lawns, played dominoes in the shade or blasted hip-hop music from their stereos. Almost no one looked up at his faded motor home.

Undeterred, he launched into his sermon against drinking: “Every time you take a slop from a cup, bottle or bag, you are saying, ‘God, you didn’t know what you were doing when you made me in your image.’ ”

His message is not completely lost on the project residents.

“Sometimes I listen to him,” said Sylvria Curry, a three-year resident of the projects, who was sitting on her front porch while Pipes preached nearby. “I catch a few words here and there.”

Kenneth Carter, who has heard Pipes preach when he visits his children at the projects, said he admires the reverend’s perseverance.

“It don’t matter if you have rap music on sky high, he is still talking,” Carter said with a smile.

Pipes’ mission was almost put on hold several years ago when a California Highway Patrol officer stopped him and cited him for broadcasting with a loudspeaker from a moving vehicle, which is against the law.

He fought the ticket, telling a judge that he was simply doing God’s work and trying to reduce crime by helping to put people on a straight and narrow path. The judge dismissed the ticket, and Pipes agreed to park his motor home before starting a broadcast sermon.

The Rev. Reginald Pope, a longtime friend of Pipes who heads the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, worries about his safety but adds: “Sometimes we have to remember the cause over the cost.”

Pipes is sanguine: “I’m under divine security.”

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Robert Pipes is part of a generation of African Americans who moved to Los Angeles during and after World War II. He landed in Watts from Mississippi in 1944 and worked in the shipyards of San Pedro and as a construction worker in South Los Angeles before he got the calling to become a pastor in 1946. He started his church with only seven people. By 1975, his congregation was still only about 15 adults and children. He feared he was not reaching enough people.

That was when he dropped to his knees, prayed for guidance and was directed to the motor home. “It was as if someone was talking to me,” he said.

Once he installed the loudspeaker on the motor home, Pipes said, he knew he had to take his message to the housing projects because the residents there needed God the most. Besides, “out there, I have no competition.”

After 24 years of his preaching in the projects, his rusting motor home is showing its age. The paint is fading and the upholstery is tattered and peeling. But Pipes said his resolve has not faded.

“As long as the Lord keeps me healthy, I’ll keep doing it,” he said, and with that he maneuvered the motor home toward his next stop.