News Digest

God answered seven years of prayer by shutting down a homosexual strip joint next door to the church and ministries under the direction of Assemblies of God Pastor Roger Huang.

But then, two weeks later, the owner of the sex business opened a similar operation catering to a heterosexual clientele in the same location.

That’s when Huang, 48, and his wife, Maite, vowed to lay their lives on the line: Beginning April 5, they wouldn’t eat until the strip club closed. Roger camped out in front of San Francisco City Hall in a folding chair, where he dialogued with passers-by, listened to worship music on a compact disc player, and prayed. Maite continued her administrative duties at the church as days, then weeks, passed and she and her husband grew weaker.

Both were prepared to die, says their son, Christian Huang.

Then 33 days later on May 6, something occurred that Christian calls a miracle. The strip-club owner offered to sell his building to San Francisco Worship Center, the church where the Huangs pastor. The church has served inner-city San Francisco for 19 years and is an Assemblies of God U.S. Missions national project.

The Huangs ended their strike.

Decades ago, San Francisco banished its strip clubs to what was then the sparsely populated Tenderloin district. Today it’s a square mile of strip clubs, adult theaters and liquor joints, but now some 30,000 souls also call it home. Much of the decadence occurs at Boeddeker Park, where drug deals are openly transacted on domino tables and people shoot up drugs and have sexual intercourse in a public bathroom.

The church moved to the Tenderloin location, the former Musicians Union Building, in 1997 and opened a Christian elementary school for 35 students. It also continued operating San Francisco Rescue Mission, which serves 800 homeless each week.

“For them to dedicate 33 days on behalf of these children and their futures really reaches the heart of God,” says David W. Turner, a teacher at San Francisco Christian Academy, the kindergartern through eighth-grade school operated by the church.

The zoning commission is considering a request from the Huangs to reduce the number of liquor and sexually oriented businesses in the Tenderloin district. There is currently a moratorium on granting liquor licenses. San Francisco district supervisors are considering a plan that forbids opening a strip club within 1,000 feet of a school.

Ralph Gella, assistant pastor of the rescue mission and the church, says the Huangs’ hunger strike made an impact on city officials as well as Christian residents who want to help.

“This has brought attention to these issues,” Gella says. “We won’t know for months what the full outcome will be, but we’re getting verbal commitments. In the spiritual realm, God is moving hearts.”

The strip-club owner is asking $1.4 million for his building, which San Francisco Worship Center is seeking to raise. The church would expand its ministry by using the building as a gym and living quarters for those needing housing.

“This hunger strike was just a matter of obedience to finish in the physical realm what has already been accomplished in the spiritual realm,” Roger Huang told PE Report. “That made it a lot easier for me to go day after day, night after night, sitting and sleeping in front of City Hall. God has called us to the Tenderloin. He will not let us linger.”