Meet the Street Preacher of Semarang

They call him the street preacher.

It's a fitting name for Agus Sutikno. This pentecostal preacher wanders the slums and back alleys of Semarang, a coastal city of 1.5 million in Central Java, offering help, and housing, to the sex workers, street children, and drug addicts forced to live in the city's margins.

But it's also name that also speaks to Agus' past. He ran away from home as a teenager to escape an abusive father. Agus then spent years on the road, wandering from his hometown—the small coastal town of Probolinggo, East Java—to cities throughout Java. Along the way he picked up countless tattoos, an alcohol addiction, and a violent reputation.

It's a period of his life that Agus prefers to forget.

"These are from a darker time in my life," he said of his tattoos. "I forgot when I even got them the first time. Let's not dwell on the past, OK?"

Agus eventually washed up drunk, broke, and alone in Magelang, Central Java. He spent two days living at a bus station before he was struck with a flash of enlightenment. He would devote his life to Jesus Christ. But he was determined to walk his own path, spending less time at the pulpit and more time on the streets with the people most choose to ignore.

He's now a constant critic of the church for not doing enough to help the poor. I was struck by his honesty, and his focus on doing good deeds over proselytizing. Most Indonesian pastors spend a lot of time building a congregation. Some of the richer ones focus their energy on securing televised sermons and building glitzy megachurches. But Agus was different. The man, in his tight black pants, red boots, and crisp white button down, looked more punk than preacher.

"He kept showing up in Tanggul Indah and playing with the kids," said Kak Bon, a trans woman who was a sex worker before she met Agus. "We were like 'who is this guy?' I was suspicious at first. I didn't know he was a preacher at the time. But after I found out he was a preacher, I was interested in his teachings and I began to help him hold services."

When Agus first showed up in Tanggul Indah, few residents trusted him. He was a preacher, a Christian, covered in tattoos, and working in a Muslim neighborhood. They were concerned that he was trying to convert people. But, in time, the neighborhood changed its mind, he said.

"The majority here are Muslim," Agus said. "But I really have no agenda. All I do is for the good of humanity, regardless of your religion, ethnicity, and status."

I met Agus at his foundation headquarters in the eastern reaches of Semarang. He was sitting in the small 3x4 meter room as a half-dozen children wandered in and out of the room. The building, the home of Yayasan Hati Bagi Bangsa (the Heart for the Nation Foundation), is part church, part school, part orphanage. Most of the kids were the children of sex workers. They were abandoned by their mothers—many who work at a low-income red light district found along the East Semarang Flood Canal. It's an all too common problem in the slum of Tanggul Indah, Agus said. In total, his foundation was caring for more than 100 children.

"This is about humanizing the humans," Agus explained in a thick East Java accent. "The children of Tanggul Indah often face stigma. They're reduced to 'a bastard' or 'sex worker's child.' I want to empower them, to help them get through school."

Agus started the foundation as a way to formalize his work with the children of Tanggul Indah. Today, it's still a modest operation run out of one-room house across the street from the canal.

"The foundation is nothing more than a formality," he said. "It provides a place for the children. I used to hang out with them by the canal. We don't receive a monthly salary here. I don't get any transportation money either. It's all just plain commitment.

"For fourteen years, I've been going in and out of these kinds of places. I never asked for help. I never even submitted a proposal for funding. Everything we have now, it was given by the people. Even the church has never bothered to help."

These donations were still enough to cover the school fees of his children. Most of his children are elementary school aged. All of them are in school, he said, but he would still love to have enough money to take them out of the slum at least once a year.

"Sometimes I like to take them out, when I have spare money," Agus said. "They love swimming. At the end of this year, I hope I can take all the children of Tanggul Indah on a trip somewhere."

Agus works in a part of the city with little access to public services. Few social service NGOs work in the Tanggul Indah, a slum still plagued by high crime rates and a terrible reputation. But it's also one of the areas most in-need of help, said Agus. Semarang had one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infections in Indonesia back in 2014, according to government statistics. The problem persists. In Tanggul Indah, six people died from the virus this year alone.

"These people barely receive any attention from the government because most of them aren't registered with the city," he said. "They have no access [to social services]. So it's up to me to take care of their medical needs and even their funeral arrangements."

Agus told me that he plans to continue his work in Tanggul Indah. The pulpit, with its weekly sermons and large congregation, was no place for him, Agus said.

"There are many people at the church who call me 'strange'," he told me. "But this is my battlefield. I'm with the marginalized. Why would we preach about religion and His powers when we don't show compassion to our own kind?"