Sssst. The pungent fumes of spray paint fill the long upstairs room. Cameron Moberg wears a mask to fend them off as he wields the metal cans with quick strokes. Ssssssst.

Yellow patches - lights inside apartments - are framed in black, then a building takes shape around them. Sst. Sst. Ssssssst. Moberg is a graffiti artist, using the medium of spray paint to cover a wall, only in this case it's legal - and righteous.

"Graffiti is really about fame. It's getting your name up as big as possible," he says. Sssst. Ssssst. "I've never done my name in letters. I'd rather put up God's name than mine."

Sure enough, on the mural Moberg is painting, a vine-topped wall proclaims "Jesus" in the stylized, candy-colored letters characteristic of graffiti. When Moberg says he's never painted his name, he means since he became a Christian and gave up street graffiti. As a kid in San Francisco, he ran with a "tag crew" - graffiti lingo for a group that paints their distinctive pseudonyms, or "tags," illegally on buildings, walls, subway cars or just about any flat surface. The tags can be wildly colorful and inventive - some consider them a legitimate art form - but merchants and the police regard them as an unsightly nuisance and criminal activity.

Moberg, 25, is part of an urban ministry in San Francisco that has turned his talent to a religious purpose. As youth pastor at City Crossroads Community Center, he ministers to street kids, including a lot of tag crews, and frequently paints Christian-themed murals for churches across the country.

Moberg was in Lakeland two weeks ago, painting a mural in the youth center of Crestview Baptist Community Church. The church was originally known as Central Avenue Baptist Church, then Real Life Community Church. It sits in a depressed area of west Lakeland and had fallen on hard times. In January, it was taken under the wing of Crestview Baptist Church, a thriving north Lakeland congregation, and new staff was brought in.

The Rev. Eric Jackson, pastor of Crestview Baptist Community Church, says his congregation is trying to help a neighborhood dealing with poverty, crime and substance abuse.

"We've got to be real to the community. People come here drunk. They come high. We take them as they are," he says.

The new youth pastor, John Wren, says he is trying to find ways to reach out to neighborhood kids. Recently, several houses in the area were vandalized by graffiti.

"I kind of wanted something the kids could relate to, something out of the norm. I happened to think about graffiti," he says.

Wren searched for Christian graffiti artists on the Internet and found www.gospelgraffiti.com, a site for a "virtual" crew of more than a dozen artists from around the world that includes Moberg, identified by his tag, "Camer1".

Wren brought Moberg to help out with a special four-day outreach effort. In the evenings, Moberg told the youth his story and gave a hip-hop concert, another of his talents. During the day, he painted.

"This church is cool. They're doing a good thing for the neighborhood," he says.

Crestview Baptist Community Church's youth group is known as The Bloc, so Moberg decided to make the mural an urban scene of city blocks. The buildings in the mural have a graphic-novel look about them - dark gray and black, but with splashes of neon color like blue and gold, expertly feathered at the edges. Sssst. Sssssst. A couple of quick strokes and shadowy figures appear at the windows of the apartments.

You can't achieve that kind of detail with spray paint bought off the shelf, which typically contains only 30 percent paint, Moberg says. He uses special low-pressure, high-content paint that allows him more control and costs about $3.50 per can. He also uses special tips that he calls "German thins" or "banana skinnies."

In the graffiti culture, respect is earned through having a flashier or more distinctive style. Moberg freely admits he admires the artistic talent of some illegal taggers. His personal art is mostly lettering, a throwback to his street days. He prefers a style known as "wild," in which the letters intersect in complicated patterns resembling oriental calligraphy.

"Lettering is what graffiti is about. One of the unwritten rules is, you've gotta have dope ('cool') letters," he says.

Moberg says he was always into art and used to get in trouble in school for drawing in his notebooks rather than writing. He was already lured by the style of graffiti.

"My notebooks were full of tags," he says.

Moberg described his early childhood as "pretty crazy" before his father converted to Christianity and became a pastor. Moberg went along to church, more as a place to hang out than because he believed in Jesus, he says. Although he wasn't a bad student, he got suspended for "stupid kid stuff" in high school. He was living the street life, tagging, drinking and fighting.

A couple of summers at church camp changed all that. He saw a girl he wanted to date, but she wouldn't have anything to do with him because she knew about his lifestyle. Finally, angry at God and unhappy with his life, he responded to an altar call and says he heard God say, "You're always yelling at me, but you don't take time to listen to me." Moberg started hanging out at City Crossroads Community Center, located in San Francisco's South Market district, where there is a lot of public housing and crime, he says.

Still, it took nearly a year before he gave up illegal tagging.

"I still did illegals occasionally, but I felt convicted about it and quit. I met a guy a City Crossroads, and I knew his tag name because he used to tag illegally. He taught me to do murals and took me under his wing," he says.

Just after graduating high school, Moberg joined the staff of City Crossroads. He and other former taggers started Gospel Graffiti as a way of using graffiti art to share the gospel. He regularly receives invitations to create murals at churches around the country, which helps him support his family. He married the girl he met at summer camp, and they have two small children.

Moberg still has the marks of street culture. He wears a lip ring and an ear gauge. He has tattoos on his forearms - one is his tag, "Camer1." On his left forearm, the one he paints with, he has an image of a paint can labeled "Gospel Graffiti" with three circles on it, a symbol of the Trinity but also a play on the five circles on a Krylon spray paint can.

Ssssst. Sssssst. Moberg finishes the mural by adding a billboard on which he paints "Love." At the end of the cityscape, he paints a large stylized wooden cross. It has taken him only a few days to cover more than 30 feet of wall with the art.

The finished mural dominates the room, which has an assortment of old couches, pool and ping-pong tables and foosball. Wren says he hopes the room will be a place for kids to hang out and stay out of trouble.

"Everyone who's seen it has been blown away. It's so awesome," says Wren of the mural. He says he would like to have Moberg come back next year and lead a camp to teach kids how to paint.

Moberg is used to being asked to teach graffiti art, but he says it puts him in a dilemma.

"I have to be really careful," he says. "I want to reach out and build relationships, but I don't want them to get so excited they go do illegals."

For Moberg, it's strictly graffiti for God. But like any artist, he signs his work. On a corner of the mural, he flashes a can - ssssst - and leaves his tag: "Camer1."

Cary McMullen can be reached at cary.mcmullen@theledger.com or 863-802-7509. His blog, The Scriptorium, can be read at religion.theledger.com.