For the inner city, he builds another kind of wailing wall

The list of names that hangs on the sanctuary walls of the Global Ministries Christian Church is 296 deep and growing: Anthony R. Sullivan, age unknown, shot with a handgun; Robert Litrege Jr., 16, stabbed while arguing over a bicycle; Nialani Lee, 4, severe head trauma, rape. The dead are Boston's children and teens: shot, stabbed, raped, bludgeoned, and suffocated between 1985 and 2004, said the Rev. Bruce Wall. He lists them on large sheets of white paper -- often by request, sometimes from newspaper accounts, sometimes he has ministered them -- to help friends and family commemorate those lost to violence.

''I knew a lot of them," he said, sadly. ''There's a story to every one of those."

The pastor said he began recording names of dead youths in 1989 on a wall at the Chez Vous Disco Rink, where he volunteered.

''This is major in our community," he said. And Wall hasn't even added the 2005 murder victims. ''We're going to go way over 300."

Wall, who spent last week in an apartment on a drug-infested corner near his Washington Street church, said it's time for adults to take back their neighborhoods. In Grove Hall, Nation of Islam members are visible on the streets and drug dealers don't do much business there, he said.

Christians should do the same, showing dealers that fathers and mothers are not afraid to confront them, he said. ''We need to act as crazy as they are acting, if not more."

To anonymously report illegal guns in Codman Square, call the Global Ministries Christian Church at 617-282-4136.

PAYSHA STOCKTON