By John DeWitt

Danny Steis is the Children and Youth Pastor at Yates Baptist Church in Durham, N.C. Like so many other youth ministers, Steis was challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. “COVID Zooms were awkward. Many youth, children and families didn’t fully return, and something was just ‘lost’ when we resumed.” 

However, the youth ministry at Yates was given new life through one student. “We had a youth who lives in the neighborhood surrounding the church join the group several years ago. She was facing some challenging things at the time. Her biological mother had just passed away, she’d been in foster care for several years and being on the spectrum (as well as being a teenager) made interpreting these life challenges very difficult,” Steis said.  

“She was welcomed and loved immediately, however. An older youth dropped everything to welcome and include our new addition and helped reinforce a culture of non-patronizing inclusivity. Over COVID, this ‘new’ youth, now an alumni, noticed that her neighbors, children and youth didn’t have much going on, so she invited the church to come hang out,” Steis said.  

Steis followed this student’s lead and started informal gatherings for the community surrounding the church.  

“My family and often a couple of others just went to grill out and play on the playground on Wednesday nights. After several months of grilling out, we hosted some COVID-safe outdoor block parties at the church and invited our new friends. Our gym was discovered at one of the block parties, and once word got out to the neighborhood, I started getting texts and drop-ins to hang out at the church. We started scheduling ‘Open Gym’ times with a simple meal and prayer, and this gathered group eventually became our youth and children’s ministry.” 

When reflecting on how he was forced to think outside the box after COVID, Steis was saddened by the fact that in his 20 years of ministry, he has been molded to “do church with people who already know how to do church.” Steis talked about how “everything has to be rethought and success has to be reinterpreted.”  

The way that church services and traditional youth ministries are organized makes it hard for people unfamiliar with these contexts to feel welcomed. Steis walks the neighborhood around his church as a spiritual practice. He said that he doesn’t have any goals when he does this, but he always experiences something helpful during his walks. “Doing something that has no goals is very foreign to ministers, sadly, so I’ve had to unlearn a lot of my former approaches to ministry.” 

 Fruitful ministry to the community comes with challenges. “Some of our new youth and kids come from challenging home lives and ‘tell’ their stories in some not-so-helpful ways. Progress is very gradual, and sometimes, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when a meltdown happens during Lectio Divina. But I think these are good problems to have- I could be spending my time dealing with committees debating carpet colors!” 

“It’s also been challenging to get certain parts of the church to view what we’re doing as youth and children’s ministry. Thankfully, many ‘traditional’ church members have bought in and been supportive,” he said. 

Steis often prays the Serenity Prayer when thinking through church decision-making. “I have found that there is much to celebrate, some of it things I can’t change, but most of it good things that can be changed with a hopeful look towards the future.” 

Until recently he did not recognize how pre-COVID ministry was rooted in “competition and lack of trust.” Steis realized that attempting to prevent students from going to the megachurch down the road and playing travel sports was much of his motivation. “This provided so much self-criticism when I failed. I was losing a game I shouldn’t have been playing.” 

When asked what most excites Steis about his ministry, he stated, “I think the new understanding of being a neighborhood youth and children’s group is so much healthier. Thinking through what it means to be present to the families who live 100 yards from the church is a much better question than what it means to attract or retain families that could go anywhere.” 

“My own children, one a youth and one a kid, are in this new approach, too, and that excites me. I think they will be much better spiritually formed as ‘preacher’s kids’ by asking new questions rather than stressing over the old. I think inclusivity as a key value will also help form our youth and children who returned from COVID in a helpful way, too.” 

Steis had some insight for churches that are considering community ministry. “It will not be possible to do a new thing in church unless something else is taken off the church schedule… COVID taking away our Wednesday nights made the neighborhood stuff possible. I think most ministers can probably easily name several church programs or activities that have outlived their usefulness, and more importantly, they can also probably name new stirrings and callings from God.” 

“I have found that constantly and prayerfully immersing myself in the neighborhood ministry world–books, conversations with practicing churches/ministers and just walking the neighborhood are helpful practices for know-how and insight, to be sure, but more importantly, to keep me believing in this work–why it’s valuable, why it works and why it’s the Gospel. In youth and children’s ministry, we are all tempted to answer primarily to the really qualifiable and tangible metrics, and radical inclusivity generally is not on the list of most of our critics. There is much to celebrate and quantify in neighborhood ministry if one has the right eyes to see it.” 

“Patience is key for me, too. We accidentally learn a lot of shortcuts in ministry to get people to commit to our programs: guilt tripping, emotional manipulation, fear, pandering, etc. None of these work in neighborhood ministry; praise be to God. Opening the doors, meeting neighbors when the opportunity arises and being patient are the only ways forward.”  

Openness to the movement of the Holy Spirit and the courage to shed the crutch of regular ministry programming has enabled Steis to serve faithfully and effectively where he is placed. The youth ministry at Yates Baptist Church provides a place for everyone to experience God in a mutually beneficial way. Everyone has something to offer, and Steis, the youth leaders and the students are all in it together.