Dirty Vagabond Ministries: Love for Inner City Youth

They have received the Holy Spirit's vision and love for urban communities

Dirty Vagabond Ministries has heard the Holy Spirit's call to the Church, the call to serve the poor, the forgotten, and the marginalized, and to labor with the Gospel in often inhospitable territories and transform them for Christ. They have received the Holy Spirit's vision and love for urban communities, and believing that every person deserves Christ, they are Jesus to those in the "distressing disguise" of inner city youth.

NASHVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) - "We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God but our lives as well" (1 Thess. 2:8). This Scripture is the call and spirit of Dirty Vagabond Ministries, an answer from the Holy Spirit to a community hungry for the love of Jesus in action.

Based out of Steubenville, OH, Dirty Vagabond Ministries is a Catholic apostolate to inner city kids whose communities typically lack the resources to pay for religious youth workers and programs. The ministry seeks to mentor urban teens through Catholic incarnational philosophy; its workers immerse themselves in the slang, fashion, and music of inner city culture and give themselves to the pain, hopelessness, and anger of urban teens in order to bring Christ, and "be" Christ, with the people.

The Mission

Though the goals of typical Catholic youth ministries and DVM are the same, the DVM approach is radically different, and it gets right to the root of Gospel evangelization and discipleship. The usual model targets large numbers through formal youth groups and functions in the hope of reaching a few. DVM takes the one-on-one approach, so that every conversation and every activity is recognized as an opportunity for ministry, and every individual that visits a DVM community center is personally heard, loved, and ministered to.

DVM community centers, located in the heart of urban communities, are where youth workers volunteer to live and work as missionaries for 3 to 5 years. They are where teaching, formation, relationship, and love happens as the workers address physical, educational, emotional, and spiritual needs of the young people they serve.

DVM does not organize large-scale youth events or even seek to draw large numbers of youth. Instead, patient with the slow growth of real fruitfulness, they take the long view. They labor to raise up a whole generation of urban leaders, not hoping to "get them out of the ghetto and on to a better life" like most organizations that serve in inner-city areas, but to raise up new leaders in the urban Church that will remain in the community to mentor others, and transform the culture there for Christ. 

The Visionaries

Struck by the absence of visible urban youth ministries in the modern sea of Catholic youth service, veteran youth ministers Bob and Kate Lesnefsky founded the ministry hoping to stand in the gap. As a Christian Hip Hop artist and speaker, Bob travels the country reaching out to contemporary teens through the rap music and Hip Hop culture that has attracted them, while Kate puts degrees in Theology and Catechetics to use mentoring teenaged girls.

Realizing that the Church's efforts to win over inner-city communities for Christ would require more than occasional attention, the annual week-long service trip, or typical youth ministry models and structures, Bob and Kate threw themselves into building relationships in the urban community. Thus, they have become the Church in service to inner city youth.

Rather than overlook the particular configuration of urban life, Bob and Kate lead DVM in addressing the unique challenges of inner city communities. The almost completely single-parent family structure in inner cities leads to a lack of structure, motivation and attention among kids who live there. This lack of parental involvement provokes staggering drop-out rates, making the streets the only classroom, and peers the only "youth group."

Participating with great zeal and fearlessness in the New Evangelism, Bob and Kate are pioneering Catholic service to inner city youth. Their ministry seeks to be a healthy classroom and youth group to a generation of teens left to fend for themselves in a hostile time and environment. DVM provides resources and catechetical models to develop the faith, character, life skills and knowledge that lead urban teens to the sacramental life of the Church, to pastoral leadership within their communities, and on to Sainthood.

Bob and Kate's hearts' cry is an admonishment from John Paul II, himself a lover of youth, "If the Church holds back from culture, the Gospel itself falls silent." Formation through relationships is the foundation of DVM's vision to engage inner city culture and thereby raise up multi-ethnic urban pastors, youth ministers, speakers, and professionals - a new generation of servants with the heart of Christ to transform urban areas and serve there in the coming decades.

Most often in the Church, those given the eyes to see the need are the very ones called to serve. Dirty Vagabond Ministries has heard the Holy Spirit's call to the Church, the call to serve the poor, the forgotten, the marginalized, and to labor with the Gospel in often inhospitable territories and transform them for Christ. They have received the Holy Spirit's vision and love for these communities, and believing that every person deserves Christ, they are Jesus to those in the "distressing disguise" of inner city youth.

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Sonja Corbitt is a Catholic speaker, Bible study author, and contributing writer for Catholic Online. Visit her at www.pursuingthesummit.com.

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