By Lori Rodriguez
Houston Chronicle, December 24, 2005

The first time minister Joe Williams presided over “street church” for the homeless youths that drift through the Montrose area, he offered up coffee and cookies. Four youngsters showed up.

Five years later, the open air ministry has become a Wednesday night fixture in a parking lot at Yoakum and Lovett. As many as 150 youngsters regularly gather for a hot meal and a healthy dose of ministering.

On one recent Wednesday, lasagna was up for grabs, prepared by one of numerous area churches that help Joe Williams Ministries and the local chapter of Youth With A Mission operate Montrose Street Reach. The weather was damp and daunting, but Williams, now known to youths as “Preacher Joe,” was undeterred.

“In five years, I’ve learned that you can’t just hit these kids over the head with a Bible. You have to develop relationships with them,” Williams said.

“It’s like that saying: `They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’ ”

Street Reach, with a goal of getting youths off the streets and into productive lives, has placed more than 170 youths into transitional housing and rehabilitation programs since it began.

Williams, 61, an ordained minister, recently was among 12 local individuals and nonprofits recognized for their good works by a Bank of America charitable initiative.

Williams has worked with troubled youth for most of his life. So have Kim and Martin Dale, who head the Youth With A Mission missionary program – but all three agree they found their calling when they partnered to form Street Reach.

“These kids need so much. Even after five years, they still break our hearts,” Kim Dale said.

On any given night, she said, there are as many as 1,500 homeless youngsters on city streets. Most use drugs; many sell their bodies. Nearly 13 percent are HIV positive, she estimated.

“We work with prostitutes, drug addicts, alcoholics, you name it. They get addicted to the drama of streets and it becomes a lifestyle,” Williams said.

Since creating Street Reach, the leaders have held three memorial services for street youngsters. One HIV-positive boy, whom they had ministered for four years, called the Dales when he landed in the hospital with a 108-degree fever; he had no one else.

“He told us, `The insanity of my life is gone.’ He was ready to die,” Kim Dale said.

At its heart, Street Reach is a faith-based program that seeks to get youngsters to renounce sin and embrace a Christian way of life. Williams and the Dales measure their success one person at a time.

“Big Steve” was a drug user who now trains other youngsters as missionaries through Youth With A Mission. Ernest, aka “Olivia,” was a drag queen the missionaries wore down bit by bit until he stood at a street church weeping.

“We really had to heal him with prayers and incubate him with love,” Kim Dale said.

“He’s in Mississippi now working with hurricane victims and wants to be a missionary.”

When possible, Williams and the Dales try to reconcile street youths with their families, offering mediation, bus tickets home and other assistance.

They regularly offer youngsters food, clothing, blankets and referrals to jobs, rehabilitation programs, transitional living facilities, HIV testing and other health and social services.

Twice a week, at Heights Christian Church, they offer “Mom’s Day Out,” a child care program that gives street mothers a chance to look for a job or get career training. They also offer young mothers help with placing babies in stable adoptive homes, if they choose.

“We started noticing kids bringing babies with them to street church,” Kim Dale said. “It caught us off guard. It’s so much like children making children.”