“We seek to meet the needs of those who come our way,” is the way the 19th Avenue Baptist Church defines its mission.

Meeting the needs of Sunset residents goes way beyond Sunday services. That’s why the church offers free yoga classes and a range of social activism activities that include preparing food for a soup kitchen and supporting immigrant and refugee populations.

The church even provides water, charging stations, and bathrooms for folks trekking down 19th avenue to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Outside Lands concerts in Golden Gate Park.

For those seeking deeper insights, the church also offers graduate level Bible-study.

As a self-described “Church of the Nations,” 19th Avenue Baptist shares its sanctuary and facilities with Chinese, Mongolian, Vietnamese, and Japanese congregations. Everybody comes together for Christmas, Palm Sunday, and other holidays.

“We don’t impose a belief structure,” says Pastor Joy Yee. “If you have questions, you can safely explore those questions with other people, and not have ideologies pushed on you.”

The church is not a member of the Southern Baptist Convention but is aligned with the more progressive Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which supports intellectual freedom and separation of church and state.

“We’re 100 percent inclusive,” says Co-Pastor Jim Dant. “If a person comes to the door, we’re going to welcome them. That means you might have a very progressive gay person sitting in one pew next to an extremely conservative theological person in another pew. But we all agree to be part of the same congregation and work together for the good.”

Lifelong friends, Pastors Yee and Dant came to 19th Avenue Baptist from opposite directions.

Dant came to the church six months ago after a career as a “big-church” minister in the south. His last post was at the First Baptist Church of Greenville, South Carolina. 

Pastor Yee was ordained in June 2000, when only about 100 women served as pastors among some 41,000 Baptist churches. Pastor Yee’s ordination happened just as the Southern Baptist Convention declared that the office of pastor was limited to men. Yet Pastor Yee was ordained because Baptist churches are free to choose their own leadership, and the convention order was not binding.

Pastor Yee joined the 19th Avenue church in 2005 when it merged with New Covenant Baptist.

19th Avenue Baptist currently has about 70 members and most are Sunset residents. 

“Others might see us as progressive,” Pastor Dant says. “We think of ourselves as normal.”

The co-pastors say they want to support community efforts without trying to reinvent the wheel themselves.

“If Saint Martin de Porres is running a soup kitchen and is doing good work, we’ll work with them,” Pastor Dant says. “If Wah Mei School is doing good work with disadvantaged youth, we’ll work with them.”

During the pandemic, Wah Mei started the District 4 Youth and Families Network, bringing organizations together to serve at-risk families. Now the church provides space for Wah Mei’s various school programs. 

Volunteer work done by Sunset residents during the pandemic continues to encourage Pastor Yee.

”There were over 1,000 people who joined together to help their neighbors,” Pastor Yee says.  I was thankful for the compassion in the Sunset. I’m heartened by their spirit and am glad that our church shares it.”

Pastor Dant says the church will go all out this Christmas.

“We are going to create a Night in Bethlehem for the whole community, complete with a manger scene and live animals,” he says.

The co-pastors have traveled to Israel many times, and they want to turn the church’s parking lot into a first-century Palestinian town.

“We want to bring the spirit and essence of that ancient land here,” Pastor Dant says. “We think it will be fun.”

Reported and written by volunteer community journalist Tom Colin. We encourage retired journalists and student journalists in high school and college to volunteer as writers for Supervisor Engardio’s newsletter. Interested? Apply here. Do you know a story you would like to see featured in the newsletter? Tell us about it here.