Reflecting the Gospel Through a Late-Night Car Ride

Reflecting the Gospel through a late-night car ride

It was 6:30 in the evening when Shannon Ramsey, exhausted from the day’s work, had just sat down in his living room chair to relax when his phone rang.

A county director with the Georgia Department of Human Services, Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), in the next county was looking for a foster home for a three-year-old boy.

“He had been removed from his home, from his parents, and there were some pretty severe circumstances surrounding his situation,” Shannon said.

Fifteen minutes later, Shannon was on the road for the hour-long drive to pick him up.

Shannon is the Chief Recruitment Officer for Families 4 Families, a Christian foster care placement agency. He works out of the Southeast division of the organization in Statesboro, Georgia. While his typical role is to recruit new foster families and churches to support them, he still helps oversee operations in his area.

The team in his office had had an unusually busy day — having already placed five other children that day, and he offered to help. Shannon was glad to do it. In his previous role, he had regularly done late-night pick-ups to take children to foster homes.

“The reality is there was a three-year-old who was sitting in an office building somewhere who did not need to be there late at night; he needed to be in a home. He needed to be in bed,” Shannon said. “He had just had some traumatic things go on in his own life.”

After picking up the child from DFCS and getting him some food, it was another two-hour drive to the foster family, “but he was safe,” said Shannon, “and I knew he was going to a safe place. God was allowing us to engage in what our full mission is, and that’s making sure kids are safe with Gospel-centered homes.”

Anecdotally from what he hears, Shannon said, it’s not too common anymore for a placement agency to handle this part of the fostering process, with the responsibility of transporting a child typically on the DFCS case worker or the foster family who’s taking the child in. 

But Families 4 Families seeks to be different in how they care for children, serve state workers and serve foster families. 

When talking about caring for the children, Shannon points to the story behind what people often see or hear on the news when tragedy strikes — like a neighborhood shooting or drug bust. There’s often a child entering foster care at that moment.

“We want to be on the front end of helping care for these kids when those types of things take place,” he said.

State workers like those at DFCS are regularly called to handle many different situations at all hours, and offering to help, like transporting a child, is a way to ease their burden. 

“If we can find little ways to serve them, then we’re going to do that,” he said.

For foster families, not having to leave home to pick a child up means they don’t have to divide themselves, leave their own biological children behind or have to worry about extra logistics.

“We want them to have the time and the space to get ready to receive this child and to know that they’re going to have somebody from our agency who’s been working with them from the beginning showing up and helping assist them to make that next step,” Shannon said.

After dropping the three-year-old boy off with his foster family, Shannon had another long drive ahead, getting home around one in the morning. It’s in those moments he reflects on the Bible passage in Matthew 25 where Jesus talks about being fed when he was hungry, being given something to drink when he was thirsty, being clothed when he needed, being looked after when he was sick and being visited when he was in prison.

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” — Matthew 25:37-40 (NIV)

“I can’t help but lean on passages like that to know that the efforts we put into doing this, we are engaging in Gospel work, to the least of these, to the most vulnerable,” Shannon said.