Our Plans...and God's Plans

by Juliette Chien - GUM Newsletter, Summer 2009

   There was a plan for how it was supposed to work. Scheduled groups of children, flow monitors, time allotments… but we knew from our previous experience that the Willie Brown Academy Health Day would hardly be controllable, predictable, or… comfortable. For the last four years, our church, Redeemer Community Church, has been developing relationship with Willie Brown Academy in our neighborhood, and with their school nurse, Kathy Babcock, in particular. Kathy invited us in the Spring of 2006 to host a day with her where the kids could interact and engage with different health topics. The first Health Day was primarily made up of booths manned by folks just from Redeemer Community Church.

   For this year’s Health Day, we asked GUM for assistance because we did not have enough resources to host the event on our own. So GUM referred four congregation members from Grace Fellowship Community Church (GFCC) to join our team. Along with GFCC, we had the joy of hosting alongside the school’s Peer Resource class. This widened our relationship at Willie Brown beyond the school nurse to embrace more students and faculty. As we set up a few booths alongside some student presenters, our hope was that they could experience and see they are created in the image of God. The place was bustling with eager children visiting booths on dental hygiene, healthy breakfast foods, vegetable tasting, heart health, reading food labels, body image, and sugar content. At one booth, the children drank a solution that dyed all the places on their teeth where they had missed brushing. At another booth kids pretended to be blood cells running through a clean artery and a clogged artery.

   God’s plan goes beyond our plans. It’s a bit intimidating for our small congregation to help host hundreds of bouncy, excited 4th and 5th graders and cool, trying-to-be-tough middle schoolers. It feels vulnerable to welcome and love a wide range of kids with all their energy, charm, and occasional abrasive candor. Certainly for us, following Jesus into this school is outside our usual experiences of being in control. We needed help and God led us to depend more on others as partners.

   In Eastertide we had been hearing how those who vulnerably put themselves before Jesus and one another (like Thomas and Mary Magdalene) are answered and met by Jesus, and how the early church was free to transparently love one another, to give and receive from one another. Four years ago we asked for friendships in our neighborhood and God answered with wide open arms at Willie Brown. We asked for growing partnership with GUM & GFCC and here we were working side by side with them.

   Praise God for the sharing of gifts and common hearts and minds among partners! Praise God for delivering us from the need to be capable and self-sufficient! Praise God for young students excitedly brushing their teeth, tasting different vegetables (even jicama!) and learning about how hearts pump blood! Praise God for the joy of simply jumping in and seeing the kids’ many smiles! Praise God for the blessing of working alongside old friends in the gospel, on one hand, and young new friends on the other! Praise God for his uncontrollable, good plans!

Juliette Chien is an ordained elder of Redeemer Community Church, in San Francisco’s Bayview. See the Photos