Angel Metzger holds the title of compassion director at Ransom Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. But that is only one of the many hats she wears in her passionate pursuit of serving vulnerable families and children in her community, her state and even across the country.
“I just wanted to make an impact somehow, some way,” Angel said, “and use my story to really shape other people’s journey.”
Her story is a difficult one. By the time she turned 18, Angel had experienced many kinds of abuse. At 16, she left home. “I fled to my friends’ places often to find comfort, to find safety,” she said.
Her family only attended church periodically, but when she was younger, her mom sometimes dropped Angel and her siblings off at a local Vacation Bible School. Angel recalls feeling like her mom just wanted a break, but these days, she looks back with compassion.
“It took me a lot of years of therapy to recognize and go, ‘My parents were not bad parents,’” she said. “They did the best they could with what they had and what they knew.”
The friends who welcomed her into their homes and a youth pastor she met during this time had a major impact on Angel’s life. “The Lord used those people to show me something different, to show me I was loved and cared for,” she said.
Over time, Angel came to the perspective that “mistakes were made, and I can learn from them and grow from them, or I can repeat them.”
She chose to learn. Angel was the first in several generations of her family to go to college. Today, one of her greatest passions is trauma training: helping others learn about poverty and trauma so “they can love well, like Jesus would.” This includes everyone from volunteers to families to educators. Knowing that experiencing trauma influences behavior, she wants to raise the question, “How do we connect before correcting?”
Within her family, she has also sought to break cycles of abuse and trauma. She explained that her own ACE score — a scale used in trauma care to measure Adverse Childhood Experiences — is 7 out of a possible 10. Her oldest daughter, now an adult, has an ACE score of 0.
“We have normalized therapy in our home,” Angel said. Her dedication to caring for kids continues to affect her professional work and her personal life, as she raises her son (14) and daughter (13) who are still at home.
Angel is also a licensed foster parent, and her youngest daughter was adopted from foster care.
Through her work at Ransom and through organizational partnerships including Lifeline Children’s Services and Hephzibah62:4, Angel also works to recruit, support and empower foster families in Sioux Falls. Her ministry journey began in 2013, when she joined the staff at Ransom as an administrative assistant. She also became the first volunteer in South Dakota with a family preservation program aimed at preserving families in crisis, now called Harbor Families.
Harbor Families seeks to provide resources for vulnerable families in times of crisis to decrease the risk of abuse and neglect. This often looks like families volunteering to host kids, navigators offering mentorship to parents in need, and more. Angel said, “The whole goal is to share the gospel through relationships.”
In 2018, Angel joined the board of the newly redesigned Hephzibah62:4, an organization that seeks to equip Wesleyan churches to transform the lives of vulnerable children and families in their churches and communities. The next year, Angel became Ransom’s compassion director. In that role, she oversees all of Ransom’s missions’ initiatives and outreach programs, including some volunteer and leadership development.
This role gives her an opportunity to pursue one of her other greatest areas of interest: walking with people as they pursue faithful obedience in whatever way God calls them. She said, “Everybody can do something. What’s your part?”
In helping people become trauma-informed and connecting them with innovative ways to serve — in international missions; The Closet ministry, Shift Garage, school partnerships, church collaboratives, foster care, Harbor Families or anything else — she hopes to give everyone a chance to impact their community for good.
The final major way Angel feels God is calling her to direct her passion relates to her legacy. She said, “I have a huge heart for developing and multiplying leaders. And specifically, I’m feeling called even to young adults.” She wants to pass on what she has learned to a younger generation that she sees as full of zeal to make an impact. At the same time, she wants to continue learning from those young people.
The programs she’s involved in are numerous and cover a wide spread of needs. Even so, Angel sees all the work as connected. After all, she said, “Everybody is a child, was a child, or has a child.” And all need the hope that only Jesus can provide.
Jerah Winn is a writer for The Wesleyan Church. She is passionate about sharing stories with others for the glory of God, and she currently resides in central Indiana.
In recognition of National Foster Care Month, join Hephzibah62:4 on May 12, 2026, for our Better Together online gathering to hear more from special guest Angel Metzger. This opportunity will also help you connect and learn more about how you and your Wesleyan church can get involved in and benefit from the coaching, resources, financial support and collaborative community offered by Hephzibah62:4, to bolster our shared mission of transforming the lives of vulnerable children.
