Caring for vulnerable families and children is a multifaceted effort. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Ransom Church is tackling the work from as many angles as they can.
Reverend Phill Tague, Ransom’s lead pastor, said, “It’s very, very difficult to go to Ransom and ignore the call to serve somewhere.” When the church launched in 2009, they started with a specific mission in mind. “We knew a call of setting captives free was pretty holistic,” Rev. Tague said.
From that mission, they drew three guiding principles. “You can’t come on a Sunday without hearing our core values,” Rev. Tague said, “whether that be worship free of inhibition, live free of sin or serve free of self.”
All three of these values require participation, and they make the call to serve impossible to ignore.
As Ransom’s compassion director, Angel Metzger views supervising the church’s outreach programs as a chance to help people discover what God is calling them to do. “Everybody can do something,” she said.
“Our core value is serve free, but what we want the most for people in that core value is that they learn what faithful obedience looks like,” said Rev. Tague. The philosophy at Ransom is that there’s a way for everyone to be involved.
And Ransom certainly provides opportunities for that kind of obedience. Angel shared that many people in their church have a heart for fostering and adoption, herself among them. The church offers encouragement, help with discernment and support groups for families pursuing fostering or adoption.
In addition, Ransom financially supports organizations like Lifeline Children’s Services and Hepzhibah62:4. They also partner with Foster605 and The Gathering Well in addition to other associations to serve their local community in Sioux Falls.
Ransom’s ministries cover a broad spectrum of needs from awareness to prevention to support. Near the end of 2025, they hosted a No More Orphans event in partnership with the Declare No More Foundation. They work with SD Kids Belong and Foster 605 to provide resources and training to foster and adoptive families. Under the umbrella of Lifeline, they offer mentoring to women facing unexpected pregnancy via the Worthy program.
Harbor Families
Harbor Families is a program under Lifeline Children’s Services, and it was piloted in South Dakota. Its intent is to supply resources for families in crisis, most often in the form of community networks. Families and individuals can volunteer in several different capacities. Host families provide a care option for kids who need a place to stay. Other volunteers might offer to babysit or buy groceries. Navigators act as mentors for struggling parents.
Angel recalled the story of a host family who took in two toddlers of a single mom who was in a tough situation, struggling to find work. For weeks, a navigator walked alongside the mother as she looked for employment, transportation and more.
For six weeks, Angel saw them all meet at church on Sundays: host family, kids, mentor and mother. They sat together during services.
With Harbor Families, the goal is to build relationships as well as share the gospel. The program doesn’t prevent all future crises, but it does provide options. The next time that single mother needed help, she wasn’t alone — she knew who to reach out to.
Now, through Lifeline’s partnership with churches across the nation, Harbor Families is getting started in South Carolina and Mississippi. Angel hopes to see programs like this in every zip code with a Wesleyan church.
Shoes for Shortiez
Some of Ransom’s ministries, like The Closet and partnership with Shift Garage, aren’t geared directly toward helping children, but everything is connected. “When you’re serving at the soup kitchen, you’re impacting families and kids,” Angel said.
But they do have another major outreach that is, very specifically, for kids. “We do an event called Shoes for Shortiez,” Rev. Tague said, “which is for new shoes for kids, for back to school — and last year gave away over a thousand pairs of shoes.”
Each August, Ransom works with low-income schools in their area to invite kids to come and pick out a new pair of tennis shoes for the first day of school. Angel called it “a beautiful collaboration with the Sioux Falls school district.”
In addition to donating all of the tennis shoes, volunteers also serve at the event. They measure kids’ feet to make sure they get a pair that fits, and they host the event on a Saturday and turn it into a big party. Two or three hundred volunteers participate every year, and some of them take on the task of line entertainment. Sidewalk chalk, temporary tattoos and bubbles help ease the wait for families standing in line. 
Shoes for Shortiez has also created a fun connection with a senior living center across the parking lot from Ransom. Angel described how some of the senior residents like to sit and blow bubbles into the crowd.
Since its inception six years ago, Shoes for Shortiez has grown into a massive undertaking. But the key goal remains helping kids go to school with dignity.
Faithful obedience
Since she started attending Ransom, Angel has grown to love the church deeply. She said, “It is a place that I found healing in lots of areas of my life, and yet, it is also a place that I get to be who God called me to be.”
In seeking to help people discern God’s calling on their lives and live in obedience to God’s prompting, Ransom has also promoted a community that aims to serve vulnerable families and children in whatever way possible.
“We have a great culture of serving,” Rev. Tague said. “We have a lot of people who, you know, are doing things now they never thought they’d do, because they said one ‘yes,’ then another, then another.”
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.
