"It works! It works!" Spiritual Life is Epworth Village
Spiritual LIfe
By: Kerry Hoffschneider
The boy came running up to him, as fast as his young legs could take him.
“Thomas! It works! It works!” He was jubilant, his smile stretching broad and genuine across his face. Out of breath, but with just as much excitement as he could muster, he proclaimed, “Today I got so mad at somebody in school that I got out of my chair, picked it up and was going to hit him with it. And then I remembered, Thomas is praying for me every day this week that God will help me control my anger. So, I set the chair down, sat in it, took my three deep breaths, and then went and talked to my teacher about what was bothering me.”
That was when, at age 60, Thomas Reppart, Spiritual Life Coordinator at Epworth Village, says he learned how intercessory prayer works.
Spiritual Life at Epworth is an interesting subject to try and grasp in the confines of an article with so many unique “spirits” working for the agency each day, nearly 200 of them in fact. Spirituality at Epworth is not a “forced” program or rigidly-assigned “requirement,” but rather presented as an opportunity for both staff members and children. It is an open door offered to everyone, but no one is pushed through. For Christians, this is just as Christ teaches all of us, we have a choice to follow Him or not.
God’s constant, ever-present peace, that “surpasses all understanding” on the hearts and minds in His care is seen at every juncture at Epworth Village. There are the prayers before meals at Mills Dining Room. There are the displays of faith hung in offices, one most often seen is the “Serenity Prayer” . . . “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Strength of spirit is also seen during some of the most difficult and challenging times at Epworth. There are the moments when compassionate staff members display the strong faith and backbone it takes both literally and figuratively to sit outside a safe room as a child in a rage hurls a litany of explicative language out the door. There are the times other workers sit at the kitchen table with a parent facing the reality of losing their children. There are the most direct times, when a child’s anger is so great it lashes out in the form of a punch or spit in the face. Those are times when spirits are most tested.
So rather than seeing himself as the “grand poobah” of all things spiritual, Reppart truly appreciates and sees deep symbolism in his title of “Spiritual Life Coordinator.”
“I might be called minister, or pastor, or chaplain, or (heaven forbid) director or vice-president,” he said with a smile. “. . . ‘In charge of?’ Oh no, we staff are all ‘servants of’ Epworth Village, Inc. and right up to God most high, whether we acknowledge that or not. No, I do not ‘direct,’ nor am I in any way ‘in charge of’ spiritual life at Epworth Village. A big part of my job is to be aware of, to remind and to activate somehow, both for clients and staff, all the many ways God is working in our lives to make ‘a change for the better.’”
Reppart prefers to view himself as a vehicle for the spirit to be shared, a shepherd. He says, “The 23rd Psalm is a good guide for my work, to ‘lead beside still waters,’ to accompany by prayer through the ‘dark valleys of the shadow of deathly desperation,’ to be a facilitator (with good humor) of ‘mercy and goodness’ all the days of a child’s life here at Epworth.”
“Sometimes the children will announce; ‘I don’t have any spiritual life!’ Or they say, ‘I don’t want any spiritual life.’ So, I say, ‘Okay, I am not going to argue with you or try to persuade you otherwise.’ For example, there was the young man, who, on his first day at Epworth, when it came his turn in prayer circle, rather grumpily declared; ‘Well, God, I do not believe in you! But, I’ve got to talk to someone because I’ve got problems!’ Or, the nine-year-old client who recently declared; ‘You are wasting your goddamned breath and my goddamned time, because I don’t believe in any goddamned God!’ To which another nine-year-old client quietly responded, ‘That’s okay. Sometimes you feel like that but Thomas is here because he believes in you and we believe in you and that is how God believes in you.”
Staff members across the spiritual “village” agree that the “spirit” is alive and well here.
“Epworth Village is a spiritual experience if we just let it be,” said Lori Miller with the In-Home Safety Services Program. “I was transporting two youth, ages five and six. Mom had passed away and dad had supervised visits. It was a week before Christmas and we were on the way back from a visit with dad. They asked if the ‘little people’ (Nativity scene) in the yard of Epworth had a baby and who the other people were. I pulled the car over to show them the display. They asked the baby’s name, who the mommy and daddy were and why the other people were there too. The next ten miles back to their home they were full of questions. By the time they arrived home, they decided their mommy must have met Jesus when she got to Heaven.”
“One of the great things at Epworth is prayer,” said Scott Wiles, Education Director. “Prayer is the most important activity that we can do for each other and this agency. Meetings are begun with prayer, the prayer needs of fellow employees and children are often shared and I have prayed with my staff. Every time we pray we acknowledge our need for God. We confirm that our hope and trust is in Him. For me it is a great comfort and sense of freedom to know that I do not need to, nor can I control everything that happens around me. I need God. It’s all in God’s hands.”
“We start every one of our vice president’s meetings with prayer,” said Pam Phillippe, CFO at Epworth. “We have the freedom to stop and pray on site here for one another during our work day. I also have the freedom here at work to invite other employees to my office once a month over a lunch time to ‘soak’ with Jesus or spend time praying together and it just seems to provide a time of refreshing for all of us and a time to remember our priorities on this earth.”
“One’s faith is never more tested than when confronted with an unexpected death,” said Allan Schmidt, Residential Manager at Epworth Village. “One of the Epworth boys faced such a test when he learned the death of his mother. Mom had come for a visit on a Thursday and the two of them got to go off campus to eat. Another visit was scheduled for Saturday, but mom did not come. On the following Monday, the boy’s brother came to the cottage to share the news. Many tears were shed, but not by the boy in our care. He was too busy comforting his brother, reassuring him that it would be alright.”
“When the brother announced the funeral would be in Louisiana, my heart sank. I didn’t think it would be possible for this young man to be able to participate in this important life event. Miracles, however, do happen. Thanks to the tireless help of countless people, the child got into a car and began his journey. . . . I believe that God’s spirit was so strong amongst all of us during this event. There were staff members who lost sleep talking or texting each other about the pain this young man and his family were experiencing. Others shed tears for him. Thomas Reppart came over to visit with the child and encouraged him to talk. Because of this child’s participation in the agency’s Spiritual Life Program, a relationship had been established so that conversations about God, death and life could take place more easily. . . . It is an honor to have been part of such a situation where God’s love flows so freely.”
“However badly any one of the children we serve may have been treated, abandoned, abused, beaten, whatever,” Reppart said. “I tell them, at the very least, we can ‘honor’ our parents because without them we would not be here. If we carry the baggage of hate and wanting revenge with us all of our lives, who suffers? God does not want us to be consumed and destroyed by desires for revenge. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ says the Lord. God wants us to enjoy life in the experience God is giving us now.”
So, the “spiritual life” at Epworth Village cannot be confined nor defined in the context of a simple story. Rather, it is best displayed, in an ongoing fashion, in the way we forgive one another and forget and most importantly bear with one another in love as best as we can each and every day.