When the Lord Had Other Plans

This article traces the two-year search for a missionary couple in San Francisco and reflects on what it reveals about prayer, perseverance, and the urgent need to renew preaching efforts in North America.

By LEVI GELINEAU

Read Time: 5 minutes

There have been Christadelphians in San Francisco since shortly after our denomination was formally named Christadelphians. In 1898, Brother Robert Roberts died while visiting the brethren in San Francisco on his trip back to England from Australia. For decades after, Christadelphians have continued to have a presence in the area. But there is a question as to whether or not that would continue. In December 2022, my family and I visited the San Francisco Peninsula (SFP) ecclesia, and their Outreach Committee expressed a desire for a domestic missionary couple and wondered if I could help.

The SFP ecclesia, like many in North America, had experienced a decline in membership for several years, and the global pandemic did not improve the situation. They had lost members due to moving, deaths, and disengagement. As a result of the smaller size, the remaining members felt burnt out. It’s a story I’d heard from many corners of the community on our continent; the difference in this case was that SFP members wanted to act drastically to reverse the course. They had received a sizable donation from the estate of a deceased member and wanted to explore whether domestic missionaries were a viable solution.

It was not random for the SFP Outreach committee to ask us for help. Jessica and I are former missionaries; we spent five months in India in 2010, and one or both of us have visited many ecclesias outside the United States, including in Jamaica, Bolivia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Chile. We also had the wonderful experience of attending the Los Angeles Hispanic ecclesia regularly for four years, an ecclesia with many connections to the mission field. I currently volunteer as the Team Lead for WCF’s White Fields program, which funds missionaries and missionary projects in South Africa, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam; therefore, I regularly connect with people interested in mission work.

Thus, my confidence going into the search was high. Covering the expenses for a couple to spend a year in beautiful San Francisco, California, while supporting an established ecclesia would surely be a relatively easy task, I thought, in comparison to finding placements in our other active mission fields.

The Lord had other plans.

The search took over two years.

After 27 months of phone calls, emails, Zoom meetings, and many, many prayers, Gideon and Shoshanna Hewitson from the Baltimore, Maryland, ecclesia agreed to come. They were on my first short-list of contacts, but the initial ask of an arrival in the summer of 2023 didn’t work for them. God’s plan was for our search to continue through 2024 and conclude with a successful arrival in 2025. We went through dozens of candidates, starting with young married couples, then expanding to retirees, and subsequently to Canadians (immigration issues had previously ruled them out). Multiple interviews were also conducted with a couple from Africa; however, several obstacles ultimately prevented us from bringing that family into the SFP position.

Initially, it wasn’t a public search. We had decided to target a pre-determined list of brothers and sisters. As previously mentioned, I assumed this would be an opportunity that many would jump at. After the first 12-month phase left us feeling no closer to finding our missionaries, we expanded our search to a public one, which involved contacting the entire Williamsburg Christadelphian Foundation (WCF) mailing list and posting on their social media channels. This initiative is how we received an international response. At first, this was exciting and intriguing, but the realities of visa complications and increased budget meant we pared the search back down to North America, where the search floundered until the Hewitsons agreed.

Gideon and Shoshanna arrived in San Francisco in September of 2025. Please keep this effort in your prayers.

Paul gives us multiple examples of calling on the ecclesias to pray (Ephesians 6:19-20; Galatians 4:3-4; 2 Thessalonians 3:10). I hope that is the impact of this article. Praying is one of the most practical things that we can do for others in our community.

By the time you’re reading this, the Hewitsons will have been working in San Francisco for 6 months, but the effort would still greatly benefit from your prayers. They plan to stay through July 2026, so they will be approximately halfway through their time. Pray for strength for them, and for the lampstand in San Francisco to rekindle and be a witness for many more years, if the Lord remains away.

I am excited to see what impact a couple can have on an existing ecclesia for a relatively short time. The SFP Ecclesia has clear plans for what they want help with, including young mothers’ gatherings, bolstering the speaking schedule, and coordinating a Vacation Bible School, among other initiatives. We established a few metrics to track and polled the ecclesia before their arrival. So, I will write a follow-up article after they leave with those results. If we can prove that this “works,” my prayer also is that it can be repeated in other North American ecclesias.

We have larger questions to ask as a community about why we are producing so few missionaries.

According to reports from CBMA and WCF, North America has only produced one long-term missionary couple or individual in the last 10 years. Something has changed in our youth education or culture as a whole, that there are so few who look to devote substantial time out of our lives to the direct expansion of the Christadelphian message in other parts of the world. We know that preaching is important and commanded, as seen in Matthew 28:19-20, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations;”¹ Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation;” and Acts 1:8, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” But, as a North American community, we haven’t been showing that in practice.²

The Barna Group, a Christian polling company, has a report that blames a change in thinking of the entire Millennial generation:

Almost all practicing Christians believe that part of their faith means being a witness about Jesus (ranging from 95% to 97% among all generational groups), and that the best thing that could ever happen to someone is for them to know Jesus (94% to 97%). Millennials in particular feel equipped to share their faith with others. For instance, almost three-quarters say they know how to respond when someone raises questions about faith (73%), and that they are gifted at sharing their faith with other people (73%). This is higher than any other generational group: Gen X (66%), Boomers (59%) and Elders (56%).

Despite this, many Millennials are unsure about the actual practice of evangelism. Almost half of Millennials (47%) agree at least somewhat that it is wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith. This is compared to a little over one-quarter of Gen X (27%), and one in five Boomers (19%) and Elders (20%).³

It seems that generationally, many feel able to preach, but simply don’t want to. Perhaps we need help in changing our thinking toward this issue—and so I’d like to ask for prayer again. This call for prayer is now the third in this article. Please pray for our young people and our ecclesias to increase their confidence and interest in supporting the mission fields, including those in our own backyards. We need to support programs like Truth Corps and try to visit our mission fields. I would be happy to speak to any reader to develop a plan for their ecclesia (or themselves) to get more directly involved in the existing preaching work our community is doing. But the most important thing we can do is pray.

Levi Gelineau,
Simi Hills Ecclesia, CA