Joseph and Rachel Givens are developing a support community to host people fleeing violence. They will join a ministry of partnership with organizations in France and the United Kingdom to offer a temporary home and place of prayer in Calais, France.
GOSHEN, Indiana (Mennonite Mission Network) — "How can you watch children drown and not provide an alternative?" This question is part of the reason that Joseph and Rachel Givens are planning to sell their house in St. Paul, Minnesota, and follow Jesus to Calais, France. The Givens family is inviting you to be part of this journey of radical discipleship. Learn more in their
YouTube Live event, March 27, 4 pm CDT.
Joseph Givens asked the above question as he described how he and Rachel, his spouse, decided to leave their current jobs as a bank teller and an accounting administrative assistant, respectively. The Givens couple have been called to a new vocation on the northern coast of France.
Rachel Givens’ interest in mission began early as she grew up in a close-knit Iowa farming community, where many of the people in church were also family. Her best friend was a missionary kid in Indonesia, and she loved hearing the stories told by missionaries when she attended camp. Missionaries were also part of Joseph Givens’ childhood in South Carolina and, later Minnesota. His maternal grandparents served for 50 years in Brazil.
Their separate pursuits of desiring to live out their faith joined at Faith Baptist Bible College in Ankeny, Iowa, where Joseph worked on a secondary education degree and Rachel double-majored in office administration and Bible and minored in women’s ministries. They married after graduation and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where they pursued careers for three years.
"But we longed for something more," Rachel Givens said. "Our convictions called us to address the injustice we saw in the world. As we searched for answers, we discovered kindred spirits in Anabaptists."
When they moved to Minnesota in 2015, a year after their first son, Elijah was born, they found their spiritual home at Third Way Church in St. Paul. Here Sunday worship continues throughout the week via "house church" groups that reach out into the community.
In 2017, the Givens family was part of Third Way’s welcoming committee for a Karen family, arriving from Thailand, after fleeing their homeland in Myanmar (Burma). The relationship developed as Joseph and Rachel Givens, and others from their house church, drove Klaw Klah and Mer Naw’s family to doctors’ appointments, and helped with government paperwork, and English classes.
Soon Klaw Klah and Mer Naw were inviting the people from Third Way to meals and celebrations. For example, the Givens family was invited to an all-night prayer vigil at the beginning of the Advent season, a Karen Christian tradition.
"They taught us about hospitality," Joseph Givens said. "It seemed like every time we came, they would bring out most of the food in the house!"
Until their second child, Micaiah, was born in 2018 and life became busier, the Givens family and the Karen family would meet several times each week.
As Joseph and Rachel Givens grew in their familiarity with the Anabaptist concept of discipleship, they also found ways of being missional that held together individual salvation with working for justice alongside people on the margins of society. They began scouting out mission agencies that best expressed their understanding of Jesus’ call.
When they settled on Mennonite Mission Network, they were able to spend a week in London with Sharon Norton, Mission Network’s co-director for Africa and Europe. There God’s call to them focused as they met with Simon Jones, a Baptist pastor, who is a board member of Maria Skobtsova House in Calais, France — a place of prayer and temporary refuge for people fleeing violence in northern Africa and the Middle East. France has instituted harsh measures to assure that the people in exile don’t find a way to settle in their country and the United Kingdom creates barriers to entry.
While visiting Calais, Joseph and Rachel Givens heard one woman from Eritrea ask, "Why doesn’t anyone want us?"
The Givens’ call includes the good news that responds to this question, "We want you. You are loved by God. You have inherent worth as a human being."
The Givens family’s ministry will be to provide a daily structure of prayer and hospitality — including cooking, cleaning and maintaining the household — for the women and children who come Maria Skobtsova House, typically around 15 people. Maximum capacity is 30.
