The Bridge We Need to Be

One of our high school seniors, a teen in the New Walk of Life Church youth group, was talking with one of our team members a couple of weeks ago about her post-graduation plans. This young woman was accepted to college and has an idea of what she’d like to do, either nursing or dental assistant or hygienist. She wasn’t sure and didn’t know how to choose except to go into college and take classes and pursue the options and figure out what she could do from there.

Something niggled at our team, though. Surely there’d have to be a way to help her figure out before she spent thousands of dollars she didn’t have and years upon years, only to maybe possibly sort of figure it out. So our team racked their brains until one had an idea. We called up a dentistry practice to see if our teen could talk with one of their assistants or hygienists. They did us one better. Our friends at Carmichael Dental Care invited our teen to come shadow one of their assistants and one of their hygienists for a few hours.

So on a Monday morning, tennis shoes laced up, mask on, and eyes wide, our teen walked through the doors to watch an extraction and witness a cleaning. We had picked her up that morning, drove through to get some breakfast, took her to the dentist's office and waited in the lobby, working on the logistics for our Reading with Grace and Mercy Program. After a couple of hours, she came out to the lobby, was ready to go, and we thanked our friends and headed out.

This was significant, not only because she now knows what she wants to do, and learned that the State of Alabama has a program that allows her to become a dental hygienist and assistant through an apprenticeship-type program of on-the-job training. So she can work a livable-wage job as soon as she graduates high school while training for a career in dentistry. This was also significant because it bridged an opportunity gap many of us simply aren’t aware of. 

There aren’t any dentists here on the West side of Montgomery.

How can our kids dream of a life, attain a life, beyond what they’ve known, if they aren’t given the opportunity to witness it for themselves? We can tell these kids that they can rise out of poverty all we want, but if they don’t see it for themselves, why should they believe us?  

We, alongside our partners in ministry, bridge the opportunity gap that children living in an impoverished community experience. Our church partners, business partners, family partners, government partners, we all link arms and try to offer opportunity after opportunity to these children and teens we so desperately care about, in order to expose them to a life they can have if they reach out and grab it. We try to show them that they’re not reaching alone and that we believe and will make every effort to ensure whatever they’re reaching for is within their grasp.

Getting to know our kids, learning how each one is beautifully wired and crafted by God and uncovering the call He has on their life, it’s a joy. It’s an honor and a privilege.  Our community partners make it possible to speak into that calling, that crafting, and to show them the life God has for them. We get to be that bridge; God invites us to be that bridge. And there are many more kids who never believe that bridge will be built for them, who wouldn’t dream of asking for it. We’re working - and invite you to help us - to show them they’re wrong. That they’re dearly loved and their future is radiant.

One of my employees told me that for the rest of Monday, after the visit to the dentist, the only thing she heard from our teen was about teeth and how excited she is about the opportunity she has to work in dentistry in just a few months.

That has me smiling ear to ear.

God Bless,
Pastor Ken Austin