Dressed in cotton-candy pink overalls and vibrant green and orange saddle shoes, Ms. Tippytoe makes her way to her classroom. But it’s not what typically comes to mind when a person thinks of a classroom setting.
Ms. Tippytoe teaches inside Redemption’s Promise Ministry (RPM) Outreach’s 28-foot-long trailer. It is set up like a Sunday School classroom with colorful posters lining the walls and two benches stretching the length of the trailer.
Monday through Friday, during the school year, Cindy Johnson (or Ms. Tippytoe), a member of Little Escambia Baptist Church, Flomaton, teaches Bible classes through RPM, a nondenominational children’s ministry she started in Escambia County.
Since 1995, Johnson and her husband, Daniel, have felt called to serve together in a children’s ministry.
While members of Pineview Pentecostal Holiness Church in Brewton, they volunteered at Camp Victory, a children’s camp near Florala, where they anticipated serving full time after Daniel’s retirement from his job at a paper mill.
But he began to struggle with health issues in 2002 and underwent five bypass surgeries, and the couple wondered if and how their dream might ever be fulfilled. In fact, at the time, doctors gave Daniel a rather grim prognosis.
But he began to slowly heal. He continued to pray for guidance and felt impressed to share what was on his heart with Cindy.
“If we listen to the doctors, it doesn’t look good,” Daniel said. “But if God really wants us to minister together, I feel like we have to try to do (children’s) ministry here, where we live.”
And that was the start of RPM.
In January 2005, Cindy went to the Escambia County school board and presented her idea of using the same five-year curriculum as Camp Victory — Released Time Bible Education — in the schools.
According to the Released Time website, the curriculum — created in 1914 by a public school superintendent in Gary, Ind. — teaches “religious education during the school day to public school students off campus with parental permission.” The curriculum was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952 and is legal in every state, Cindy said.
The school board allowed her to try the program at three of the county’s six schools in 2005. But getting the board’s permission was just the beginning of many “God-sized tasks” that had to be accomplished before RPM was up and running.
The Johnsons’ church raised more than $6,000 for the trailer. Volunteers from several churches of various denominations teamed up with Cindy and prepared more than 1,500 gift packets that included an explanation of the program, an evangelistic letter, a small New Testament and a permission slip for each student in the three participating schools: W.S. Neal Elementary in East Brewton, A.C. Moore Elementary in Atmore and Pollard-McCall Junior High in Brewton.
During the first semester, 704 students attended the Bible classes.
In 2006, after the school board approved RPM for another year, a fourth school participated: Flomaton Elementary. Two years later, a fifth school joined: Huxford Elementary in Atmore.
In 2010, the Johnsons felt led to join Little Escambia Baptist and asked the Escambia Baptist Association church to handle RPM’s finances. They also began to look to the church’s deacon board for guidance and accountability.
This school year, 1,648 students are enrolled in RPM’s classes.
In a summary of findings from research compiled by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the Released Time curriculum “improves academic performance and the development of positive moral character among youth.”
But for Cindy, Daniel and the approximately 25 RPM volunteers, it is much more than character development. It’s a chance to give real hope — Christ.
Every month, according to each school’s schedule, the trailer is transported and parked off of school property, but close enough for students to walk to. Volunteers help gather the students (a maximum of 35 at a time) for their assigned 30–45 minute Bible class, and when the class is finished, they help guide them back inside the school.
Volunteers also serve in other capacities such as folding permission slips, delivering gift bags, praying with students and teaching classes. Several volunteers come from Catawba Springs Baptist Church and North Brewton Baptist Church, both in Brewton. And churches from several other denominations — Pentecostal Holiness, Presbyterian, Freewill Baptist, Mennonite, United Methodist and Assembly of God — provide volunteers and financial support for RPM.
The Baptist Men’s group of First Baptist Church, Flomaton, did an “extreme children’s trailer makeover” this year with a team of eight men in four weeks. The team made the trailer look “brand-new,” Cindy said, with new subflooring and carpet, new paint and repaired ceilings and air conditioners.
Daniel, who transports the trailer from school to school, keeps up with the trailer maintenance and helps Cindy with planning for RPM during the summer months.
Judy Wilson, a member of North Brewton Baptist and RPM’s advisory committee, has volunteered with RPM for five years.
She recalled one day when Cindy asked the students if there were any prayer requests and a third-grader did have a special need. Cindy stopped the class and all the students got down on their knees and just started praying.
“I haven’t heard adults pray like they did (with such fervor),” Wilson said.
Esther McMath, a member of First, Flomaton, was a part of RPM even before it had a name. McMath became a prayer partner with Cindy and has watched the ministry grow, a special blessing for her, she said.
McMath volunteers once a week at Flomaton Elementary and remembers a special day when a first-grade girl, sitting at the edge of one of the benches, was reading all the Bible posters on the walls. She felt a tug on her heart and went to sit by the girl and wrapped her arms around her. The girl looked up at her and said, “My aunt died.”
McMath tried to console the girl as she continued with tears in her eyes, “She wasn’t a Christian.”
McMath listened to the girl and nodded in assurance as she said, “I [want to] love Jesus. What can I do to go to heaven?” McMath shared the gospel message and that “God loves us all and has a plan for our life.”
“God gave all the right words for her level (of understanding),” she said. “Right there, while class was going on and no one else knew, we quietly prayed.”
Pausing in her interview, her voice full of emotion, McMath said she prays every time she walks into the trailer.
“I have a very urgent feeling for this generation,” McMath said. “There are so many children out there … if we could just get the gospel to them.”
And Cindy Jackson, a member of Catawba Springs Baptist and the school board, is happy to be a part of making a way for RPM to continue to do that.
“I think it is wonderful that our schools allow RPM to come and open up doors for children that want to come and hear God’s Word,” she said.
As for Cindy Johnson, at one point, she asked God, “How can I make a difference in these children’s lives if I’m only seeing them once a month?”
But she recalled how the Lord worked in her life when she was a child and a Christian woman came to her school once a month, sharing the gospel in the cafeteria. Cindy Johnson knows her main purpose in the ministry is to point the children to the same hope she found as a child.
“I don’t want to just teach the lesson,” she said. “I want to lead to the Savior.”
For more information, call Cindy Johnson at 251-236-1626.
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