Wakefield finds purpose in restoring hope to women in crisis

Jenifer Wakefield was sitting in her office at Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin one day, when a suicidal woman came in seeking assistance. Wakefield, who was serving as executive administrative assistant to the executive pastor at the time, couldn’t help her.

“I had nothing for her,” she said. “I didn’t have any substantial advice to give her that would help her,” other than to recommend that the woman enroll in a program.

“And I know I failed her,” she added. “I cried all night long when I went home that night, and I’ll never forget her.”

Haunted by her inability to help the woman, Wakefield set out on a course that would lead her to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) and the eventual founding of Restoration Ranch, Texas, a Christ-centered residential program for women in crisis.

Wakefield knows what it feels like to need help. She grew up in a fractured family that resulted in her living on the streets as a young girl. She was picked up by police and placed in juvenile detention. When the judge contacted her mother, Wakefield said, the woman refused to take her back. She was sent instead to Texas Baptist Children’s Home in Round Rock, where she would stay for about seven years. During this time, she believed in and decided to follow Christ.

Wakefield went on to study communications and theater performance at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, though she said, “I had no idea what I wanted to do.” At the time, she was dating her future husband, Gary, and “was mostly just trying to pass the time to figure out what in the world did I want to do with my life, and how do I balance this Christian thing and also all this pain and this brokenness in my heart that I had never dealt with.”

Wakefield said she often felt as though she was two people.

“I was this person, this shattered person inside, and I was trying to play the game outwardly.” It was an “arduous, tortuous life of just trying to keep up appearances and perform. So I performed. I think that really fed into what I chose to do with my studies.”

Wakefield quit college about 20 hours short of a degree.

“Gary popped the question. I was like, ‘Absolutely, I’m out of here,’” she said with a laugh, noting that she planned to finish her degree later. The couple married in 1984.

When she joined the staff of Great Hills, Wakefield said she saw “a lot of brokenness. It was a lot of people coming in needing help.”

After being unable to help the woman who had come into her office, Wakefield did some research and found that, in Austin, “there were more shelters for dogs … than there were for people in crisis,” she said. While there are more resources now, Wakefield noted, “per capita, there’s very few resources that will take women who don’t have any money and help them and their family.”

Wanting to do more to help these women, Wakefield enrolled in the biblical counseling certificate program at Southwestern. She said she chose Southwestern because her pastor, Danny Forshee, had graduated from the seminary (MDiv ’90, PhD ’95).

After completing the certificate program, Wakefield wanted to complete her bachelor’s degree. While checking into Southwestern’s programs, however, Wakefield learned she qualified for a new “provisional student program” that would lead to a master’s degree.

“Thirty minutes later I’m … interviewing to get into the master’s program, not having graduated from Howard Payne, and I went, ‘What just happened?’” she said with a laugh.

Wakefield earned her Master of Arts in Christian Education (MACE) degree in 2017 and noted, “I’d never had a graduation before. It was so awesome. It was just the funnest day … one of the funnest days of my life.”

Shortly after her graduation, Wakefield started in the Doctor of Educational Ministries degree program. The decision to pursue doctoral studies didn’t come easily, though. Wakefield said she wondered whether she could find a balance between work and studies, not wanting to short-change the ministry at Great Hills or Restoration Ranch, Texas, which she had started in 2016.

“I think that the calling that was on my heart was to be as most prepared as I could be and to do everything with excellence that God had called me to do,” she said. Wakefield earned her doctoral degree in 2022 and described her studies as “one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had.”

Several people at Southwestern had an impact on Wakefield, including Jonathan Okinaga, assistant professor of biblical counseling, and Cheryl Bell, adjunct professor of biblical counseling, both of whom serve on the board of Restoration Ranch, Texas.

“Jen is a gift,” Okinaga said. “It was an honor to serve as her supervisor for her PDS (Professional Doctoral Studies) degree. Seeing her put into action a ministry plan to care for women coming out of abuse, addiction, and aging out of the foster system is a blessing. It is rare to be part of someone’s vision from the start. She has done all the hard work and has assembled a fantastic/diverse team.”

Among those team members is program and residential director Holly Summers, a fellow SWBTS alumna. Wakefield said she met Summers at Southwestern, adding that Summers was the first person she hired.

Wakefield explained that Restoration Ranch, Texas, is a voluntary, Christ-centered discipleship program.

“They do not have to be a Christ-follower to come in, but we ask them to respect the parameters of the program,” she said.

The three stages of the program are designed to help the women gain stability, deal with the issue that brought them to the program, then return home, find a job, or get an education. Some women stay for months, while some stay only a short time.

Wakefield calls the women “students.”

“The Lord has really impressed on my heart that they would not be clients, they would not be residents, they would be students,” she said. “And we wanted to really impart to them to try to learn something new every day … and hopefully that just helps promote just a heart attitude of just being able to receive and be teachable.”

While at the ranch, students take three educational classes each day – a discipleship class, a class dealing with their counseling issues, and an elective. The elective class is any subject that interests them, from culinary arts to phlebotomy and more.

Recreation is provided, whether it’s “Movie Night” or “Taco Night” or an outing to a museum or gallery. Students also help out on the farm where Restoration Ranch, Texas, is located. Farm owners provided a place for the program when it began, but it always was intended to be a temporary home.

A permanent home now is closer to reality. Restoration Ranch, Texas, recently received a $1 million grant from a donor. Funds will be used to purchase land in Florence, Texas, and build the Restoration Ranch, Texas, Women’s Discipleship Home.

“The Lord did all of this,” Wakefield said, adding she had been praying specifically in response to a challenge from her pastor, who asked, “What is God asking you to do?”

“The answer the Holy Spirit gave me was this: pray more, pray specifically, pray bigger,” she said.

Looking back, Wakefield said that when she surrendered to the Lord, “God set me free, and I began to realize the person and the purpose that He had for my life. But also, it’s been able to give me great compassion for people who have been wounded.”

What she calls “the cherry on top” is that “Southwestern was so faithful to show me how Jesus Christ and His Word is sufficient, 100,000 percent sufficient for everything in life.”