The Good Shepherd Children’s Home, located just outside Murfreesboro, serves as a Christian-based home and ministry for disadvantaged boys and girls. More than 1,000 children have lived at the home since it opened in 1962, and the community has fully supported it financially.

The current director of the home is Randal Graby, and Robert and LeeAnn Brown are the house parents.

The home needs to be updated, the team says, so the ministry has purchased property and is almost ready to break ground on a new home facility.

The current home is 60 years old, all concrete block, and it’s time for a new house for the children, Robert Brown said. Good Shepherd is working to construct an updated home to keep its mission going. Brown said the new property will have more land and be located further out in the county. This will be better safety-wise and be more efficient, with lower long-term costs.

“We want to get the word out about the home,” Graby said. “When the home was built, Murfreesboro was a very small community, and everybody knew about the children’s home. But Murfreesboro has grown so much the last 15 to 20 years that not a lot of people know we are here. We are kind of the best-kept secret in Murfreesboro.

“It’s challenging for us to show people the home. On one hand a lot of people do hear about the home and want to come see it and volunteer to help the kids, which is great.”

But the team must balance interested visitors with security and the children’s privacy. As a result, they don’t have many volunteers within the home.

“So we are putting together a campaign for people to help us, by buying a square foot of the new building,” Brown said. “That square foot costs $150, and it will make it easy for a lot of people to get involved.”

The building project will be ongoing for the next 12–18 months, so donors could even break it down and contribute over the course of the year.

“We’ve also had people donate in other people’s names, like buying square feet for their grandchildren. And sometimes people like to give at Christmastime,” Brown said. “Everything we do here is just on donations, and we couldn’t do it without people who are willing to be involved.”

The total cost left to raise for the new house is about $1.47 million, which means the project needs about 9,800 people to donate the requested $150.

“We are used to doing things as we go,” Brown said. “We are breaking the cost down to where people can be involved. When we get a lot of people to do just a little bit, it can be done. Everything has been done off donations for more than 60 years now.”

Life at Good Shepherd Children’s Home

Many of the children come to the home after struggling with the effects of poverty, abuse or neglect, and in most cases they have just needed stability, extra love and support.

“We just love them like our own,” house mother LeeAnn Brown said. “We give them a lot of love and attention.”

LeeAnn and Robert Brown

Being a house parent at Good Shepherd is a lot like being parents in any home, Robert said.

“We try to operate very much family-style. We go places and do things together as a group.”

Like many area households, the Browns take the kids on family vacations to Gatlinburg and to Dollywood occasionally.

“We are very much similar to any family, just maybe more structured than another home would have to be. Some homes have structure, but we may have a little bit more structure. We have a time to get up, there’s a time to do homework, and time for showers—there is a time slated for everything,” Brown said, “taking the kids to school, helping them with homework, taking them to ball practice and games.”

The ministry moves children out of difficult situations where they have faced things they should never have to face, Graby said, and puts them in a structured environment where they have stability and can thrive.

The home traces its origin to 1962, when a child was dropped off at the doorstep of local pastor Bro. Woodrow Medlock.

“The pastor saw a need in the community for a home for children,” Graby said. “The home was—and is today—focused on helping children that are from difficult home situations. That could be a variety of different things. Maybe the parents are homeless or the parents may be having to go to jail for some reason. And the kids don’t have anywhere to go. Occasionally grandparents come to us when parents are no longer in the picture, and the kids are being raised by grandparents who can’t physically take care of them.”

Rather than these children going into state custody and going into a state-run program, Good Shepherd Children’s Home—designated as a “voluntary placement home”—serves as a mediator between the family and the state.

“We don’t take parental custody of the child. That remains with the legal guardian,” Graby said. “We take a power of attorney that allows us to make decisions for schooling, health and everything that needs decided on a daily basis.”

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Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me. — Mark 9:37

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Fred and Martha Kemle were heads of the home for 27 years. They served as “Mom and Dad” to over 800 young people. Since Fred passed away in 1992, the home has been cared for by several couples including Mike and Sandy Glanzer, Jim and Patty Scalf, and Mike and Barb Juneau.

Children from age 5 and up may come to live at Good Shepherd Children’s Home, and children can stay until they graduate from high school.

“When children come to us, we request that they stay for a minimum of one year,” Graby said. “That’s for two reasons. It takes kids that long sometimes to adjust into some kind of routine and stable environment. Also, this time might help the children’s family gain stability, whether they are unemployed or homeless or whatever the situation might be.”

For more information about Good Shepherd Children’s Home and to contribute to its cause, visit gsch.net.