Our History

Our name has changed, but our mission “Helping families find hope and healing in Christ” remains the same. After more than 50 years serving troubled youth within a residential setting as The Fold Family Ministries, we have changed our delivery model to a day program, and our name to Elevation Family Ministries, to better reflect our purpose and impact. We fervently seek to elevate those from brokenness to claim their true identity as God’s beloved daughters and sons.

The Fold was founded in 1967 to provide a Christ-centered home for rejected, homeless, and disadvantaged children. Its founder, Earl Eldridge, was a recovering alcoholic who found deliverance through Christ. Through rescue mission work, he began to reach out to others who were enslaved to drugs and alcohol. Earl soon discovered that most people who came to the rescue mission had grown up in grossly dysfunctional homes and had been deprived of adequate parenting and upbringing. They had received little or no instruction about the important things of life, beginning with the Lord. The vision for The Fold Family Ministries formed as Earl began with the question, “Why not reach young people from broken homes for Christ before they turn to drugs and alcohol?”

For several decades, Dr. Fred Tomaselli led the ministry as a model that was emulated by other ministries and programs. The cornerstone of Fred’s vision was to help teens resolve their problems and conflicts and to reunite with their families by involving their parents as well. This included counseling and teaching, which took place on specially planned parent seminar weekends. It also involved several individual meetings with counselors from The Fold Family Ministries.

After years of recession, a couple of things became clear, donations were down along with the number of both student and staff applications. In 2019, with ongoing financial strains and COVID-19 looming, the board of directors realized that maintaining a residential program was no longer feasible. Although the board felt that God wasn’t through with the ministry, after much prayer, they reluctantly began preparations to close. During that process, God miraculously answered their prayers. They received a phone call from Dr. Scott Rancourt, a graduate of The Fold Family Ministries in 1988, who informed them that God had laid it upon his heart to contact them with a new, sustainable vision for The Fold Family Ministries. Out of that vision was born Elevation Family Ministries.