A central conviction underlying the work of the Christian Alliance for Orphans is that Christians can’t answer God’s call to care for the fatherless via formal organizations alone. Rather, meeting the deepest needs of an orphaned boy or girl requires the personal, wholehearted involvement of caring believers: as foster parents and mentors, adoptive families and engaged supporters of orphan care ministry. Just as important, this personal involvement isn’t the role of an isolated family here and there acting alone, but ideally will happen as part of communities in local churches that walk this journey together, supporting, encouraging and enabling each other.
An article last week by our good friend Dan Cruver on www.edstetzer.com does an excellent job explaining why this vision isn’t the sole territory of the large, well-resourced church. Rather, he explains that often it is the small church that embraces orphan ministry in the fullest manner possible: not seeing it merely as “one more good cause” but as a core aspect of the church’s character, representing not only a ministry of mercy, but also a vital force for discipleship and proclamation of the Good News.
Read the whole article here. And, if you haven’t already, make sure to register for Together for Adoption’s upcoming conference in Austin.
I spent the last two days in Louisville along with my trusted Alliance co-laborer, Elizabeth Wiebe, laying groundwork for Summit VII (May 11-13, 2011). We came away full up with enthusiasm and certain there could not be a better location for next year’s Summit.
Louisville is a beautiful city and will be in top shape in mid-Spring a week after the Kentucky Derby (thankfully minus the crowds.) Meanwhile, the facilities at Southeast Christian Church are nothing short of amazing. The area is also easily accessible by road from countless southern and mid-western cities, and via air as well.
Yet there’s one factor far more compelling than any of the others. Henry Blackaby urges, “Look for where God is working and join Him there.” In orphan care, the Louisville region certainly fits that description. Churches across the city and surrounding areas are at the forefront of the stirring that’s happening all across the country as Christians rise to God’s call to “defend the fatherless.” The community is alive with energy for this work, from huge congregations like Southeast Christian Church and Highview Baptist, to an expansive network of small churches across southern Indiana, to the region-wide Orphan Care Alliance, to all that Russell Moore is doing out of SBTS.
Best of all, these churches and many others are taking a personal ownership of Summit VII. It will not only be an event of national reach and global impact. It will also be a conference truly rooted in the local church. We’re excited to pair this local team with the volunteers that step forward from around the country to make Summit all it can be.
Elizabeth and I are now headed back to our respective offices on our respective coasts (DC and CA), but we leave refreshed by the time with such remarkable friends, new and old. Just as much, we’re more excited than ever by the glimpses of all that God is doing in the area already, and by all that will happen when we (and you!) get to join Him there next May!
Paul Pennington at Family Life’s Hope for Orphans shared this great news with us about stories and interviews recorded at Summit VI in Minneapolis:
Monday, August 30th through Friday, September 3rd, Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman will be guests on FamilyLife Today. As many of you know, the Chapmans adopted three girls from China and several years ago began a ministry, now called Show Hope. As many of you also know, the Chapmans lost their precious daughter, Maria Sue, in a tragic accident in May 2008.
In addition to the Chapman shows next week, FamilyLife Today will also be featuring several orphan ministry leaders in a two-part series in mid-September. Hope for Orphans has had the privilege of helping hundreds of churches start orphans ministries over the past seven years. These two broadcasts will feature some of our special friends who have been pioneers in this movement, including, on September 16th, Rocky Gill, Founder of Hope for 100 at Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler, TX, Elizabeth Styffe, Director of both the HIV and Orphan Care Initiatives at Saddleback Church (where Rick Warren is the Senior Pastor) in Lake Forest, CA, and Jedd Medefind, President of the Christian Alliance for Orphans and former Director of President George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative. On September 17th, guests include three local church orphans ministry leaders: Beau Fournet of Watermark Church in Dallas, TX, Jodi Lewis of Kentwood Community Church in Kentwood, MI, and Jill Toth of Biltmore Baptist Church in Asheville, NC. Please make sure you tune in on both dates and hear what God is doing through churches all across the nation to bring His love to the fatherless.
The Cry of the Orphan partners (Focus on the Family, Show Hope, and Hope for Orphans) are excited about our special, one-hour, pre-recorded program called Answer the Cry which was produced to support this year’s Orphan Sunday, scheduled for November 7th, 2010. Come back to Hope for Orphans in September for the soon-to-be announced details on how you can use this program for your church or Bible Study via DVD or live streaming. The program features Francis and Lisa Chan, Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman, Mark Shultz, and interviews with Hope for Orphans’ own Paul and Robin Pennington, as well as Kelly and John Rosati of Focus on the Family.
Mike Gerson, former chief speechwriter to President Bush, has a tremendous column on international adoption in today’s Washington Post. Mike has a reputation even among critics as not just a master communicator, but also both an incisive analyst of international issues and a devout Christian. During work-related travel in Zambia, we visited homes of AIDS victims together, and I saw in him a truly Christlike heart of compassion—one not content with just writing about needs, but yearning to address them as well.
The full article is definitely worth the read for anyone who has pondered the ethnicity issues tied up in cross-racial adoption. Here’s a few highlights:
The relationship [of adoption] results from a broken bond but creates ties as strong as genetics, stronger than race or tribe …
After millennia of racial and ethnic conflict across the world, resulting in rivers of blood, America declared that bloodlines don’t matter, that dignity is found beneath every human disguise. There is no greater embrace of this principle than an American family that looks like the world.
Instead of undermining any culture, international adoption instructs our own. Unlike the thin, quarrelsome multiculturalism of the campus, multiethnic families demonstrate the power of affection over difference. They tend to produce people who may look different from the norm of their community but see themselves as just normal, just human.
This week the Alliance hosted the Post Placement Journey webinar. Dr. Karyn Purvis and Amy Monroe provided practical insights and resources to equip adoption and foster care ministries to help families meet the challenges of loving, nurturing and building strong relationships with children from hard places. In case you missed it, you can view it here:
This week the Alliance Webinar Series hosted the Safe Families model. Safe Families provides a transformational alternative to foster care that makes the homes of local Christians and their church community the center of care. This model now serves more than 1,000 youth in the Chicago area each year, and is now being replicated by Alliance organizations and churches in seven states. You can view this webinar here:
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of being interviewed by a friend, Ken Coleman, the voice of the highly popular Catalyst podcast series. Catalyst is a potent influencer of young pastors and other leaders, so it’s been exciting to see how Ken and other Catalyst leaders are using their platform to challenge Christian leaders to consider adoption and other ways of caring for orphans. Ken asked great questions as an interviewer—perhaps in part because he’s an adoptive father himself. Hear the Alliance segment of the podcast here.
Last month marked the half-year anniversary since Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake. Aside from the small uptick in coverage at the milestone, the eyes of the world have largely turned elsewhere: oil leaks, soccer matches, November elections. Of course, this was all but inevitable. The 24-hour news cycle is fueled by “new,” and tales of ongoing struggle, grinding poverty, and a less-than-hoped-for rebuilding are anything but new.
There’s certainly good reason for frustration at the reality every news programmer knows all too well: news consumers rarely remain interested in other people’s tragedy for more than a few months, at most. Such is human nature, as much a testimony to evil in our world as Haiti’s earthquake itself. The truth is, if we tried to sustain concern for every tragedy we’ve ever seen on TV, we’d melt like cheese on a stovetop. So, as the media’s conveyor belt of heartbreaking stories rolls on, we are left making uneasy peace with an emotional journey that looks like an EKG: long stretches of numbed apathy spiked by occasional moments of empathetic sorrow. Is this really the best way to live?
We just received this message from our good friend and co-laborer, Dan Cruver. The Together for Adoption Conference is less than 2 months away, and it promises to be a rich time of instruction, fellowship and exploration of the ultimate motivation for adoption and orphan care: God’s loving pursuit and rescue of us when we were destitute and alone…
We are just 7 weeks away from our 2010 national conference in Austin, TX. Join us as we consider “The Gospel, the Church, and the Global Orphan Crisis.”
We are very grateful to God for all that He has been doing to bring this event together. Registrations are up 300 percent from last year’s conference! We’d love to have you gather with us! Check out our conference page for informationhere.
This year our pre-conference event is with Dr. Karyn Purvis and Michael and Amy Monroe. We are partnering with Empowered To Connect to present this Pre-Conference workshop on Thursday, September 30, 2010 in Austin, Texas.
One of the slipperiest elements of orphan advocacy is the statistics often quoted to describe the number of orphans worldwide.
These often-varying estimates are sometimes misstated and frequently misapplied. For example, the various global estimates (143 M, 145 M, 163 M, etc) are often quoted in ways that imply that all of these children have no living parents. It’s hard not to make that mistake, since most people typically think of an “orphan” as a child that has lost both parents. But since global orphan estimates include children who’ve lost either one or both parents, roughly 90 percent of children classified as “orphans” have one living parent. This does not mean that these children are not highly vulnerable, but it does mean that the best response to their needs is often not adoption or some form of orphan home, but helping the family remain intact or reunite.
In recent years, the most frequently quoted numbers have been UNICEF estimates. However, the data used to produce UNICEF’s most recent estimate (145 million) is three years old. Previous UNICEF estimates also include the frequently quoted 143 million figure.
The most recent and, according to many experts, most accurate numbers we have at this point are those delivered in a U.S. government report from late 2009. These numbers are expected to be updated late this year. This report projects:
Total global orphan estimates for 2008 are 163 million (Children having lost one or both parents).
Of these, an estimated 55.3 million have lost a mother and 126 million have lost a father.
An estimated 18.3 million children have lost both parents.
In addition to the fact that such statistics are often misquoted or misunderstood, the simple truth is that statistics rarely motivate to action. If anything, they create a paralyzing sense of “what can one person do?” (See this prior blog posts on the shortcomings of orphan statistics). So, while it certainly is important to have a good grasp of the numbers and what they actually mean, it is vital that advocates emphasize the most important statistic of all: it only takes one caring individual to transform the life of an orphan.
Finally, Christians also need to understand that the biblical concept of “orphans” or “the fatherless” found throughout Scripture is a category that includes much more than just the boy or girl who has lost both parents. Rather, it describes the child that faces the world without provider or protector. Some children who fit this description have one living parent. In some cases, such children may even have two living parents who’ve abandoned or abused them, or simply have no capacity to care for them. No statistical analysis will ever perfectly capture the global number of children who fit in this category, but that need be of little concern. Ultimately, God’s call is to defend the defenseless child—whatever the particulars of her situation may be.
Posts 
