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 30^th through Friday, September 3^rd, 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 16^th, 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 17^th, 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 7^th, 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.

New adoption statistics from Alliance member Bethany Christian Service brought cheers from orphan advocates this week.  As reported by Bethany and covered in the Christian Post, January to June 2010 was Bethany’s “highest-ever increase in adoption placements for a half-year period.”

Bethany Christian Services reported that the combined international and domestic adoption placement increased 26 percent over the six-month period of January to June compared to the same time period in 2009.

Intercountry adoption inquiries were ahead by over 5,000 requests the first half of this year compared to 2009, totaling an unprecedented 10,567. Meanwhile, there were 8,037 domestic infant adoption inquiries, which is also higher than in 2009.

Alongside it’s excellent work in facilitating adoptions, Bethany is also providing remarkable leadership on other fronts as well—serving children that will never be adopted, and championing the “cause of the fatherless” in ways that benefit other organizations and expand Christian engagement in all forms of orphan ministry.  Internationally, this includes in-country care for orphans in more than 12 countries.  Domestically, Bethany is also helping expand the cutting-edge “Safe Families” foster care alternative beyond Illinois, where it has proven remarkably successful, to other parts of the country.   Bethany has also worked with the SBC to establish an innovative new fund providing scholarships to help SBC pastors adopt.

It’s thrilling to see organizations like Bethany acting out a vision that’s larger than their own organization alone.  Again and again, I’ve seen Bethany’s leaders work behind the scenes—in ways that will likely never be noticed or praised—simply to help advance the cause of the orphan and God’s kingdom.   Having friends and co-laborers like that makes work with the Christian Alliance for Orphans a privilege like none other.

The last post highlighted the need for men, specifically, to catch up with our stalwart sisters in taking up the cause of the fatherless.  My own father—who embodies for me the blend of gentleness and strength that marks  a man fully committed to Christ—shared with me a song last week that resounds with this theme as well.  It’s clearly from an artist with a vision for men stepping forward as fathers to the fatherless, country singer Randy Travis.

Raise Him Up

When I first met his momma
She was just 19
Couldn’t say for certain who the father was
I have known him since he was a pup
And I’m gonna raise him up

If you never knew your daddy
Like I never knew mine
It feels like everybody knows you’re fatherless
This boy may not be blood of my blood
But I’m gonna raise him up

I’ll provide for him
Walk beside of him
I am strong enough
Cause it’s time he knew
What a son can do
With a father’s love
He can change the world

Ya’ll may have to look at Joseph
A couple thousand years ago
When he held a newborn baby he named Jesus
He said he may not be blood of my blood
Still I’m gonna raise him up

I’ll provide for him
Walk beside of him
I am strong enough
I will show him too
What a son can do
With a fathers love
And he will change the world

33 years later
When the Son was in his grave
Broken and abandoned by a world he came to save
His real Dad said he’s mine
Blood of my blood
And I’m gonna raise him up

I’ll provide for you
Walk beside of you
I am strong enough
I have seen from you
What a son can do
With a fathers love
One man changed the world
And he can change your world
But you gotta raise him up
Raise him up

A Time for Men

It sometimes seems Christian men are ten steps behind the women in responding to God’s call to care for orphans, whether via adoption, foster care or global orphan care.  There’d be a lot to say about reasons why.   But whatever the cause, one thing is clear:  men need to know that when we talk about reflecting God’s heart for the orphan, masculinity is every bit as needed as maternal love.

Yes, to meet an orphan’s needs does call for much nurture and caregiving.   (I might add that any loving father should join and relish these involvements, too.)  But there’s another side to the call as well, a fiercer side.

The word translated “care for” or “visit” in James 1:27 is a much more potent term than we often imagine.  It carries a hint of the same thought as in our colloquial saying “show up”—as in, “…then, the Marines showed up.”   In Luke 1:68 the term is set in the context of God’s mighty rescue His people:  “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath visited and redeemed His people” (KJV).  We get a taste of this same call to masculine action in Isaiah’s mandate: “Defend the cause of the fatherless” (1:17).

Ultimately, the wellspring of all our actions on behalf of orphans is God’s action on our behalf:  His role as the rescuing and defending Father, His fierce pursuit and rescue of us.

This kind of active, pursuing, sacrificial, even aggressive “visiting” of orphans is a call to every man who claims the name of Christ.

The truth is, the fatherless child often faces the world without provider or protector; she lives on a precipice between poverty and predators.  Men are needed.  Real men.  As protectors and providers.  As adoptive fathers and mentors.  As defenders and champions.  The role demands struggle; we must grapple in prayer, in sacrifice, in wresting a young life from those that would use and abuse it.  This can be a bloody road, sometimes literally.  And it calls out for men to stand alongside their wives, sisters and daughters to truly “defend the cause of the fatherless.”

There is reason for hope.  Men are waking.  A small, hand-written note was left for me at Summit VI, unsigned.  It read simply, “I know of quite a few women in my hometown who would love to and have a desire to adopt or open their home for fostering children.  Sadly, none of their husbands are open to this in any way.  I’ve wondered, ‘Where are the men with a heart for the fatherless—a heart like my heavenly father.’  This is my first time at the Summit and I am blown away by the number of men here!!  And I am very encouraged.  Just wanted to pass that on.”

It’s a beautiful thing.  For Christians who yearn to see the Church grow impassioned for the Gospel and the orphan, the newly-arrived July edition of Christianity Today is little short of thrilling.  The cover declares, Abba Changes Everything:  Why every Christian is called to rescue orphans. Inside, an excellent introduction framing the magazine is headlined, “Adoption is Everywhere.  Even God is into it.”

That the leading print voice of evangelicalism in America would choose to make orphan care and adoption the center of its July magazine underscores what many of us already knew:  God is stirring His people to again be known as those who “defend the cause of the fatherless” (Is 1:17).

Page 18 begins a tremendous article by Russell Moore, which gave the magazine its cover language, “Abba Changes Everything.”  I’ve heard Dr. Moore articulate this message from the podium, via radio and over the dinner table, but I must admit I felt my heart expand against my ribcage as I read this fresh expression.  Beautiful and heartbreaking; daunting and inspiring; and profoundly rooted in the ultimate reason for it all:  the Father-love of our God revealed through the Gospel.

Page 23 starts the cover story, “Coming Alongside Parents:  Churches are getting real about adoption’s challenges—and helping families after the child arrives.”  It shares the experience of Summit VI and highlights the robust growth of orphan ministry within churches.  Writes author Carla Barnhill, “…[T]he Summit drew more than 1,200 attendees, most of them ministering to orphans through their home churches.  Watching those gathered, I knew this was not my parent’s generation.”

Finally, page 52 carries the section “My Top 5 Books on Orphan Care” that I had the opportunity to provide:   Russell Moore’s Adopted for Life, Dr. Karyn Purvis’ The Connected Child; Melissa Fay Greene’s There is No Me Without You; Tom Davis’ Fields of the Fatherless, and Doug Sauder’s The One Factor.  (Several others came to mind after I’d submitted that I wish I’d included as well, but five was the limit).

If you can, pick up a copy of CT from the newsstand today.  If not, all these articles will come available online over the month ahead, and we’ll post them on the Alliance blog as they do.  In the meantime, advocates of the orphan care take heart:  God continues to build both passion and action in His Church for these children He so deeply loves.

Cardus online carries the article, Crossing the Sahara. It explores a question that haunts many who care deeply about orphans, foster youth and other pressing needs:  Given the struggle and sorrow that mark so many attempts at bringing justice and mercy, is there really any motivation that can keep us in this work for the long haul?

Crossing the Sahara

A gripping scene in The Soloist is a moment of dark epiphany for the film’s antihero protagonist, L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez. Casting about for a story to fill his syndicated column, Lopez discovers that a homeless schizophrenic he’s happened upon was once a virtuoso cellist named Nathaniel Ayers. Although Lopez has interest in little beyond good writing material, the clumsy relationship that grows between the two men slowly wakes him to genuine concern, setting Lopez on a quest to rescue Ayers from both mental illness and the streets.

After many false starts, Ayers seems to have finally turned a corner, accepting a rented apartment and playing the cello once again. But when Lopez asks him to sign some forms, Ayers’s paranoia re-ignites. He seizes Lopez by the neck and drags him to the floor, thumbs nearly crushing the terrified writer’s windpipe until Lopez finally wrests himself free and runs for dear life.  More…

The Washington Post carried the remarkable story of Jelani Freeman last week, noted in the blog of our good friend Kerry Hassenbalg.  The twists and turns of Freeman’s story provide a window into the real-world texture of life in the U.S. foster system.

The full story is worth the read, but certain key points come through loud and clear, first among them the ache of realities so many children face:

When Jelani Freeman came home after school one day, his mother was gone. Eight years old, he waited, realizing as the hours passed that she would not be back. She was mentally ill and in need of treatment. His father was in prison. “I just knew that was it,” he recalled…. In foster care, he was first placed with a woman who barely talked to him. “Dinner is ready,” she would announce, without using his name.  His next foster family left him home when they went to the circus, the movies or Chuck E. Cheese’s…. He lived in one group home, then another. His final placement, for a year and a half, was with an older sister who took him on a foster-care basis, he said, and told him he would have to leave when he turned 18.

Where Jelani is today, however, is a tribute to the profound difference personal involvement from caring adults can make in the life of a foster youth.  Just this week, he graduated from law school.  (A quarter of former foster youth who aged out of the system like Jelani have no high school degree, and just 6 percent even acquire a 2-year AA degree).   The elements that Jelani believes were key for him are worth noting:

For Freeman, what’s made the difference has been a kind of makeshift family of those who have cared along the way. Some cooked him dinner. Some steered him toward opportunities. One couple paid for a year and a half of his law school tuition. Many gave him the kind of advice a parent might bestow.

Alongside the many smaller involvements, one woman played a particularly significant role as a mentor:

“There were so many things going on, I sort of didn’t care about school,” he says. But that began to change when he met Jackie Booker, a Xerox manager and mother of three who became his mentor in the 11th grade through a community program….After school, he worked in her office at Xerox, and a few times a month they went out: to church, the bowling alley, the mall. They talked a lot by phone….Said Booker: “He needed to know somebody was around who cared. He needed to know I was there and if he had problems, I was going to help him resolve those issues.”

Looking towards his Law School graduation, Jelani concluded about Booker and the many others who opened their lives to him:

“This didn’t magically happen,” he said. “People encouraged me. People supported me….”One person at a time, he has pieced together something akin to family, and as he prepares to cross the stage once more, he says, “that’s more important to me than the degree.”

The National Foster Care Prayer Vigil takes place each May through collaborative efforts of a number of Christian Alliance for Organization members.  The Vigil invites followers of Christ to gather in communities across the country during the week of May 16-23 to pray on behalf of children in foster care, as well as their families, their social workers, and the church as it responds to their needs.

A local prayer vigil can take on many forms, from a formal, church-wide event to an informal gathering with your family after dinner.  Ideas suggested by the organizers include doing it as:

• Part of a regular Bible study group in your home
• Part of a regular Community Group meeting
• Part of a Sunday School class
• A Prayer walk through your city
• A gathering of friends at a park, or the beach
• A lunchtime gathering with co-workers
• Or whatever and wherever you want it to be

If you’re ready to register an event, you can learn more here. You can also see the national map for a listing of vigils already scheduled.

The New York Times reports on a significant new study released Wednesday that examines the lives of foster children who were never adopted and “aged out” of foster care into adulthood alone.  The findings echo those of prior studies, reminding that government is a poor substitute for parents, and underscoring the long-term challenges facing individuals who grow up and enter adulthood without the love and support of a family.

By their mid-20s, less half of those who’d aged out of foster care were employed.  More than 80 percent of males had been arrested (compared to 17 percent of all males).  And of women who’d aged out of the foster system, 68 percent were on food stamps, compared to 7 percent of all women.

As the study’s lead researcher explains, ““We took them away from their parents on the assumption that we as a society would do a better job of raising them.  We’ve invested a lot money and time in their care, and by many measures they’re still doing very poorly.”   See the troubling chart from the NY Times on the statistical outcomes below, and to read more, click  here…

In the midst of this disturbing reminder, however, there’s reason for much hope.  As noted in prior blog posts here, Christians nationwide are rallying to this need.  In some regions of concentrated effort, it is entirely conceivable that we will see a day when virtually no children whose parental relationship has been terminated grow up without being adopted.  For example, as noted in this post from February and in today’s “Capitol Commentary” from the Center for Public Justice, the number of children waiting for adoption in the Colorado foster system has been slashed in half, from nearly 800 to 365, since November 2008 (despite a continual inflow of new children in need of adoption.)  The simple truth is that, daunting as the needs are, this is a challenge that can be overcome.  If just a small percentage of America’s 300,000 churches created small foster care and adoption ministries, the number of children waiting for adoption in the foster system could be reduced to virtually zero and the statistics highlighted below could be fundamentally transformed.  That’s a vision worth dreaming, praying, and working towards.

Chart of Stats on Foster Youth from NY Times

We’ve often quoted from and mentioned Tapestry Adoption and Foster Care Ministry on this blog.  This volunteer-led ministry at Irving Bible Church is among the most mature and substantive church orphan ministries in the nation.  They’ve just hit their five-year anniversary, and I must confess I’m blown away by all God has done through Tapestry over that time.  They’ve made a profound difference for local families and the children those families have fostered and adopted.  At the same time, they’ve also provided a tremendous amount of invaluable guidance to church orphan ministries nationwide that are a few steps behind them.

This new post on the Tapestry blog provides both a chance to take stock of what’s transpired in five years, and also words of hard-earned wisdom for churches and individuals new to adoption, foster and global orphan ministry.