Patheos has posted a new interview highlighting the Christian Alliance for Orphans and engagement with orphan issues:

“…At its best, throughout history, the Church has been known as a champion for orphans. You definitely see echoes of this in the 20th-century Church as well. However, often we saw a false dichotomy between orthodoxy and orthopraxy-between emphasis on believing the right things and emphasis on doing the right things. At times, that caused us to fail to recognize that gospel truth and loving service to the least of these must always go hand in hand.”

“…I’ve come to believe that love for orphans can be powerfully transformative. Transformative for the child. Transformative for the family that chooses to love him or her. Transformative to the Church that moves beyond self-focused religion. And transformative to a watching world that sees, perhaps for the first time, the gospel embodied in love for the least of these.”

To read the interview, click here.

By Jedd Medefind

Our good friend at Together for Adoption, Dan Cruver, this week highlighted the upcoming movie, The Blind Side.  It’s slated for release November 20.   Dan’s blog post poignantly named the emotion that I felt also as I watched the trailer.  He described the impact of the adoptive mother’s words “My son” as she stood to defend the boy who, outwardly, seemed to share nothing whatsoever in common with her.  Dan wrote, that picture “moved me to tears, both because of what it means to me as a father of a multi-ethnic family and because of what it means to me as a son in God’s multi-ethnic family.”  I felt the same.

I was also struck by another line as well.  It captured very simply the often under-noted consequence of the decision to adopt or care for orphans in other ways.  Mrs. Touhys, the adoptive mother, is praised by another woman, “You’re changing that boy’s life.”  Touhys shakes her head with a wondering smile.  “No, he’s changing mine.”  It’s true.  When we open our lives to an orphan, the transformation most always happens in both directions.  Certainly, orphans do need us.  We may need them even more.

This week we saw Mary DeBoer VandenBosch, 93, reach the end of her race.  Mary co-founded Bethany Christian Services.   Her life embodies an incredible example of the ripple effect of an ordinary woman responding to the nudging of God to show compassion to a child.  It was 63 years ago when Mary DeBoer and Marguerite Bonnema took in a three-month old baby that a single mother was unable to care for.   The story of how this “pebble tossed in the pond” rippled outward is remarkable, ultimately leading to the official formation of Bethany Christian Services thirty years later.   Today, Bethany is the largest adoption agency in the country, both enabling adoption and serving orphans and vulnerable children in over five continents.   What a powerful reminder of what remarkable things God can do with even the smallest acts of obedience.

By Jedd Medefind

By Jim Daly

I was an orphan.

The world, at least as I knew it, fell apart for me when I was in the fourth-grade.  My mother died of cancer and my stepfather walked out on us only minutes after the funeral.   I know the pain, the loneliness and the despair of life without love.  I’m intimately familiar with how helpless and hopeless a young person can feel — anchorless and directionless, a lost soul adrift at sea.  What a deep and dark hole can develop in your heart when you have no home to go home to.

And so this is why I’m so passionate about the Body of Christ working together to find forever homes for orphans and collectively, to do everything we can, to help as many children as we can, anyway we can.

But even more importantly, the reason we should care about it is because God cares deeply about His children and especially about orphans.   It’s a subject matter obviously very close to His heart.  Did you know that the topic is mentioned 47 times in the Scriptures?  By caring about what God cares about, we’re joining in His wondrous work here on earth.  What a privilege and glorious opportunity this side of eternity.

That’s why we’re putting such emphasis at Focus on the Family on raising people’s awareness about this dire need.  By some estimates, there are well over one-hundred million orphaned children around the globe.  That’s an overwhelming statistic, so enormous, in fact, that it won’t register with most people.  So we’re working to personalize the need and highlight, state by state, just how many children are waiting to be adopted.  In many places, the list is several hundred names long.  That’s still quite a few, but when it’s made more quantifiable, it also becomes more tangible.  And personal.

What if the Church began to embrace and pursue the goal of reducing these waiting lists?  What if a single church made it their mission to very deliberately promote the idea of encouraging their members to pray about the possibility of adopting a child?  Several have done just that – and in parts of Texas and Colorado and Florida, hundreds of children are now permanently placed with newly adoptive families.  Alongside the families that have made the decision to adopt or provide foster care are countless more supporting them in everything from running errands to babysitting.  What a joy to see this all unfold!

Have you ever wondered how the first century church, easily the most persecuted era in Christendom, was still able to thrive and grow by leaps and bounds?  I believe it’s because the Lord found them faithful and obedient and simply chose to bless them.  They were known for their loving service to the destitute, particularly orphans.  Imagine if today’s believers were to tackle this task of caring for orphans with the same fervor.  Do you not think the great God of the universe would do the same with us as he did with them?

Jim Daly is President of Focus on the Family.  He cares deeply about Focus’ I Care About Orphans initiative to help families and churches engage the needs of foster youth and other orphans.

By Dennis Rainey

I’ve been thinking recently of the magnitude of the task before us:  If you define an orphan as one who has lost either mother or father, there are more than one hundred and thirty million orphans in the developing world.  I’ve been trying to grasp what that looks like and what is needed to truly address a humanitarian crisis of historic portions.  Picture the following top 9 cities in the world in terms of population:

1.Tokyo, Japan – 28,025,000
2. Mexico City, Mexico – 18,131,000
3. Mumbai, India – 18,042,000
4. Sáo Paulo, Brazil – 17, 711,000
5. New York City, USA – 16,626,000
6. Shanghai, China – 14,173,000
7. Lagos, Nigeria – 13,488,000
8. Los Angeles, USA – 13,129,000
9. Calcutta, India – 12,900,000

Now think about these cities, ALL being filled to the brim with orphans.  High rise apartments, neighborhoods and urban centers filled with throngs of hungry, abandoned, abused and neglected orphans;  children whose parents died of AIDS and children who are  themselves infected with AIDS.   Little ones everywhere,  ALL with no moms and dads to love, clothe, feed, protect, and train them.   Even if we count only “double orphans” – those who have lost both parents – there are roughly 15 million in our world today.  What was unthinkable and  unimaginable is taking place now.

The thought of the unspeakable evils being perpetrated against these vulnerable little girls and little boys motivates us to give voice to those who have no voice.  The image of a room with a dozen cribs, filled with babies compels us to urge the community of faith to sacrificial action.  The magnitude of the need must galvanize an army of adults to address the needs of these who are nameless and homeless.  Now.  We must work together as never before.

I’ve been in ministry now for almost four decades and it has been my experience that it takes a crisis, something extremely significant for the Christian community to truly work together.  This moment has come.  God is calling us to see some of what He sees.  To hear some of what He hears.  And to feel some of what He feels as millions of orphans languish.  He wants us to be His feet and His hands and His arms of love bringing hope where there is none.

The need is so immense that there is absolutely no way we can address the collective issues if we do not link arms and find a way to collaboratively use one another’s strengths.  Jesus prayed that we’d be unified in His high priestly prayer in John 17.  Perhaps His prayer and the enormity of the task before us will unite us to address the needs of orphans.

I’m reminded of a story featured over a half century ago in the Saturday Evening Post.  A small child had wondered into a cornfield and was missing.  The corn was only a little taller than the child and for over 24 hours rescuers sought in vain to find the youngster.  But the field was too vast.  Finally a worker had the idea of all the workers joining hands as they walked down the rows and searched the field.  What had proven futile as they searched as individuals worked, but it was too late.  The child had perished.

Today the cry of the orphan calls us to courageously link arms with one another—as individuals, organizations and churches—to work together as never before.   I’m expectant that this can happen, because I believe God has raised up the Christian Alliance for Orphans to help wake us to the need and leverage one another’s strengths…before it’s too late.

Dr. Dennis Rainey is President and Co-Founder of FamilyLife. Hope for Orphans ( A founding ministry of the Christian Alliance for Orphans) is a ministry of FamilyLife.  To learn more go to www.familylife.com and www.hopefororphans.org.

Virtually every facet of the Christian orphan movement—from foster care and adoption ministries to overseas orphan care—is growing more robust by the day.  In both discussion and ministry-emphasis, however, one vital element can often be overlooked:  the resources, training and support needed by families whose children via adoption, foster care or otherwise have special emotion, psychological or relational challenges to overcome.  I was excited to learn this week that our friends from Tapestry, Michael and Amy Monroe, and Dr. Karyn Purvis have teamed up to engage this need with a significant new website, Empowered to Connect.  It promises to be a great resource for sharing wisdom and skills among families, ministries and others committed to helping parents connect fully with their children, even in the face of real difficulties.  The site already contains a solid and growing online library of articles, audio and video presentations.   I anticipate it will play an important role in helping to build out an aspect of the orphan movement that has often been underdeveloped.  More importantly, it will help many families overcome real barriers to grow deep connectedness between parent and child.