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.

A good friend and member of the Alliance’s Church Orphan Ministry Advisory Council, Johnny Carr, has an op-ed on Ethiopian orphans in the Washington Post today.

The piece highlights the vast need, warning “the future of Ethiopia’s children is heading toward a crisis of epic proportion if measurable and immediate action is not taken.”  But alongside this vast need, the article emphasizes where hope lies as well:  not in big institutions, but in individual families and the local church.

The article describes a new project Bethany Christian Services is spearheading to care for orphans in-country.   Like many of the very best orphan care initiatives of Alliance member organizations, this one is centered in local churches.  As the article describes, “These are one-on-one relationships; essentially, the U.S. church provides the necessary financing for foster care and the Ethiopian partner inspires its members to help find families and develop loving, local communities. The two churches coordinate their efforts in a symbiotic fashion, working not only on adoption issues, but also any other missions projects that they wish.”

If this project proves successful, it will add one more vital model to the growing array of church-to-church partnerships that can be harnessed to address the global orphan crisis in a way that is both family-centered and saleable.   In my view, response centered in the local church provides not only the best, but also the only, real promise of solution to the needs of orphans worldwide.