Suppose you asked me to help you lose 15 pounds. The problem is, however, you have a disease. That disease is called "Chick-Fil-A"! You're addicted to the #1 value meal which includes a sandwich, fries and a drink. You're eating it almost daily for lunch. As part of my motivation I inform you the meal deal you always order is a total of 1,020 calories. Sounds like a lot of calories, right? Yes, because it is, but probably not enough to cause you to think twice about ordering that meal again. It tastes too good not to. As a matter of fact, this one value meal constitutes a vast % of annual revenue for Chick-Fil-A.
In a counterintuitive way, the goal of your church is not to make foster care and adoption special; it’s to make it normal. It’s relatively easy to make caring for orphans or kids in foster care a “special” thing because in many ways it is special. It’s a uniquely difficult yet rewarding place to engage a broken world with the heart of God. Yet for as special as it is, we don't want it to be a peripheral side-show in our church - we want it to be a normal, regular, consistent thing our church does – any time and all the time. That's a bit more challenging and requires a more thoughtful, strategic approach.
Imagine three friends come upon a raging river. They see children in the water rushing down the rapids towards a waterfall. One friend immediately jumps into the river and begins pulling as many children out as he can. Knowing there’s a waterfall downstream, the second friend runs down river and tries to catch as many children as he can before they fall to their deaths. The third friend, however, wonders why these children are in the river in the first place. He runs upstream to find out how these kids are getting thrown in and to stop whoever is doing it. All three friends are running in three different directions, but all of them are right and necessary places...
My brother-in-law and I live in the same town. Attend the same church. Eat at the same restaurants. Play on the same softball team and hang out at the same family functions. But aside from those things, we couldn't be more different. My career has mostly involved standing on stages speaking to audiences or sitting behind computer screens writing at coffee shops. His, on the other hand, has in large part been spent in helicopters, flying top-secret missions into parts of the world most of us have never heard of to train or protect us from dangers most of us were never even aware of.
I am excited to share with you that I will be joining the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) team this fall. I'm humbled to have the opportunity to work with an amazing organization like CAFO who is helping to lead a gospel-driven, church-based and kingdom-minded movement of orphan care around the world. CAFO exists to serve, support, inspire and resource churches and organizations in their work to care for vulnerable children and families. The annual CAFO Summit draws thousands together to be inspired, networked...
If we're not careful, our care of vulnerable kids and families can become shrouded in an evangelical hero complex that makes it more about us than it is about them. In the end, our good works can be promoted on the backs of the vulnerable to the detriment of making Jesus known as the true Hero in all of this.
It was never God's intent for children to be left without a family. This is why Scripture says He assumes the role of "father of the fatherless" (Psalm 68:5) and “sets the lonely in families" (Psalm 68:6). This is the heart of God - a good, loving and gracious Father.
