Sep

08

2009

Justin Taylor|4:02 pm CT

Starting a Church Adoption Fund

Here’s an upcoming webinar (seminar on the web) on how churches can help families meet the financial challenge to adoption costs.

HT: Z

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2 Comments

  1. AdoptAuthor
    September 9, 2009 at 12:46 pm

    Would it not make more sense for churches to set up finds to help families in crisis avoid losing their kids to adoption? Tough economic times are causing more families to have to do this and that's an awful shame!

    Seems it would make a whole lot more sense than helping someone who has trouble affording adoption to take the kids of another….

    WWJD?

  2. Steve
    September 9, 2009 at 9:01 pm

    Hey Justin;

    I appreciate your pointing to this webinar, but really want to add my 2 cents worth of "amen" to the above comment.

    About 20 years ago, I dedicated my life to ministering to the least of these, Jesus' little brothers and sisters, and then focused on Orphans, as I read the many stories of children needing a family, especially in third world countries. I truly believe that every child needs a family to develop into the person God created that child to be.

    But when I actually moved to a third world country, to focus on orphans, lo and behold, I found that most "Orphans" have a mother. It seems that is what James meant when he said in 1:27 that true religion is to minister to "widows AND orphans in their distress" . In the third world, when the man leaves, through any number of reasons, the widow and orphan are left to fend for themselves, in a very bad scenario.

    In the old testament, the term most often used, is "fatherless". This too suggests that only the man is absent.

    In looking at your blog, it is clear you lean toward reformed theology. So do I. That is why I think in God's sovereignty, He has provided the family that that child needs. Sin and a fallen world then messes up that picture, but the fact remains that there is a widow and orphan(s) needing the help of those who would obey Jesus. But there is already a family in many cases. A broken, needy family. As far as the child's needs go, they don't need a new family; they need help in the one they have. The one God sent them to.

    This may sound like I am missing the point of your post, which was talking about financial help to adopters. But here is the point. Something has gone terribly wrong with the way children are being adopted throughout the world. The process is being managed, very profitably, by middle men; Agencies and Lawyers, who have turned the idea of finding a family for a child on it's ear, and instead, now seek children to fill the incredible demand for people who want to have their own family by adopting an infant. So people of good intent are seeking to fill their nest, and do right, but paying exorbitant sums to the baby brokers.

    They don't need help with the fees. The fees are very much a motive for the distorted mess that adoptions have become.

    Money is rarely the answer in the kingdom of God.

    It is always the answer in the Kingdom of Mammon.

    Great blog!

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