In a guest post for Christianity Today, Focus on the Family’s Kelly Rosati describes how the next wave of the evangelical adoption movement will rely on the church’s support.
Rosati writes:
Life as we knew it changed on April 16, 2000.
That’s the night my husband, John, and I sat at a friend’s dinner table surrounded by five girls between the ages of 5 and 15. Some were adopted; others were there through foster care. She told us, “There are orphans right here in Hawaii who need adoptive families. The church really needs to get involved.”
When we prayed about it, we sensed God calling us to become foster parents. Eleven-year-old Angie arrived a few months later, and John and I were nervous but ecstatic. Surely this was going to be a happy-ending story, different from the harrowing tales our friend had told us.
By the end of month, though, we were wading through unprecedented darkness. Faced with her stealing, lying, cursing, and insults, we felt hopelessly unprepared and inadequate for the task at hand. Angie made the choice to leave our home for good, leaving John and I shell-shocked.
Looking back on that experience 15 years later, my own family makeup has shifted and so has the church’s involvement in foster care and adoption. And yet, I would still affirm that adoption and foster care remain unimaginably hard, and God is still calling the church to care for orphans.
Read the rest of the article: How to Address America’s Foster Care Crisis…
