Drunken Mystic

Went to a meeting today, a good group called Unite (uniteus.org), which is attempting to get resources and info out to churches to make a difference in the community.

The topic today was adoption and fostering.

There are roughly a hundred thousand orphans for adoption in America.  There are more than half a million kids in the foster system in America.  So let’s assume 600,000 kids that need stable homes.

Could we also assume a few hundred thousand churches in America?  So, easily, every single church could have two families that adopt or foster and take care of every one of those kids.  That is both exciting and frustrating.

For evangelicals who say they believe the Bible, and the Bible says our pure religion is to take care of the orphans and widows and to keep oneself pure from the world, this seems like a no-brainer.  It is exciting because it is practically achievable.  Frustrating because kids still go without homes while the Church alone could solve this problem with very little help from the gubmint.

Why isn’t it happening?  Well, the encouraging thing is that the awareness and the conviction is growing among Christians in our country to foster or adopt.  But some factors get in the way.

First, unfortunately, many Christians are too busy with “the cares of this life” to do more than get a little weepy when they watch Blindside and root for Sandra Bullock to win an Oscar.  It takes a certain amount of sacrifice and courage that many Christians just don’t seem to have.  Seems harsh to say, but many are more concerned with careers and hobbies than being greatly inconvenienced by an orphan.  But like I said, that is improving and more and more are getting personally involved by being a home for a kid who needs one.

Second, a lot of churches don’t communicate with one another.  They’re more concerned with hyping up why they’re better than the church next door with their cool new video Sunday School or their dogmatic theology than reaching out to that same neighboring church to spread the vision or be willing to have the vision spread to them.  This is why groups like Unite exist, to spread that vision and give resources to those churches, but the isolated nature of most fellowships still inhibits this.

Third, it is cost prohibitive.  One of the tragedies is that it costs up to 30 grand to adopt a kid.  This is because all of the bureaucracy and legalities involved, among other things, but it is sad to me that many good, stable families in our country would take in a kid in a heartbeat but don’t have 30 grand sitting around.  There are resources for those that would have trouble coming up with that money, even ministries that will help you raise that money, which is cool.

I long to see the Church, in the expression of local churches, grab a hold of this vision and do something that the Bible clearly teaches and the world could practically see.  What a different testimony Christianity in America would have if we could fix this problem.  Call it compassion or social justice or whatever name you want … it’s just the right thing to do.

Peace.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 1:03 pm and is filed under misc messages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.