Posts Tagged ‘adoption’

In our previous post, we shared how every believer is called to care for orphans. In this post we just wanted to share as many resources as we could to help you get started or continue. Whether it’s adopting, mentoring, giving financially, going on a missions trip, or countless other ways – every one can care for orphans!

10 Ways That You Can Support the Orphan, Fatherless, and Lonely:

1. Pray for them!

• Make them a regular part of your prayer life and the prayer times of your House Church family.
• Fast and ask God to deepen your understanding of His call to seek out the lost, lonely, and needy.

2. Speak up for them.

• Become a court appointed special advocate for a child in foster care – www.nationalcasa.org
• Use your various social media outlets to raise awareness for their needs.

3. Provide for their needs.

• Sponsor a child. (see resource info below)
• Send supplies or financial gifts to a reputable orphanage, especially those internationally in highly impoverished areas.
• Organize a food/supply drive.

4. Support those who support them.

• Pray for the families around you that are adopting or providing foster care.
• Contribute financially to a family in an expensive adoption process.
• Offer to babysit, mow lawns, provide meals, etc. for adoptive/foster families.

5. Protect them from harm.

• Become a foster parent or emergency foster parent for children in transition. (see resource info below)
• Join efforts to free children from the sex-slave trade (see resource info below)
• Start or join an effort to build orphanages, children’s homes, etc to keep them off the streets.

6. Visit them where they are.

• Find a local orphanage or children’s home and spend time building relationships with the people there.
• Go on a mission trip to serve orphans nationally & internationally. www.visitingorphans.org
• Take a meal, Christmas gifts, etc to a local foster group-home.
• Become a mentor. (see resource info below)

7. Give sacrificially to them.

• Support reputable orphan care organizations on a regular basis.
• Contribute generously to an adoptive family to help them off-set their costs. (see info above)

8. Encourage them.

• Sponsor a child, support them financially, and encourage them through your letters. (see resource info below)
• Join in efforts like Operation Christmas Child or Shoes for Orphan Souls.
• Become a mentor or tutor for those needing help. (see resource info below)

9. Mobilize your church for them.

• Help your house church figure out ways you can regularly be involved with the lost, lonely, and needy.
• Help them stick with it and continue!

10. Adopt them.

• Give a child a home through international, domestic, or foster care adoption. (see resource info below)
• Adopt a young adult who has aged out of the system.

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RESOURCES

A few local Foster Care & Adoption agencies:

-  Agape For Youth

-  Specialized Alternatives for Families and Youth (SAFY)

-  Montgomery County Children Services

-  Greene County Children Services

A few International Adoption agencies:

-  America World Adoption

-  Gladney Center for Adoption

-  Christian World Adoption

-  All God’s Children International

Apex Families currently the International Adoption Process that could use prayer & financial support (as of 1/11):

-  Josh & Tami Rogers – therogersuz[at]gmail.com

-  Dan & Abby Garman – daniel.garman[at]gmail.com

-  Jason & Angela Maggard – jmaggard3[at]woh.rr.com

Local Child Mentoring Programs:

-  Big Brothers Big Sisters

-  Agape for Youth

International Child Sponsorship:

-  Compassion International

-  Children’s Hopechest

-  World Vision

Rescuing Children from Sex-Exploitation and Slavery:

-  International Justice Mission

General Orphan Care Resources:

-  Help for Orphans

-  The Christian Alliance for Orphans

This past weekend, Apex devoted it’s gatherings to the Biblical call for every believer to care for orphans.  We didn’t want to make an emotional appeal that would produce action out of pity.  There is plenty of that in the world already and, usually, pity-based action is very short lived.

We wanted to help Christians see that inside each of them is “the Spirit of adoption“!  Because God has given us His Holy Spirit to lead us from within, that means that we have His very nature inside of us…and part of God’s nature is orphan-care.  He is a God of adoption – seeking out the lost, lonely, and needy and giving them a family…a home…a future.  He doesn’t just seek the easy or comfortable – he sought out the failures, the most needy and draining of people, and made them His kids.  Scripture even tells us that He didn’t just adopt lonely kids…we were His enemies.  We were against Him!  Yet His love was still lavished on us and He sought us out and turned His enemies into His dearly loved kids!

That is why every one of us who calls ourselves a “follower of Jesus” has a nature to reach the needy.  It’s not something crazy or weird, it’s natural.  That is why you feel sad when you see those commercials…that is why you struggle when you see the guy with a sign on the side of the road…that is why your heart breaks at the disasters of the world.  Because God has put within you a Spirit that says “Daddy! They need a Daddy!”

God has made you to be an reflection of Him…so just as He naturally cares for orphans, so do we.  I mean it when I say that the Church (the real Church…the big ‘C’ Church) is the hope of the worldwide orphan crisis.  Adoption is who we are now.  Orphan-care is who we are now.

I can’t wait to see how God uses Apex to change the scope of the needs in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S., and the World!

(We definitely don’t want to just throw out the challenge without giving you some helpful ways to get involved…resources and ideas coming in the next post.)