equipping churches to support the special needs of adoptive & foster families
/
Ever since I started looking for special needs ministry resources outside of our local church, Key Ministry has been there to encourage and equip me and connect me with others who could help our church serve our families well.
As I wrote this blog almost daily and ramped up my speaking at national conferences, the folks from Key Ministry cheered me on. Then, they were some of the first ministry friends to find out about our first adoption. As that adoption and our second one required me to step out of the ministry spotlight (which is a rather weird place anyway), they got it and cheered us on in the ministry God called us to in Taiwan and Uganda and, ultimately, behind the doors of our family home.
Now I'm privileged to join their ranks in a very part-time consultant role (because my life doesn't permit anything more than that right now!), serving:
I'm particularly excited about the second objective. As more and more churches rightly exhort their members to consider adoption for children in need of families and foster parenting for those who need a soft place to land for a time, children's and youth ministries need to be prepared to lovingly support the families who step forward and welcome the children who join their families for a time or forever.
As I wrote this blog almost daily and ramped up my speaking at national conferences, the folks from Key Ministry cheered me on. Then, they were some of the first ministry friends to find out about our first adoption. As that adoption and our second one required me to step out of the ministry spotlight (which is a rather weird place anyway), they got it and cheered us on in the ministry God called us to in Taiwan and Uganda and, ultimately, behind the doors of our family home.
Now I'm privileged to join their ranks in a very part-time consultant role (because my life doesn't permit anything more than that right now!), serving:
- to help churches troubleshoot various challenges to inclusive children's and youth ministry
- to equip churches in supporting the special needs of adoptive and foster families
I'm particularly excited about the second objective. As more and more churches rightly exhort their members to consider adoption for children in need of families and foster parenting for those who need a soft place to land for a time, children's and youth ministries need to be prepared to lovingly support the families who step forward and welcome the children who join their families for a time or forever.
Let me be the first to admit: It's not easy.
But it's definitely worth it.
I can't fully express how excited I am that my friend Gillian Marchenko and I will be co-leading a session called "Making Churches a Place of Welcome for Children with Special Needs….and Their Families" at next month's CAFO Summit. I've been clamoring for a session like this for years, and God has equipped Gillian to address this topic as a mom of children with special needs (both by birth and adoption), as a minister's wife, and as the author of a wonderfully reflective memoir about the birth and parenting of their first daughter with Down syndrome. And I'm honored that she's asked me to come alongside her in addressing the topic.
Three other promising sessions are "Creating a Church Culture Where Foster and Adoptive Families Thrive," "How Your Church Can Equip and Support Adoptive & Foster Families," and "Is Your Church Ready? Successfully Communicating to your Children & Youth Ministries." In several years of reviewing adoption conference workshop offerings, these are some of the first sessions I've seen that uniquely focus on how to serve these families and the children well post-placement.
Previously, all the special needs sessions at adoption conferences have either (a) focused on pre-placement, addressing questions like "what is special needs adoption?" and "could my family handle adopting a child with [insert a diagnosis: HIV, Down syndrome, and so on]?" or (b) aimed at directly addressing families who have adopted children with special needs but not equipping church leaders to meet the ongoing needs these families face.
Those are worthy and necessary topics, but they're not enough.
The need is great, both for Christian families to open their homes to children in need and for the rest of the church to step forward with them in offering support and understanding their diverse needs.
If you'll be at CAFO, let me know! I'd love to connect.
(Register here if you'd like to come but aren't signed up!)
Whether you'll be there or not, would you comment to tell me ONE thing - a resource, a training, a passage of scripture, a program, a "how to," anything - that you'd like to see shared or developed to aid churches in supporting the special needs of adoptive and foster families? It would be a huge help in directing my priorities at Key Ministry.
Thank you!
Three other promising sessions are "Creating a Church Culture Where Foster and Adoptive Families Thrive," "How Your Church Can Equip and Support Adoptive & Foster Families," and "Is Your Church Ready? Successfully Communicating to your Children & Youth Ministries." In several years of reviewing adoption conference workshop offerings, these are some of the first sessions I've seen that uniquely focus on how to serve these families and the children well post-placement.
Previously, all the special needs sessions at adoption conferences have either (a) focused on pre-placement, addressing questions like "what is special needs adoption?" and "could my family handle adopting a child with [insert a diagnosis: HIV, Down syndrome, and so on]?" or (b) aimed at directly addressing families who have adopted children with special needs but not equipping church leaders to meet the ongoing needs these families face.
Those are worthy and necessary topics, but they're not enough.
The need is great, both for Christian families to open their homes to children in need and for the rest of the church to step forward with them in offering support and understanding their diverse needs.
If you'll be at CAFO, let me know! I'd love to connect.
(Register here if you'd like to come but aren't signed up!)
Whether you'll be there or not, would you comment to tell me ONE thing - a resource, a training, a passage of scripture, a program, a "how to," anything - that you'd like to see shared or developed to aid churches in supporting the special needs of adoptive and foster families? It would be a huge help in directing my priorities at Key Ministry.
Thank you!
*One note about churches and adoption:
I am fully convinced - as is the team at Key Ministry - that adoption and fostering are not the only ways the church ought to respond to at-risk children. We are all for orphan prevention, through initiatives to preserve existing families and alleviate poverty and meet practical needs, and ministry to single mothers and widows. That said, we're intentionally honing in our focus on a specific area of need in inclusive family ministry (ministry to post-placement adoptive and foster families), and we're thankful that God is calling others to step forward in other ways. The only way the church can holistically address all the facets of orphan care is if we each are faithful to do what God has placed before us; no one person or organization can do it all.