Together for Adoption Breakout: “Missional Living & Orphan Care”

One of the breakouts I went to “Missional Living & Orphan Care” taught by Jason Kovacs. He’s one of the founders of Together for Adoption and is on staff at Austin Stone.

I really appreciated how Jason spent the first part talking about the theology of adoption and the heart of God in adopting us. Our calling for adoption has to start with God’s adoption of us.

Here are some thoughts:

• The question for the Christian is not should I care for the orphan, but how.
•  The call to do something can be overwhelming because we often don’t know what it is and the options seem endless.
• Our calling as Christians starts with God’s heart and mission.
• When we say adoption, our first thought should be our adoption in Christ, and then adopting children.

God’s heart

• Before the foundations of the world, God predestined us. He planned to adopt us before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1).
• The purpose of our salvation is our adoption (Galatians).
• Adoption is at the center of God’s heart and story.
• Because of God’s adoption, God sees us as he sees Jesus.
• Our journey and call of adoption begins with being gripped by what God has done in Christ.

James 1:27

• I used to read that and focus on the last part, pure and undefiled religion. The middle part is what I got hung up on, I didn’t know what to do with that. If pressed, we often think that we do that by sending others to do that.
• In the first century, when the church read James 1:27, they would’ve thought of all the things they knew about God, a reminder of his nature because of how often he is called the “Father to the fatherless and the protector of widows.”
• The word visit, the early church would’ve thought of Jesus because Jesus visited us when we were orphans, when we were destitute. When we had no family, Christ visited us.
• How did Christ visit us? He visited us in our affliction, our sin. He entered our world, saved us and adopted us.
• When the church is gripped by this, it changes everything.
• God’s power, mercy and justice is made most visible when it is made for the good of the most powerless in our world.

How does orphan care affect the church locally?

• We have an unprecedented opportunity as a church to make the gospel visible.
• The church today could be known for a lot of things, but one thing that God is doing is that the church of our day really cared for the poor and orphan.
• The church shouldn’t be content with starting an adoption ministry for a few but seek to build an adoption culture in their church. A culture of adoption is where everyone is a part of it.
• The reason is that it is God’s heart, his passion, his mission so we should all be a part.
• Seek the welfare of the city where you live (Jeremiah 29).
• There are over 120,000 children in America whose parental rights have been terminated and they’re waiting to be adopted.
• The church is the only ones who are called, divinely called to take responsibility for orphans, not the state.
• Someday, we should look back and think, “Can you believe it, there used to be orphans in our city, kids used to wait for families?”
• If we don’t live out God’s heart, these kids have no hope. The government is not their hope.

How does orphan care happen globally?

• Missional living is not content with small visions for a church to remain local.
• The church is to move outward.
• The heart of God is other centered.
• God talks so much about the nations knowing him in Scripture.
• The Spirit of God has a burden for the nations to know and hear the gospel.
• There are 2.7 billion people unreached on the globe today.
• There is an incredible spiritual crisis of the unreached and the physical crisis of the orphan.
• We are called, through the power of the Spirit, to meet both of these crisis.
• People won’t get saved unless they hear the gospel (Romans 10).
• Matthew 24 says Jesus isn’t coming back until everyone has heard the gospel.
• In the top 100 unreached people groups, there are 40 million orphans. Which means, 40 million orphans are not being cared for. Not even being prayed for.

This was such a good breakout and call for us as Christians and churches to live out the call of God to see our cities transformed.