Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Church adoption/orphan ministry!

Although we are not yet an official ministry of our church we had our first major event! A few of us have been meeting to pray over the past several months. Then Aimee and I attended the Orphan Summit. On Sunday we had a pool party social event and invited those interested in being a part of an adoption/orphan ministy! We had a great turn-out and more importantly a lot of great conversation. As a ministry we desire tooperate in 3 channels. The first is adoption. We want to be a source of information and support for those who are interested in adopting. We also want to provide ongoing care and support for those in process and beyond. We are also hoping soon to start an adoption fund! We have been in conversation with the great folks at Abba Fund and are excited about what that can mean for future adoptive families. The second channel is orphan care. Not everyone at our church may be called to adopt, but we are all called to care for the orphan. We hope to connect our church to a village/church/orphan home, most likely in Africa, where we make multiple trips and have mutually beneficial cross-cultural relationships. The third channel is foster care. To start out, we are hoping to come alongside some foster parents in the area and help them meet some practical needs. Long-term we would love to see our church become a place that recruits, trains and supports foster parents.
Anyone else out there? I would love to hear about other churches doing adoption/orphan ministries!

1 comment:

Passanita Family said...

Hi Laura,
We have an orphan ministry at our church that was just started by my husband and I a year and a half ago. If you wanted to contact me I would be happy to share with you what we are doing.
Laura