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As I finished up my counseling session with Marisa and her adoptive parents, Eric and Michelle, I felt sad and frustrated. Theirs was a story I had heard many times before: Eric and Michelle’s support system, including the church they had attended for years, was very excited about the couple’s plans to adopt. In fact, the church made a big deal about Adoption Sunday, exploring the global orphan crisis and encouraging congregants to prayerfully consider whether God might be calling them to adopt or foster.

Eric and Michelle’s family, friends and church community were all eager to help, and there were quite a few meals and visits during the first few weeks after they brought Marisa home. But after the initial “honeymoon period,” the excitement waned. And now, a year into their adoption journey, all that support was nowhere to be found.

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1. Children are in foster care because of their own juvenile delinquency.

Across this nation, state and local governments intervene in the lives of families to protect children who are at risk of harm or are victims of abuse or neglect. These kids aren’t placed in foster care to punish them, but to protect them. Foster care provides a safe and stable living environment for these children while services are engaged to reunite the child with his or her birth family.

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Foster care is a silent epidemic that is overtaking so many lives. Over 440,000 children and youth have been removed from their homes and experienced immense trauma. Children being born into a survival situation. Youth who are susceptible to moving schools more than seven times before they graduate. I have wept for the souls of children and youth that want to be loved and cared for yet cannot find a loving home to take them.  

Scripture calls every Christ-follower to care for the vulnerable (James 1:27; Isaiah 1:17). It is important to note that children and youth in foster care are among the most vulnerable populations in the United States. If we turn a blind eye to these children’s needs, are we not turning a blind eye to Christ Himself (James 2:15-16)?

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Imagine that new neighbors move in next door. You’re not entirely sure how many kids live there, but you know it’s a lot. And judging by the frazzled demeanor of the adults, it’s clear that they are overwhelmed.

When you introduce yourself, fresh-baked cookies in hand, you discover that all the children living there are being fostered—with more arriving all the time. The neighbors desperately want to find loving homes for each child. Some of the children also need dental work and special therapies to improve their quality of life. But with so many children, those are difficult and costly tasks.

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The church, in many ways, already provides excellent support to foster and adoptive families. However, we have also to remember that the adoption triad consists of three perspectives: birth family, adoptive family, and adoptee.

To best serve the adoption community, our hearts must be humble and soft to what loving the full triad looks like— it goes beyond the adoptive family unit. Adoptees and birth parents also live this lifelong journey of adoption.

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There are more than 400,000 children in the foster care system nationwide. This includes over 25,000 children in the state of New York alone.

You would think that government agencies would want as many adoption providers as possible working to find homes for these children. Yet, in some states, government officials are cutting ties with—and in some cases, outright attempting to shut down—adoption providers because of their religious beliefs about the best home for a child.

New Hope Family Services in upstate New York is one of these providers. But, thankfully, today New Hope Family Services got some great news from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

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