New Church Fund Partner

We are very excited to introduce a new church fund partner - Pathway Community Church in Fort Wayne, IN.

Check them out here...

Lifesong Ethiopia Feeding Program

Lifesong for Orphans and Gobena Coffee recently partnered with veteran missionaries to start a feeding program in Ziway, Ethiopia. Lifesong is also committed provide a Christian School to 300+ children in the Ziway, Ethiopia community who have very limited access to education.

Click here to read more!

   

Empowered to Connect - new video

Dr. Karyn Purvis explains the I.D.E.A.L. response for parents when dealing with their children in various situations, especially those involving poor choices or misbehavior by a child.

The IDEAL Response for Parents from Tapestry on Vimeo.

Our hope and prayer is simple: that parents and ministry leaders will find these resources relevant and helpful and will share them with others, all in order that parents can better connect with their children to help them heal and become whole."

Church Adoption Funds | more than just "our church"...

The Church at Battle Creek in the Tulsa, OK area has luanched the Adopt(ed) Church Adoption Fund, as they live out the culture of orphan care & adoption. 

Battle Creek has an abundance mentality in the way they've set up their Church Adoption Fund - the funds are available certainly for couples from their congregation who feel the call of adoption, but didn't stop there. They had the wisdom and abundance mentality to use this Fund to come alongside other committed Christian adoptive families in the Tulsa vicinity (regardless of where they went to church).

That's exactly what they've done with the Baker family, providing them with an Adoption Matching Grant, out of the Adopt(ed) Fund @ TCABC...

 

Larry and Ahna Baker have felt the calling to adopt, Ivan, from Eastern Europe. Their pastor writes “They are devoted to the task of raising their children in a positive and God-honoring way; and they have each shown a willingness to sacrifice personal material comfort in order to provide and care for their family.”

After a six-week Bible study at their church, Larry and Ahna became certain God was giving them “details of His plan and purpose for our lives, and adoption was a major focal point”.   Larry says, “I believe that Ahna and I are uniquely crafted to adopt Ivan and be his parents, and that he was uniquely crafted to ultimately be our son, regardless of the geography or earthly circumstances involved.”

Click here to view pictures from a banquet and golf tournatment held to raise money for funding adoptions.

Click here to Start an Adoption Fund @ Your Church!

Creating a Culture of Adoption in Your Church

My friend Jason Kovacs at the ABBA Fund had a great post about creating a "culture" of adoption in your church... not just creating a ministry...

Many of these churches are asking how they can serve the fatherless most effectively?

The best advice I can give is to not simply start an orphan care/adoption “ministry” but aim to see an orphan care/adoption culture established. What do I mean by that? It may be semantics but I see a difference that has great implications:

Ministry tends be an optional program that a small group of interested individuals can take part in.

Culture is something that the whole church community takes part in by virtue of being part of the church.

Ministry does not necessitate the involvement or the vision casting of the church leadership.

Culture will be sustained by the preaching of the gospel and the particular ways it is worked out.

Ministry is not always clearly connected to the mission of the church.

Culture is a means to work out the mission of the church.

Think of these statements in regards to other “ministries” that we find in our churches – evangelism, prayer, mercy. The extent to which these gospel-activities are seen as “ministries” or “programs”, as they so often are, they often struggle. I find churches that are most effective at evangelism are those churches that see evangelism as a non-negotiable for every member and have created a culture in which every member by virtue of their involvement in the church community is caught up into the activity of reaching the lost. I think the same ought to be true for orphan care/adoption.

The greatest thing you can do to establish a culture of adoption/orphan care in your church is to be gripped by the reality that God has adopted us as His children. The church is God’s great trans-racial adoptive family. As the gospel takes root in our hearts and we recognize that adoption is central to the heart and mission of God it also becomes something we care about. We will naturally begin to reflect our vertical adoption in our horizontal efforts. This is the foundation for creating a culture that believes that every Christian is called to care for the fatherless in some way.

Not everyone is called to adopt but everyone is called to do something.

The question for each Christian and each church is not “Should I care for orphans?”

The question is “How can I care for orphans?”