Month: January 2017

2017 Empower Conference to feature new schedule, same evangelistic emphasis





LAS COLINAS  In a society that encourages Christians to hold their convictions silently, this year’s Empower Conference, Feb. 27-28, will equip pastors and church members to proclaim the gospel boldly. The two-day conference put on by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention evangelism department will feature inspiring messages and breakout sessions from notable pastors, evangelists and ministry leaders.

Speakers for this year’s conference include Matt Carter, Ed Stetzer, Jerry Vines, K. Marshall Williams, Grant Skeldon, Steve Gaines, and others, with music led by the Prestonwood Praise Team and Austin Stone Worship. A complete list of speakers is included on the event website.

Those planning to attend the free conference at the Irving Convention Center in Las Colinas, near DFW airport, are asked to pre-register online at sbtexas.com/empower. The first 1,000 who pre-register will receive an exclusive access code upon check-in for online video access to conference messages following the event.

Conference organizers have streamlined this year’s schedule to encompass two full days instead of three days, as it was in previous years. The conference will kick off Monday, Feb. 27, with a Classics Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. featuring Christian comedian and singer Mark Lowry. The luncheon, which is open for all age groups and designed to honor senior adults, will be followed by a Classics Session from 1:30–4:05 p.m., featuring Lowry, Jimmy Draper, George Harris and Bailey Smith.

Conference breakout sessions will be offered Monday afternoon from 1:00–2:30 p.m. and 2:45–4:15 p.m. A Ladies Session will also be offered Monday afternoon from 1:30–4:00 p.m., with messages by Thelma Wells, Donna Gaines and Sheila Walsh as well as music led by Austin Stone Worship. SBTC Disaster Relief teams will provide a Phase 1 Intro to DR training Monday morning from 8:00–11:15 a.m., and those interested must pre-register online.

The Men’s and Ladies’ Dinner featuring Steve and Debbie Wilson will take place on Monday evening before the main session, and a Cooperative Program Lunch with SBC President Steve Gaines will take place on Tuesday.

For a full list of speakers, breakout sessions, childcare and hotel information, conference schedule, and meal registration, visit sbtexas.com/empower.

Refugee children experience sense of normalcy at multicultural academy

FORT WORTH An international ensemble of eight guitarists enthusiastically played and sang during a December rehearsal. The musicians, like the other refugee children attending weekly classes at the Ethnic Group Academy (EGA), revelled in the experience, happy that for at least a couple of hours that Saturday afternoon they could just be kids.

EGA is a ministry of Hanmaum International Baptist Church, a predominantly South Korean congregation. When Pastor Jong Su Heo learned six years ago about the influx of refugees into Tarrant County, he asked God how his congregation could help. The answer? A reconsideration of the term “foreign missions.”

“With language and culture barriers and everything else, there’s not always much we can do except love these kids and show [and] tell them that we love them and that God loves them,” EGA volunteer Kimberly Brooks told the TEXAN.

She and her husband, Jeff, members of another church, have volunteered with the refugee program since it began in 2011. EGA’s mission has become a community project drawing volunteers from Hanmaum International Baptist Church, nearby Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and like-minded congregations.

Heo, a South Korean immigrant, did not share the tumultuous journey of a refugee in coming to America, but he empathizes with some of their struggles to adapt to life in North Texas. Their arrival in his neighborhood altered Heo’s vision of his congregation as an outreach to South Korean immigrants, seminary students and “Anglo Americans.”

In 2010, the church acquired a two-story, 30-room education building on 5.5 acres of land in order to reach the incoming refugees with the gospel. While other Christian charities meet refugees’ material needs, EGA fills an essential yet easily overlooked need.

“I think EGA gives refugee kids an opportunity to be like normal kids,” Kimberly Brooks said. “A lot of these families cannot afford or don’t know about extracurricular activities for their kids. EGA is a small opportunity for these kids to participate in something that they might not get to otherwise.”

Violin and guitar lessons, soccer, Taekwondo, choir, arts and crafts, English as a Second Language classes, and SAT tutoring are some of the 11 activities offered every Saturday from 3-5 p.m. during the school year. Each week the church bus and passenger van collect 85-100 students from two area apartment complexes where refugees are resettled by World Relief, Catholic Charities, and Refugee Services of Texas.

Between the three charities almost 3,000 people were relocated to Tarrant County between October 2013 and October 2015, according to Jay Long, World Relief Church mobilization program manager. They come from Iraq, Burma, Nepal/Bhutan, Somalia, Eritrea, Congo and Afghanistan.

Mary Mi and her husband Nai San’s Oo and their two children came to Texas from Burma via a Malaysian United Nations refugee camp. Conditions in Burma (also known as Myanmar) left the young family in fear of their lives. Army incursions into their village sent women fleeing into the forest. Men were forced into service as human pack mules bearing heavy loads for the soldiers. Mary said the men would disappear for three to six months at a time.

“Some didn’t come back,” she said.

Cherry Neill, an EGA volunteer, cradled the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Angel, in her lap as she filled in the gaps of Mary and Nai San’s story when their English failed them. Although Neill knows the story well, she still bristles at the anguish they suffered and exults in the work of God in bringing the once-faithful Buddhist couple to faith in Christ and then to Texas. The family has grown since their resettlement with the birth of their second son, Abraham, 18 months ago. Their oldest son, Abednego, 8, was a baby when they fled their home.

Mary and Nai San have found a home in Texas and an extended family in Neill and the EGA participants and volunteers.

“My joy overflows almost every day,” Neill told the TEXAN. “I have the jaw-dropping opportunity to serve both believing and pre-believing refugees, who are at least open to friendship if nothing else.”

She and other EGA volunteers cultivate those friendships during the week, often visiting the families in their homes, inviting them to their own homes, assessing needs, providing tutoring, taking them to McDonalds, and beginning a women’s Bible study.

Volunteers see the cultural and language differences not as barriers but as opportunities to speak a common language—love for the children.

“The big thing is that the students have a chance to be around not only other students but every week they are spending time with people who are unequivocally for them—praying for them, caring about them,” Jeff Brooks said

Heo said the gospel infuses all that is done at the academy. The Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist refugees recognize EGA is a Christian organization and, at times, accept open gospel pronouncements.

“I’ve been in cross-cultural ministry for 17 years,” Neill said. “No one has ever refused prayer in [the Lord Jesus’] name.”

Heo believes in God’s call to foreign missions remains. But, in Tarrant County, the world is coming to the church and the mission efforts there are bearing fruit.

“When they came to the U.S. they were refugees, but when they return to their kinsmen they will be American citizens, being equipped with [the] English language, professional knowledge and skills, and above all the good news of Jesus Christ,” Heo said. “I believe this is God’s design to bring people from everywhere to the U.S. to hear the gospel.”

For more information on the academy, visit egacademy.org. 

Back in Texas” Court: SCOTUS rulings force lawmakers to revisit civil statutes, abortion regulations

Texas capitol building image





AUSTIN—The legal ramifications of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings and continuing debates over education and women’s privacy highlight some of the bills pro-family organizations will champion during the 85th Texas Legislature session, which opened January 10.

Since the last Texas legislative session ended in May 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down marriage laws in Texas and across the nation and declared a portion of Texas’ 2013 pro-life legislation unconstitutional. Those legislative setbacks and the advancing cultural agenda of gay, lesbian and transgender advocates have made some pro-life and religious liberty advocates more determined to advance legislation that recognizes the fundamental humanity of the unborn and also bills that push back against threats to the First Amendment.

Before the opening gavel, hundreds of bills had already been filed and more will be added to the que. Public policy advisors warn conservative Christians can’t rest on their laurels with the November wins in the White House and Congress. Now, more than ever, federal and states legislators must be held to account, said Dana Hodges, director of Concerned Women for America (CWA) of Texas.

“You can’t turn your back for a moment,” Hodges told the TEXAN.

Abortion and LGBT advocates, emboldened by the high court rulings, are pressing to advance their causes. Abortion-rights activists have vowed to oppose any efforts to “humanize” the fetus, while LGBT advocates in the legislature and the Texas Business Association (TAB) are already pressing the cultural envelope beyond gay marriage to include civil protections covering gender identity.

A privacy act protecting women and children tops the CWA priority list, Hodges said. Such a bill would establish a uniform public accommodation law that requires people use the restroom and private changing facilities that correspond with their biological sex. A similar law in North Carolina applies to public buildings only, allowing private businesses to establish their own policies.

LGBT activists inside and outside North Carolina called the bill bigoted and have demanded its repeal.

In Texas, TAB President Chris Wallace started that mantra before a bill was filed. As in the previous session TAB claims passage of “discriminatory legislation” would bring economic ruin upon the state. The group cites a report it commissioned from St. Edwards University in Austin that Hodges called “farfetched” and full of suppositions.

Texas Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, agreed. In a press release he questioned the disparate extrapolation of information, some unsubstantiated, that led to the dire prognostication.

“This is indeed part ‘fake’ news, and the St. Edward’s University study should not be relying on misleading data prior to the filing of the actual bills,” he wrote. “Any study that ranges from a $964 million impact up to an $8.5 billion one, almost a 9 to 1 ratio, is just wildly speculative.”

For Hodges, the issue is personal. She was a sexually naïve 15-year-old when she was raped on a date. The boy threatened her if she told anyone.

She said it is unconscionable for business lobbies to push for passage of laws that allow biological men into the women’s private facilities and puts women and children at risk of sexual assault or voyeuristic violations.

“They are putting the almighty dollar before the safety of women and children,” she said.

Some policies already passed in Texas cities and school districts prohibit a proprietor from questioning an individual about their choice of public bathroom. Individuals are not required to present themselves as members of the opposite sex in order to gain access to the desired restroom, which opens those facilities to sexual predators who will take advantage of the policies, critics contend.

Public accommodation laws also conflict with First Amendment protections of speech and religious liberty. The reintroduction of religious liberty legislation that failed to get a hearing last session is also high on the CWA agenda.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to recognize same-sex marriages impacts state civil statutes related to marriage including fostering and adopting children. Agencies that affirm a biblical view of marriage face the threat of lawsuits if they decline service to married same-sex couples.

Hodges said the state risks losing faith-based foster homes and agencies if they are forced to place children in the homes of same-sex couples. Some, she said, may choose to close down rather than violate their convictions.

Another potentially divisive issue—educational choice—is one Hodges said CWA would examine closely before endorsing. Instead, addressing curriculum deficiencies would forestall the need for school vouchers she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that gutted Texas’ pro-life legislation has made pro-life advocates “even more determined to fight,” Emily Horne, Texas Right to Life legislative assistant, told the TEXAN.

Texas Right to Life supports passage of legislation that removes abortion coverage from basic insurance plans and prohibits abortions based on sex or disability. Pro-life legislation includes bills that protect hospital patients from involuntary do-not-resuscitate orders and the removal of life-sustaining care.

At the top of the organization’s agenda this session is affirmation of the basic dignity of the human fetus. Two key bills are already receiving pushback from Planned Parenthood and their allies. One, the Dismemberment Abortion Ban, seeks to “outlaw the torturous and inhumane abortion procedure that ends the life of the child by removing their limbs,” Horne said.

Another law, Senate Bill 8, would end the practice of fetal tissue donation by abortion clinics. The practice was brought to light by undercover videos shot by citizen activist David Daleiden.

House Bill 201 requires the burial or cremation of babies who die as a result of abortion or miscarriage. The Texas Department of State Health and Services created a similar regulation. Pro-choice advocacy organization Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit to halt implementation of the regulation before it went into effect Dec. 19.

“Both [bills] are pro-life in that they give dignity to the unborn and endeavor to afford them the same treatment as other humans would receive” Horne said. “However, they miss the crucial element of saving the lives of children destined for abortion.”

Citizens can learn more about bills and obtain contact information for their legislators at www.senate.state.tx.us and www.house.texas.gov.

Special needs ministries highlight churches” love for all people





Can I come to your church and
bring my special needs child?

The question prompted Nancy Bergeron to launch a new Sunday School class at Jersey Village Baptist Church not long after she began serving as children’s minister five years ago.  

“I said, ‘Absolutely. We’ll make room and do whatever we can to minister.’”

The Houston-area church already had a class for teenagers and young adults with special needs, but nothing geared toward kids. Starting with that one child, the Wings class took off and the mother of that first participant now leads the class.

For families who prefer that their child be mainstreamed, JVBC provides a buddy who accompanies the student to a regular classroom to help as needed. 

Special needs children are also welcome at the church’s monthly Parents Night Out, giving their parents time away from what Bergeron describes as “weeks that are hard and days that are long.”

“There are special needs families who want to be in church but have just been told no so many times that they have given up,” Bergeron said. 

“If the parents are able to be in church and sit under the teaching of God’s Word it gives them hope and the opportunity to grow spiritually when we care for their children,” she added. “It’s a very important ministry.”

Accommodating people with special needs is also a core conviction of Journey Church, which is set to launch in Pearland this year. Outreach beyond the small group that gathers on Sunday nights includes sensory-friendly movies, bounce house events and photography sessions geared toward special needs families.

“Often in the Gospels Jesus reaches out to those who have been ignored and pushed out by society,” explained church planter Lee Peoples. “In many ways in our culture this applies to those with special needs,” he said. 

“When we launch [the church], we will accommodate the best we can for the families that come.” Whether it’s a buddy system for kids who need extra help or special classes for those needing focused teaching, Peoples said, “Our philosophy is to adjust to the needs of the child, not the child adjust to the style of the church.”

Peoples has no trouble understanding the challenge of families with special needs children. He and his wife, Sandra, have dealt with the doctors, therapy, diet changes and speech delays that are a part of parenting a young child with autism. 

“These families don’t just show up in your lobby one Sunday and go into their age-appropriate Sunday School classes. They can’t,” Sandra Peoples wrote in her book Speechless: Finding God’s Grace in My Son’s Autism, describing families with a member who has a disability as an unreached people group.

“Their special family members have specific needs that must be met. You can show them the love and acceptance of Christ by learning more about their needs and meeting those needs,” Peoples advised.

Kristen Morgan has embraced that challenge in what she considers a dream job, minister to special needs at First Baptist Church in Forney. Drawing on her public school experience as a behavior specialist, resource and inclusion teacher, and most recently an educational diagnostician, Morgan brainstorms with parents to learn how they’re addressing their child’s needs and helps them pull together resources to develop a strong support system.

While some of those children appear similar based on their disability, Morgan looks at their individual needs in order to “come up with something that works for that kid.”

A child who becomes overstimulated in a large group setting may benefit from a special needs classroom, she said, while those children who can handle mainstreaming have a buddy who offers assistance or redirection when challenges arise. 

FBC Forney also provides a sensory room where children can relax in a calm atmosphere with music playing and the lighting kept low. Others who need to expend extra energy have access to a trampoline, balls they can bounce and tactile objects they can touch.

“It’s catered toward that kid’s individual needs at that time,” Morgan explained. “They can go there and have their own space.”

A respite program is offered once a month for special needs children and their siblings. For three hours volunteers let children choose from activities as varied as playing a Wii game to arts and craft projects. 

“The kids do a talent show where the camera is on and they get to see themselves on the big screen telling jokes, acting or playing instruments,” Morgan said. “It gives them a chance to showcase their abilities and talents, and we all enjoy what is the highlight of the night.”

Kelley McKay volunteers for respite care as well as Sunday classes. “Parents come back and say, ‘Thank you for taking care of my kid. My husband and I got to go out with each other for the first time in such a long time.’”

She views the special needs ministry as an opportunity “to let those parents know their kids matter. We love them, care about their families and want them to have the opportunity to just rest and feel served.”

For the past five years she’s helped Colby, a fifth grader who doesn’t speak. “When I get to see him, he smiles and recognizes me,” McKay shared. “It’s a really neat feeling to have that kind of relationship. These kids have so much to give and so much to teach us about ourselves.”

Morgan sees special needs ministry as an overwhelming opportunity she’s grateful to lead. “I’m able to do everything I want to do as far as being an evangelist, sharing God’s love and the Word to help children and their families,” Morgan said. “It’s the complete package.”  

Teenage refugee finds family through adoption

IRVING, Texas—Many parents approach their children’s teenage years with some trepidation, but Kelly and Shellie Carson began parenting at age 28 by adopting 17-year-old Kiir just before he aged out of the Texas foster care system.

Kiir says that if the Carsons had not adopted him, he might have ended up homeless and hopeless, Shellie Carson told the TEXAN.

While Texas law permits foster children to stay in foster care beyond the age of 18, Carson said this was not an option for Kiir. Had he not been adopted, he would have had to, at the very least, “figure life out on his own,” a daunting task for any 18-year-old, much less one who spoke little English.

“Kiir needs to write a book about his life,” Carson exclaimed.

Born in an Ethiopian refugee camp, Kiir grew up shuttled between war-torn Ethiopia and Sudan, the biological son of a Muslim military father and a Christian mother who brought him to the United States when he was almost 14.

Eventually, Texas Child Protective Services removed him from his birth mother’s home and placed him in foster care.

““Kiir told us he prayed to God, telling the Lord that if he really existed, he would provide a family.”

Shellie Carson

The transition to foster care was difficult for Kiir. Language barriers landed him in special education classes at school, although he had no learning disability. When Kiir became part of the Carson family before entering his senior year of high school, his reading level was at an early elementary level.

“People didn’t know what to do with him,” Carson said. She did. A reading specialist, Carson and her husband tutored Kiir nightly, and by the time he graduated from high school in 2011, he was reading at a sixth-grade level.

Kiir has since completed two years of community college, works for a major airline and lives independently in an apartment near his adoptive family, which has grown to number four other children. Lex was adopted as an infant, and biological brothers Darius and Jaylen were adopted from foster care.

Baby Nate “capped us off,” said Shellie of the unexpected biological son born to the couple in September.

The Carsons’ road to family was not what they expected.

When they failed to conceive after more than a year and a half of trying, they committed to a month or more of focused prayer about what God wanted them to do. They concluded, separately, that God wanted them to adopt a teenage son.

It was as if God said, “I have already picked him for you,” Shellie recalled. “The Lord was telling us exactly the same thing.”

The Carsons worked through the organization Covenant Kids to find Kiir. In preparation for adopting an older child, they read books and attended workshops sponsored by Tapestry, a foster care and adoption ministry. Almost a year before adopting Kiir, they participated in Tapestry workshops geared toward older adoptions.

Kiir calls the day the court ruled the adoption final—Dec. 21, 2010—as “Happy Kiir Day,” which the Carsons celebrate every year.

The December ruling culminated a year of activity, which began in January when the Carsons started the process of becoming certified as foster parents. Eighty-plus pages of paperwork were followed by a home visit in March. About this time, the Carsons opted to adopt rather than foster.

“While what we were aiming to do through foster care was a ‘good’ thing and more practical in the eyes of the world, it was not what God had called us to do,” Shellie wrote in her blog. “God called us to adopt a teenage boy, not to foster one.”

Within two weeks of switching their license to matched adoption, the Carsons received Kiir’s biography and photograph.

After Kiir entered the family, the Carsons began attending First Baptist Church in Irving, where their new son developed close friendships.

“He hit it off immediately with a youth worker who was also adopted,” Shellie said. This friend led Kiir to the Lord.

Unbeknownst to the Carsons, when Kiir, facing life outside the foster system, was asked if he wanted to be adopted, he had agreed skeptically, assuming that adoption would never happen.

“Kiir told us he prayed to God, telling the Lord that if he really existed, he would provide a family,” Shellie said.

“How can I not believe after this?” Kiir cried after accepting Christ as his savior.

The Carsons credit their family and church family with providing support and prayer.

Adoptions and fostering are becoming a way of life at First Irving. At least four families have adopted children through traditional agencies, foster care and even internationally.

With FBC Irving staff member Janelle Hartsfield, also an adoptive parent, the Carsons started a ministry at church called Grafted, which serves as a resource to support adoptive and foster families.

Shellie quotes Psalm 113 in her blog: “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, and with the princes of their people”—a reminder that her children “whom I have not yet met have a story that has not come to fruition.”

“They will be our princes. They will be our people. They will be ours,” she said.

Study: Most Americans say assisted suicide morally OK

NASHVILLE  The American Medical Association has described physician-assisted suicide as a serious risk to society and “fundamentally incompatible with a physician’s role as healer.” But Millions of Americans disagree, according to a new study released Dec. 6 by LifeWay Research.

Two-thirds say it is morally acceptable for terminally ill patients to ask their doctors for help in ending their lives, according to a new survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research. A similar number says doctors should be able to help terminally ill patients die.

Americans want more say over how they die, noted Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. That’s especially true if facing a painful, terminal illness, he said.

“Many believe that asking for help in dying is a moral option,” he said. “They don’t believe that suffering until they die of natural causes is the only way out.”

Widespread support

Physician-assisted suicide first became legal in the U.S. in 1997 under Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” law. Since then, 991 patients in Oregon have ended their lives using medications prescribed by a doctor under the law, according to that state’s reports.

Today six states allow physician-assisted suicide. The latest is Colorado, where voters by a two-to-one margin in November approved Proposition 106, which allows a terminally ill patient to request a fatal dose of sleeping medication. Washington, California, Vermont and Montana also allow physician-assisted suicide. 

The city council in the District of Columbia recently approved a measure allowing the practice—a decision that must be reviewed by Congress.

In LifeWay Research’s survey, 67 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “When a person is facing a painful terminal disease, it is morally acceptable to ask for a physician’s aid in taking his or her own life.” 

While there are differences among demographic groups, most still agree. 

For example, Americans age 18 to 24 (77 percent) and those 35 to 44 (63 percent) and 55 to 64 (64 percent) agree. So do white Americans (71 percent) and Hispanic Americans (69 percent). Those with some college education (71 percent) or with graduate degrees (73 percent) and those with high school diplomas or less (61 percent) also agree.

Among faith groups, more than half of all Christians (59 percent), Catholics (70 percent), Protestants (53 percent), Nones (84 percent) and those of other religions (70 percent) agree. Most of those who attend religious services less than once a month (76 percent) also agree.

A few demographic groups are skeptical. Fewer than half of those with evangelical beliefs (38 percent), African-Americans (47 percent) or those who attend religious services at least once a month (49 percent) say physician-assisted suicide is morally acceptable.

“Traditional Christian teaching says God holds the keys to life and death,” McConnell said. “Those who go to church or hold more traditional beliefs are less likely to see assisted suicide as morally acceptable. 

Few want restrictions on doctors

Researchers also found widespread support for removing restrictions on physician-assisted suicide.

Many Americans (69 percent) say physicians should be allowed to assist terminally ill patients in ending their lives. Those in the Northeast (73 percent), Catholics (70 percent), white Americans (73 percent), those with graduate degrees (77 percent), Nones (88 percent) and those who skip religious services (78 percent) are among those most likely to agree.

More than half of Southerners (64 percent), African-Americans (53 percent), Protestants (53 percent), those with a high school diploma or less (64 percent) and those who attend services at least once a month (52 percent) also agree.  

The issue of our day, still

Biblical Christians disagreed on several issues during the 2016 presidential election. Some of these disagreements were widely aired; others were too awkward to speak of publicly. I thought at times we disagreed on the priority of life—the scandal of legal, even publicly funded, abortion. I maintain it is still the most important moral tragedy of our culture, and one for which a solution is imaginable. Do not hear me say that any Bible-believing Southern Baptists are pro-abortion. I do think, for this election, the target-rich environment of outrageous political behavior pushed sympathy for unborn life into the background at times.

This side of heaven, I cannot imagine the end of poverty or sexism or xenophobia or any number of other ubiquitous problems. The poor we will have with us always because the poor are sinners, because the rich are sinners, because those who dispense justice and make laws are sinners—and they will be sinners until the end of the age. That doesn’t relieve us of responsibility to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but our work will be palliative not curative. 

It is similar with other problems common to the hearts of sinful men and women. Our efforts to address them seem like the desperate work of a man who pulls planks off the front of his sinking boat to fix leaks in the back. Everything we do seems to spawn as many difficulties as it solves. 

Abortion is not merely one point along the scale of “life” issues.”

But I remember a time when abortion was not legal, not blessed by presidential candidates or praised by Supreme Court justices, and not funded involuntarily by taxpayers who very much object to the expenditure. I can thus imagine a day when even sinners will repudiate the blithe destruction of innocent human life. It’s the worst thing our country willfully and legally does. Until we stop doing it or until we come up with something more monstrous, it will be the issue. 

I reject the notion that pro-life people care little for those who are already born. A significant percentage of children being cared for in our foster care system and child placement agencies are being cared for by pro-life institutions and families with a gospel motivation for what they do. I’ve not yet seen a pregnancy resource center that does not try to help with baby formula, maternity clothes, baby clothes and other services far beyond pregnancy tests and sonograms. Some provide life skills training or help with job training. All those I know are quick to share the gospel and bring adults and children into a caring fellowship of believers. But until the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly says that one adult person has a legal right to kill another person after birth, and be paid for the act with taxpayer money; until a presidential candidate praises publicly funded institutions who commit this horrible deed, abortion is not merely one point along the scale of “life” issues. 

I’ve read the arguments that say that we must work just as hard against everything from climate change to nuclear proliferation to the death penalty if we are to be truly “pro-life.” Each of these things has a moral payload, as do poverty, injustice and corruption. But use different terms rather than make “pro-life” mean everything. These causes have their advocates and even broad coalitions of advocates, so let them stay under their own rubrics. I believe some who conflate all compassion issues into the one term do so cynically. They are sometimes pro-choice and would willingly dissipate the impact of the pro-life movement. This has definitely been the response of those who believe the right of unborn children to be born is a “complex” issue—another euphemism for “I don’t believe it’s very important.” 

My plea is that we not rest on any front of this battle. The fight for life takes place in the legislature and in the courts, to be sure. But we advocate just as certainly at the local pregnancy resource center. Your church should support the nearest PRC. Support it financially and support it with volunteer help and encouragement. Baptists fight for the lives of the innocent through foster care and through children’s homes. The helpless and needy also occupy the other end of the timeline. Elderly people, homebound people and those who occupy retirement homes are people made in the image of God, and who are affected when a nation discounts the holiness of life created in the image of God. 

This does not take away from our call to feed the hungry or advocate for justice for all people. But, as I said, elective abortion is the worst, the most unjust thing our nation praises, encourages and funds. Until that changes, pro-life American Christians must not blink, whether our friends understand us or not. 

Summit addresses how churches can support foster and adoptive families

AUSTIN In determining how many prison beds will be needed each year, prison administrators nationwide look to the number of boys and girls aging out of their states’ foster care system.

It’s a sad, unofficial yet commonly understood calculation among Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworkers said Val Jackson, a 19-year CPS caseworker who now works as the faith-based specialist coordinator for the Texas Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS).

But Jackson and DPFS faith-based specialists across the state work with those who believe that a child’s past does not have to determine his future, coordinating efforts among ministries committed to rescuing children abandoned by their parents. And they do it within a system facing legal challenges.

It’s a messy business. But so, too, is grace, he said.

In 2011, DFPS, the agency tasked with protecting children harmed or neglected by their parents, was sued and accused of mismanagement and neglect. US District Judge Janis Graham Jack heard reports of children suffering at the hands of other children in foster care homes or forced to sleep overnight in CPS offices because no emergency foster homes were available. Overwhelming caseloads for some social workers and an insufficient number of families willing to step in on behalf of the children only added to the list of allegations.

As a result, Texas’ child protection and health agencies recognized that foster children and families need more help than the state can provide and called on churches for help.

“We are going to endure what Christ endured. [You] can’t draw a line and say you won’t go any further when caring for the broken.”

—Becca Harris, KIDS director at Austin Stone Community Church

“This is not an option. It is an obligation,” Charles Smith, Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) executive commissioner told almost 400 ministry leaders, state agency representatives and legislators gathered at the State Capitol building Nov. 2 for the Faith Leader Summit.

A loosely knit network of churches, independent ministries and individuals have long served foster children and their families. But those bonds must be more tightly woven and their numbers increased to work effectively within a system Jack said was “broken” and did children more harm than good.

In November Attorney General Ken Paxton rejected court-drafted recommendations for overhauling the DFPS and said changes should come from Texas agencies rather than court-appointed committees.

More than 30,000 Texas children, newborn to 18 years old, now wait for the adults to work out their disagreements. Of those, 20,000 are in foster homes and 10,000 live with extended family members. An additional 6,000 whose mothers and fathers have had their parental rights revoked await adoption.

Not bound by the legal quagmire facing DFPS is a network of established ministries that flow from the churches and faith-based organizations in communities across the state that support foster and adoptive parents and encourage more Christ-loving families to do likewise. The summit highlighted the need for better networking among existing foster-adoptive care ministries.

Summit participants heard of the challenges associated with foster care and adoption as foster parents described the emotionally demanding task of bringing children into their homes, particularly those coming from violent environments.

“As a foster dad it shook my home when they came in,” Bishop Aaron Blake said. “Then we engaged our church.”

Blake chairs the advisory committee on Promoting Adoption of Minority Children and addressed the workshop entitled “Why are we here?”

Throughout the day other foster and adoptive parents told of their children’s “melt downs,” irrational, and, sometimes, destructive behavior. Ryan North, executive director of Tapestry Foster and Adoption Ministry, said well-intentioned but ill-informed adults often go through the state’s lengthy foster care certification process only to find they are ill-prepared to care for the child, or children, placed in their care.

Fifty percent of foster families quit after only one placement in their home, perpetuating the dysfunction of children caught in the DFPS system, said workshop moderator Bruce Kendrick, executive director of Embrace Texas.

That’s where faith-based ministries and churches step in to provide spiritual, material and emotional support for foster families learning to live in a new normal.

Becca Harris, KIDS director at Austin Stone Community Church, said the grace extended to her by her church during the foster-to-adoption process of her two sons was critical. Merely offering assistance to struggling foster families is insufficient.

“Don’t say, ‘Let me know what you need,’” Harris said. “Just show up.”

But not just anyone can “show up” to lend a hand with a neighbor’s or church member’s foster children. The state requires training for caregivers, and summit leaders said this is where churches can play a supportive role in transforming the lives of children broken by circumstances beyond their control. Assisting in the care and healing of foster children requires the commitment of the entire church, and faith-based training goes beyond what the state can or will do in recognizing each child as a creation of God in need of transformative parenting.

“It’s not a hard leap for (children) to believe that God cannot love them,” Ryan North said. “They have to learn to trust again.”

As foster parents, Ryan and Kayla North experienced the impact neglect and abuse has on the psyche of a child. What some people may interpret as acts of defiance or wanton destruction by a foster child are actually learned responses hard-wired into their brains from years of living in a violent home. Loud voices tell the child someone is about to get hurt, and that child’s learned response is to fight, flee or freeze.

“There’s fear underlying this reaction,” Kayla North said. Church families need to understand this and respond accordingly.

Trauma-Informed Training provided by faith-based ministries equips caregivers and volunteers to recognize these reactions and respond appropriately. Ryan North said Sunday morning then goes from behavior management to teaching them about Jesus.

Similarly, Harris said Christ-centered foster and adoption ministry shows grace to the parents or grandparents who lost custody of their children and prays for restoration, which invites “very messy situations.”

And that’s where grace must endure.

“We are going to endure what Christ endured,” Harris said. “[You] can’t draw a line and say you won’t go any further when caring for the broken.”