Four Ways Churches and Pastors Can Support Adoptive Families

As the saying goes, the only revolutions we remember are the ones that fail. The idea is that when a revolution succeeds, its values become the status quo, and over time, we cease to notice them. So it is with Christianity and its radical teaching about love. The Bible teaches us that the one true God who created the world and everything in it exists in the eternal relationship of love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Love is so central to the character of God that the apostle John can tell his readers that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). This truth is central to foster care and adoption in the church, and to caring for foster and adoptive families.

Scripture tells us that God’s love, made manifest in the gift of his Son to save sinners (1 John 4:9), has the power to conform us to its image. Thus, God calls Christians to love the way He has loved them—tenaciously, sacrificially, and unilaterally (1 John 4:11). This truth has unleashed a revolution on the world, as Christians have made love for the weak, vulnerable, and helpless a widely admired virtue. Before the spread of Christianity, most societies only cared for their poor and needy for utilitarian or political reasons. The idea that those who can offer you nothing are still made in God’s image and thus worthy of love was largely unknown. 

Adoption and Foster Care in the Historical Church

Given the pattern of God’s love laid out for his people in the gospel message, it should come as no surprise that Christians have made a practice of caring for orphans. After all, there is hardly a more vulnerable category of person than a child without parents to protect and care for them. So, while it was common for people in ancient societies to abandon unwanted infants to the elements (basically, a post-natal version of how abortion now functions in the modern West), the earliest Christians were known for caring for these children who had been left to die.

Some of the earliest Christian councils declared that children who were abandoned at the threshold of a church building should be brought in and cared for, and wherever Christianity has spread, infanticide has been outlawed (the fact that abortion has proliferated as the West has walked away from Christian values seems to support the point).   

How Pastors Can Support Adoptive Families

In our day, many Christians have sought to live out gospel love by adopting or fostering children. Research indicates that practicing Christians adopt children at a rate more than two times that of the general public (5% to 2%). Over 77% of practicing Christians believe that they have a personal responsibility to adopt.¹ I have been a foster parent myself, and I pastor a church with adoptive families in it, so I have seen first-hand how bringing a child into a believing home can make the love of Christ visible and compelling. 

But as beautiful as adoption and foster care may be, they are not without their challenges and hardships. Believers who sacrificially step into this act of love will need care and support from their church families and their pastors in particular. In that light, here are four ways that pastors can support adoptive families and members of their church who foster children:

1. Preach the gospel to your people

The gospel message of God’s sacrificial love for the unlovely isn’t a truth we internalize at our conversion and then leave behind for more complicated doctrines. It is the heart of our faith, the strength for our service, and the pattern of our lives. Adoptive parents need a church home where the grace of God saturates the atmosphere. They need a church family where the counter-worldly logic of the gospel is the law of the land. Apart from the gospel, the difficult sacrifice required by adoption and foster care might seem crazy. But in a church where the gospel is proclaimed and cherished, it will make perfect sense. These parents must be reminded that their service is pleasing to the Lord. 

2. Highlight the needs of parents raising adopted children or those involved in the foster care system 

If the church family is to help bear the burdens of these parents (Galatians 6:2), they will need to know what challenges and difficulties they face. If your church has a prayer meeting, consider making adoption and foster care the topic of a meeting. Have adoptive parents share their experiences so that their brothers and sisters can develop empathy and pray in an informed way. Whatever vehicle might work best in your context, find ways to hold out these parents to the church as both a model of Christian love and a worthy object of the congregation’s care. 

3. Find ways to support these families practically

Adoption is expensive, and foster care can be exhausting. But the American ideal of rugged individualism often makes its way into our churches, and so many people are not comfortable asking for help. Thus, our churches need to be places where it is normal to ask for help when necessary, and that help needs to be available. Churches can provide financial assistance, help with meals and groceries, babysitting, and even respite care for adopting and fostering families. Even small acts of assistance will significantly encourage them and let them know that they are not alone in their work.    

4. Ask good questions

Don’t assume that you know what these families need or that their needs now are the same as they were a year ago. Consider inviting adoptive and foster parents to join your elders’ meetings regularly so that you can hear from them directly and offer them pastoral care. The more you communicate with them and ask good questions about their experience, the better you and the church will be able to serve and love them. 

Christian parents who show love to the weak and vulnerable through adoption and foster care are beautiful pictures of God’s love for us in Christ. Churches are privileged to care for and support these parents in their service to the Lord. As pastors, we can help to set the culture of our churches and encourage believers to practice “religion that is pure and undefiled” (James 1:27) by showing love to children in need. 

©2023 Michael McKinley. Used with permission.

1. For more information and research on Christian attitudes toward adoption, see the short book “Becoming Home” by Jedd Medefind (Zondervan, 2014). ↩︎