Foster Care and the Gospel
by Kaytlyn Cobb
Family is a concept we talk about often here at New City. We are a family of missionary servants because God created, designed, and declared us family. Family is important to God - He created it (Genesis 1:28), talked about it often, and even died to make us family (Galatians 4:3-7). This is sacred to Him. Further description of this topic can be found in a recent New City Blog post here. That’s the Good News.
But for Good News to be ‘good,’ there must also be bad news. So what is that bad news?
The bad news is that people are broken. Family at its core and apart from the redeeming work of Jesus is broken. This brokenness wreaks havoc on the family and causes things like abuse, addiction, marital struggles, endless poverty cycle, lack of support, etc.
For us who believe that Jesus came to save broken people and have experienced this redeeming work of Jesus in our own lives, we have an incredible opportunity to step into the brokenness around us and offer the same Hope we have experienced.
This can look like a lot of different things, but the example I want to point us to today is Foster Care since May is National Foster Care Month. The brokenness within the family unit can sometimes cause homes to become unsafe for children and not only does that create unstable and unhealthy living situations, but it can often result in children and families being separated. That’s some pretty devastating news. And this is happening all around us - in our neighborhood, in our city, in our kids’ schools - the brokenness of the family unit can be found everywhere. All of this is a result of the fall of mankind. Bad news for sure.
Believers, if we’ve experienced Jesus stepping into our own brokenness, at our lowest, and offering grace, compassion, and hope that changed everything for us, what would it look like if the Church did the same for others? What would it look like if we stepped into families’ lives at their lowest and offered grace, compassion, and hope in Jesus’ name?
We have been a foster family with our local DFCS for about 2.5 years now. I found encouragement to pursue this avenue for our family after seeing so many great examples of it among our New City family. My eyes and heart became more and more aware of the need and after examining my own heart, the empty bedrooms in my home, and lots of prayer, we made the decision that we could serve vulnerable families and children in our community by becoming foster parents.
If you know our family and the foster children currently in our home, you know that our journey has looked unique compared to the Foster Care “standard,” if there is even such a thing. We haven’t had the opportunity to come alongside birth families and help them meet their goals of reunification, which is incredibly heartbreaking for our kids and if we’re being honest, us too. But we’re trusting all of this to God each step of the way, and while we never know what our family will look like six months from now, we trust our loving Father who we know loves our children and cares for their future and family.
A blogger and fellow foster parent I follow, Jamie Finn (Foster the Family Blog) speaks a lot of Gospel truth into my heart as my husband and I experience the blessings and burdens of foster care. In her recently published book, she writes,
“God is about - and has always been about - redemption and restoration. It’s throughout all the stories of the Bible, from Adam and Eve to King David to the woman at the well to Peter. It’s the heart of the big story of the Bible, the gospel of Jesus Christ. God is about redeeming and restoring that which sin has destroyed. Including the family. As people who have been redeemed and restored ourselves, we must be about God’s redemption and restoration of the family.”
New City family, what would it look like if we pushed the boundaries beyond serving our nuclear or MC family and stepped into the local Foster Care system and offered support to vulnerable and hurting families around us?
Here are just a few ideas:
Becoming a foster family through local or private organizations
Becoming a respite provider (certified ‘babysitter’ who is licensed to care for foster children for very short periods of time, often to provide a break for foster parents)
Coming alongside foster families and providing meals, services, and babysitting
Becoming a CASA worker (volunteer who advocates for foster children in court)
Partnering with a birth family in the reunification process (this could mean helping them do things like meet their case goals, securing a job, having needed supplies to welcome their children home, etc.)
Helping stabilize a recently reunified family and offering support so the cycle does not repeat itself
Serving and caring for social workers (sharing gratitude for their work, encouragement, gift cards, etc.)
What could it look like to these children, parents, and social workers who see the Church stepping in and loving and serving them unconditionally and sacrificially during what is likely the hardest, darkest, and lowest time of their life? Stepping into another’s brokenness is hard and self-sacrificial, but isn’t that what Jesus did for all of us? As Jamie notes in this Instagram post, “The fact that the system and its people are broken is the very reason we engage with it. Following Jesus will always lead us to the broken because that is who He came for. He came for them. He came for us.”
I’ll go ahead and tell you it’s going to be hard. But I will also tell you that in Jesus’ name this is worth-it kind of work. Amen?