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“Adoption is not just about couples who want children?or who want more children,” according to author Russell Moore. “Adoption is about an entire culture within our churches, a culture that sees adoption as part of our Great Commission mandate and as a sign of the gospel itself.”
Moore is one of many voices within the Southern Baptist Convention appealing to individual believers, pastoral leaders and local churches to view adoption as part of their global mission effort.
“When a Christian family adopts a child, that family is committing to years of gospel proclamation, of seeking to see this child come to faith in Christ,” Moore remarked in his book “Adopted for Life.”
Christians in the U.S. were once known for obeying God’s command to care for orphans.
In his address to a family conference at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, John Mark Yeats recalled the Orphan Train movement designed to place children without hope into evangelical families, some escaping horrible circumstances as they rode the rails to waiting childless families or families needing extra hands to work the farm.
The assistant professor of church history said he finds far too many believers strangely silent on the issue of adoption today, “frequently hiding behind a barrage of evangelical aid institutions that assure us that our money is well spent.”
Urging a recovery of practical theology lived out daily, Yeats reminded, “The Old Testament mandates orphan care, and the New Testament modeled that care and bequeathed us a theological model of redemption developed from that mandate. Perhaps for all of our pro-life rhetoric, evangelicals today no longer believe what the text says.”
SBC RESOLUTION
Southern Baptists meeting in Louisville last June endorsed a resolution “On Adoption and Orphan Care” that connected the dots between the theological work picture of redemption and the practical steps toward creating a culture of adoption.
Citing John 14:18, Romans 8:12-25, Galatians 3:27-4:9, and Ephesians 1:5, the statement recalls receiving the “‘Spirit of adoption’ whereby we are no longer spiritual orphans but are now beloved children of God and joint heirs with Christ.”
Reference is made to God as a “father of the fatherless” (Psalm 68:5) who grants mercy to orphans (Deuteronomy 10:18 and Hosea 14:3). “Our Lord Jesus welcomes the little ones (Luke 18:15-17), pleads for the lives of the innocent (Psalm 72:12-14), and shows us that we will be held accountable for our response to ‘the least of these brothers of mine,'” according to Matthew 25:40.
From James 1:27, the resolution states that Scripture defines “pure and undefiled religion” as “to look after orphans and widows in their distress.”
Satanic powers and the ravages of sin are credited with warring against infants and children “from Pharaoh to Molech to Herod and now, through the horrors of a divorce culture, an abortion industry, and the global plagues of disease, starvation, and warfare.”
ADOPTION AND MISSION
Yeats sounded a similar warning during his presentation at Southwestern Seminary. Christian churches are now in competition with the world for the hearts and souls of the orphans, he said, referring to the intense lobbying efforts to legalize adoption for same-sex couples. “They are more than happy to take in children while the church sleeps.”
With an unequivocal commitment to the sanctity of all human life, the SBC statement reminds churches defined by the Great Commission of the need to show concern for the evangelism of children?including those who have no parents, pointing to the over 150 million orphans who languish without families in orphanages, group homes, and placement systems worldwide.
Yeats praised ministries providing orphan care, but noted the cost to run such programs enters into the tens of millions of dollars in order to aid a
