Becoming Home (Frames Series): Adoption, Foster Care, and Mentoring--Living Out God's Heart for Orphans
96
Becoming Home (Frames Series): Adoption, Foster Care, and Mentoring--Living Out God's Heart for Orphans
96eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
Caring for orphans makes grace touchable. When Christians choose to adopt, foster, mentor or support care for orphans around the world, it reveals God's true character to the world like nothing else we can do. This softcover book unpacks specific steps that you can take to care for orphans in distress.
Some of these steps are “big” choices like fostering or adopting; some are smaller choices like supporting work abroad or mentoring a foster youth. But all have the impact of revealing God’s love to someone who wants to be home for good.
Join Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO), as he reveals the profound sense that deep, sustaining love for orphans springs not from duty, guilt or even idealism, but foremost as a response to the way we've first been loved by God.
About the Author
Jedd Medefind serves as president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO), which unites more than 140 respected Christian organizations to labor together and equip Christians for effective adoption, foster care and global orphan care ministry. Previously, Jedd led the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which, as the Harvard Political Review describes, "“fundamentally changed the government’s strategy for improving the lives of the downtrodden.” He's written several books, including Upended: How Following Jesus Remakes Your Words and World (Passio, 2012). Jedd and his wife, Rachel, love the great outdoors and live in California with their five children.
Read an Excerpt
Becoming Home
Frames
By Jedd Medefind, Jim Daly, Carissa Woodwyk, Francis Chan, Ruslan Maliuta
ZONDERVAN
Copyright © 2013 Barna GroupAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-43337-8
CHAPTER 1
BECOMING HOME
Adoption, Foster Care, and Mentoring—Living Out God's Heart for Orphans
INFOGRAPHICS
Who is Adopting?
While adopting and fostering remain rare, practicing Christians are more than twice as likely as the general population to adopt and significantly more likely to consider adoption or fostering.
WHILE NEARLY TWO IN FIVE PRACTICING CHRISTIANS HAVE CONSIDERED ADOPTION, ONLY 5% HAVE ACTUALLY DONE IT
BECOMING HOME
Adoption, Foster Care, and Mentoring—Living Out God's Heart for Orphans
FRAMEWORK
BY BARNA GROUP
Adoption, foster care and other ways of aiding vulnerable children represent vital engagement with a critical social justice need. But they also offer a rich theological expression of our relationship with God. So it only makes sense that Christians would be the first to champion the cause of orphans around the globe.
Our FRAMES research shows Christians, in fact, are deeply engaged in this issue. If you're reading this book, you are probably one of those people who are making a difference. Maybe you're an adoptive or foster parent, or a mentor yourself. Or maybe you'd like to be, and you're doing the research, praying through the process, and getting increasingly excited about the possibility of inviting a child into your home. Or maybe you support organizations working to serve orphans around the world. Or maybe you're not personally called to or able to adopt, but all the same, you've caught on to the passion of God's heart for orphans, and you want to help. But for such a great need as this, how does one get started?
That's what this book is designed to help you find out.
Adoption by the Numbers
If the legal record is any indication, America has come a long way in the past few decades in orphan care. Only a trickle of seven pieces of federal legislation passed concerning child protection, welfare, and adoption between 1974's Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) and the Family Preservation and Support Services Program Act of 1993. Over the next two decades, however, almost three times as many bills were signed into law.
Still, the orphan care and adoption movement is in its infancy. The FRAMES research shows just 2% of US adults under the age of 50 have adopted or ever been a foster parent. Only a quarter (26%) have given serious thought to adopting a child, and less than two in ten (17%) say they are probably or definitely willing to adopt a child in the next five years. About the same say they have seriously thought of being a foster parent (21%) or are likely to foster a child (11%) in the same time frame.
Though many countries don't keep reliable adoption records, the UN reports there are approximately 260,000 domestic and international adoptions a year. The United States, with more than 127,000 adoptions per year, accounts for nearly half of the total number of adoptions worldwide. Meaning a mere 2% of the American population is carrying a huge weight of the global responsibility for adopting children without parents. This fact alone highlights two things. First, that America is leading the way in adoption. Second, that there is far more work to be done. And since over half of Americans (54%) say they would rather adopt from their own country—and 78% of parents who have adopted did so within the United States—this leaves a gaping need for adoptive parents of children in other countries.
The FRAMES research found that while the gender split of adopted children in the US is about half and half, this changes when it comes to international adoptions. Two-thirds of children adopted internationally (67%) are female. Most of these families adopt one child (75%), fewer adopt two (23%), and very rarely do they adopt more than two (3%). When it comes to having biological children as well as adopted children, adoptive parents are split: About half (48%) of adoptive parents have no biological children of their own, 43% had biological kids before adopting, and 9% had biological kids after adopting.
While the majority of adoptive parents are non-Hispanic white (73%), non-Hispanic white adopted children are actually the minority (37%). The majority of child adoptions, then, result in multi-ethnic families. While raising a child of a different culture or ethnicity might be perceived as a hurdle to some, the FRAMES data show most adoptive parents don't see it this way. An overwhelming 93% of Americans say they support multi-ethnic adoption. About one-third say they support it when the family is willing to make changes so the child will appreciate their ethnic background.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Becoming Home by Jedd Medefind, Jim Daly, Carissa Woodwyk, Francis Chan, Ruslan Maliuta. Copyright © 2013 Barna Group. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Why You Need Frames, 7,
· Before You Read, 12,
· Infographics, 13,
· Framework BY BARNA GROUP, 19,
· The Frame BY JEDD MEDEFIND, 27,
· Re/Frames BY FRANCIS CHAN, CARISSA WOODWYK, RUSLAN MALIUTA, DAVID PLATT, AND JIM DALY, 79,
· After You Read, 87,
· Share This Frame, 88,
About the Research, 89,
About Barna Group, 90,
Thanks, 91,
Notes, 93,