It’s not my idea. I don’t own it. This idea owns me. 

Of all the ideas that I could belong to – of all the ideas I could serve – this particular one provides the ultimate purpose to my life and meaning to my story. Because I’ve been a glad recipient of the idea of which I’m now dedicated to spreading, I have freely and enthusiastically allowed it to use me to its own end. 

It’s not a new idea, as there really isn’t anything new under the sun. The idea that fully possesses me today is, in fact, quite old. It’s an idea first embraced by the ancient Hebrews, and eventually passed along to us by the early Church fathers.  

I am a bondservant to the profound idea that the Heavenly Father calls his adopted children to care for the fatherless. It’s the inconvenient and transformative notion that the family of God should care for vulnerable children, whose vulnerability is due to the loss of their family at the hands of death, desertion, disappearance, or dysfunction. 

Psalm 27:10 states, “When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take care of me.” Notice it doesn’t say, “When my father and mother forsake me, the State will take care of me.” The idea of letting a centralized government do everything, dictate everything, become everything, has become a cure-all that doesn’t cure. Statism has become the contemporary Messiah that many trust will fix every broken thing. I reject that idea. It’s antithetical to the idea I serve. 

The Psalmist said, “The Lord will take care of me.” How exactly does the Lord do that? Since He does not abide on earth, how then does He care for the child who has no family? The answer: His followers. His servants. His children. In other words, His Church – you and me. Unfortunately, this divinely inspired idea – this proposition that orphan care is first and foremost a ministry of the Christian community – has suffered much abuse and neglect throughout history. It has been subverted and perverted in every century and corner of the globe.  

Ideas can be fallen just as we are fallen. Ideas can be sinful just as we too are sinful. But ideas, like people, can also be restored. They can be resurrected. Ideas can and should be reconciled – reconciled to their true identities and purposes in God.

The idea of the Church being responsible for orphan care was lost to us about 100 years ago and our nation suffers today because of it. About a century ago, the Church swallowed the idolatrous idea that the government could do better orphan care and that it was, after all, their job and not ours. Christians in the Western World backed away from two millennia of active involvement in that special ministry and allowed, (or should I say required) the government to step forward into the space which we freely abandoned. In our glad but ill-conceived retreat, we gave away precious territory to a secular institution that is not responsible, that is not equipped, and even more importantly, that is not appointed or annointed to perform the sacred task. 

Any scheme based on someone else taking action, using other people’s money, is doomed to fail.  There are fifty Foster Care agencies in the country and not a single one of them is reportedly doing a good job. Not one! I have been associated in some way or another with foster care my entire life. I was born into the foster care system. I worked as a child abuse investigator, removing children from their families and placing them with foster families, and admittedly, often wondered if I had done more harm than good. My wife and I have also been foster parents. I have observed this institution from just about every angle, including academically. I’ve believed in their promises of reformed systems. I’ve watched as taxpayers were forced to throw more and more money at the problem with little to no results. 

From my perspective, it’s not so much that the government is doing a bad job – after all it is a no-win scenario – it’s that the government is the wrong body doing the work. The problem isn’t the State and its broken system. The problem is our (the Church’s) lack of courage. The problem is our lack of faith.  The problem is our lack of compassion. The problem is our lack of action. The problem is us. It has always been us. If we don’t act, it will always be us. 

Every time a State social worker has to intervene in a family’s private life, that’s on us. Each time taxpayers have to foot the bill to care for a child in government custody, that’s our failure. Every child who ages out of Foster Care without a permanent family, that is to our great shame — not the State’s, not the system’s, not the policies’, and certainly not the frontline workers. Those things can contribute to the problem, but it’s not the problem. It’s on us. It is our sin. We are the problem that needs to be fixed. It’s time to remove the log from our own eyes. 

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord didn’t give the responsibility of orphans to the government. He gave that precious privilege to us, the Church (James 1:27). Let us not shirk from our calling. It doesn’t matter that the government is doing it now. It doesn’t matter that they have a monopoly on the kids from hard places. It doesn’t even matter that they can outspend us ten to one. “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” (Romans 11:29). God has not changed His mind on this subject.  

Pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick believed, “Every man who amounts to anything has at least one realm where nothing is so real to him as the possibilities.” I belong to the idea that we can build a privately funded, faith-based, volunteer driven but professionally supported system of care for those children who need Child Protective Services. I believe with all my heart that the need for foster care can become so rare and brief as to be seen as obsolete. 

How about you? Are you ready to serve this great idea? A person need not be a great person to be used by a great idea, especially an idea whose time has come.

Written by Robert J. Day, CEO of FIVE18 Family Services