UNICEF estimates that 153 million children worldwide are orphans — removed from their parents because of death, poverty, or social unrest. World Orphan Week is set aside each year at the beginning of March and serves as a reminder that these precious children desperately need the Church to step up and fill the gaps that the government was never created to handle. The number of children impacted is overwhelming; however, the Church has a biblical mandate to defend the fatherless and speak up for the vulnerable — so we must act.
An orphan is defined as one deprived of parental care. According to Humanium, several factors contribute to children becoming orphans, such as poverty, abandonment, abuse, natural disasters, health epidemics, and conflicts. Once classified as an orphan, children face a plethora of additional complex issues like trauma, lack of stability and care, and long-term negative effects on their sense of identity.
James 1:27 captures the Bible’s clarity on the Church’s role in caring for vulnerable children, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.”
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Furthermore, David penned the words of Psalm 82:3: “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.” The Church must never be tempted to casually turn misdirected attention to the plight of the vulnerable because caring for orphans and vulnerable women is true worship, pure religion, and a command from our Holy God.
The Christ follower’s call is to clearly imitate the Father’s adoptive love, which He shows us through the Gospel of His Son, Christ Jesus. Pastor David Platt has continually proclaimed the biblical truth, “We are not the rescuers; we are the rescued.” Christians understand spiritual bankruptcy and orphanhood — we were once spiritually fatherless, lost in our sin, but through Christ, we were adopted into God’s family, embraced by a loving Father, and cherished beyond imagination. Since God the Father extended that kind of love to us, shouldn’t we be compelled to show others that same kind of love to the most vulnerable among us?
Worldly secular and other religious cultures see vulnerable children as untouchable outcasts, but our God is a loving and perfect Father to the fatherless. Our great God has ordained His church to be the extension of His never-ending love and care for the vulnerable. Beloved, we must be the Church, a sanctified people willing to contend each and every day for the hearts and lives of children living in great peril from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
The Bible has not left us with a nebulous command, but Deuteronomy 24:17-22 describes the practical ways we are called to care. Ruth 2 then becomes the living application of these same commands. The Church needs to call and equip Christ’s followers to adopt vulnerable children from around the world. Furthermore, churches can defend the 400,000 children in U.S. foster care by hosting informational meetings to prepare homes to welcome and care for vulnerable children. The Church also must support vulnerable families to see reunification from foster care while standing in the gap for the countless children who age out of the foster system each and every day.
The Church is a much-needed partner in child welfare as she supports ministries that provide adoption and foster care opportunities. However, the most powerful tool that the Church has to care for vulnerable children is action rooted in prayer. We must pray for the hearts of vulnerable children around the world to find physical homes where they will come to know the love of their Heavenly Father. We need to pray for the fruitfulness of our advocacy of potential adoptive and foster families while praying that these future families will be strengthened and encouraged. And it’s crucial that we speak up while praying for the hearts of government leaders to be softened so that the Church can more adequately advocate and care for the vulnerable.
We simply cannot ignore the over 100 million orphans worldwide. The truth is we know why we are supposed to care, but we need God to further illuminate our individual calling for how we are to look after vulnerable children in their affliction.
World Orphan Week is the perfect opportunity to go from hearing the call to answering the call through action. You can take the first steps in the adoption or foster care process. You could volunteer with Harbor Families, which offers mentorship and community support for vulnerable families in your area. You might even get involved with foster children at risk of aging out of the system by providing them with the necessary life skills to set them up for success. You could also support a foster family in your church by providing respite care or taking them meals on a regular basis.
There are many ways to serve vulnerable children, women, and families — we must stop finding convenient excuses.
Herbie Newell is the President of Lifeline Children’s Services, the largest Evangelical Christian adoption agency in the United States. The organization serves vulnerable children and families through private domestic and international adoption, family restoration, and pregnancy counseling. Herbie is also the author of Image Bearers: Shifting from Pro-Birth to Pro-Life.
