Abba Changes Everything

Have you seen the July edition of Christianity Today?  It's centered on adoption and orphan care! Four different articles help sound a clarion call to the Church: God cares passionately for the orphan and His people are called to do so as well.  Here’s a preview of the articles featured in this issue from the Christian Alliance for Orphans blog from Jedd Medefind.

Why Every Christian Is Called to Rescue Orphans


It’s a beautiful thing. For Christians who yearn to see the Church grow impassioned for the Gospel and the orphan, the newly-arrived July edition of Christianity Today is little short of thrilling. The cover declares, Abba Changes Everything: Why every Christian is called to rescue orphans. Inside, the framing introduction to the magazine is headlined, “Adoption is Everywhere. Even God is into it.”


That the leading print voice of evangelicalism in America would choose to make orphan care and adoption the center of its July magazine underscores what many of us already knew: God is stirring His people to again be known as those who “defend the cause of the fatherless” (Is 1:17).


Page 18 begins a tremendous article by Russell Moore, which gave the magazine its cover language, “Abba Changes Everything.” I’ve heard Dr. Moore articulate this message from the podium, via radio and over the dinner table, but I must admit I felt my heart expand against my ribcage as I read this fresh expression. Beautiful and heartbreaking; daunting and inspiring; and profoundly rooted in the ultimate reason for it all: the Father-love of our God revealed through the Gospel.


Page 23 starts the cover story, “Coming Alongside Parents: Churches are getting real about adoption’s challenges—and helping families after the child arrives.” It shares the experience of Summit VI and highlights the robust growth of orphan ministry within churches. Writes author Carla Barnhill, “…[T]he Summit drew more than 1,200 attendees, most of them ministering to orphans through their home churches. Watching those gathered, I knew this was not my parent’s generation.”


Finally, page 52 carries a list of list and descriptions titled “My Top 5 Books on Orphan Care” that I had a chance to provide: Russell Moore’s Adopted for Life, Dr. Karyn Purvis’ The Connected Child; Melissa Fay Greene’s There is No Me Without You; Tom Davis’ Fields of the Fatherless, and Doug Sauder’s The One Factor. (Several others came to mind after I’d submitted that I wish I’d included as well, but five was the limit).


If you can, pick up a copy of CT from the newsstand today. If not, all these articles will come available online over the month ahead, and we’ll post them on the Alliance blog as they do. In the meantime, advocates of orphan care take heart: God continues to build both passion and action in His Church for these children He so deeply loves.