5 Nuggets and 5 Questions from Summit 9

My wife, Loretta, and I traveled to beautiful Nashville, Tennessee, last week to take part in Summit 9, the annual global orphan conference put together by the Christian Alliance for Orphans.  In nine years Summit has grown from just over 30 people to this year's over 2,500 (with registration closing early due to space limitations).  At least 25 countries were represented as well as 49 states (Come on, Vermont!).  The energy, focus, and passion of this year's gathering was most inspiring and contagious, most challenging.

I will not try to summarize everything that we experienced, though much of what I learned and was challenged with will find its way through the blog in days to come.  For today, I have pulled five nuggets from my notes, each with a question to challenge you to action on behalf of the millions of at-risk children in the world.  As you consider each question, though, don't think in terms of millions; think in terms of individual orphans that you may or may not yet know.  Kids who are waiting for you to act on their behalf.

Nugget #1

Stephen Ucembe, a Kenyan pastor who was orphaned in a tragic way at age five, shared that he hated the term "I love you" because he never heard it as a child.  He recalled that when visitors came, they always picked the cutest kids to hold and to play with; he was never chosen.  His most beautiful memory of childhood was receiving a Christmas package from a lady in her 70's, a lady he had never met, from England.  In that package was a four-page letter in which she wrote, "I love you."

Many of you already sponsor at-risk children around the world.  We might think that our $25, $30, $35, $40 per month sponsorship is bringing great blessing to those children (and it is!), but would you go a step further and also write a letter to your child in which you tell him/her "I love you"?

Nugget #2

U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann from Minnesota, a leading Congressional advocate for orphan care, was introduced to foster care through a friend at church.  In the years that followed, the Bachmanns brought 23 foster kids into their home, and each one graduated high school (If you have ever looked at the statistics, you know that this is an amazing feat!).  She recalled how therapeutic it was for the older children to engage with the younger children and for the younger children to engage with the older.


How will you intentionally train your children of whatever age to wisely engage with at-risk children? 

Nugget #3

Jedd Medefind, president of Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO), announced to the crowd in the sanctuary of conference host Brentwood Baptist Church and to those in the overflow room that Summit has always been held in a local church because local churches were the answer to the world's orphan crisis.  I'm not sure any more profound words were shared in the entire conference.

Simply, what are you doing in your local church to carry out God's command to His people to care for orphans?  If you are a part of our faith family at Colonial Hills Church and you don't know what this looks like for you, I would love to sit down and have a conversation with you about how much there is to do and how you can get involved.

Nugget #4

Bishop W.C. Martin of Possum Trot, Texas, absolutely captivated the crowd with his larger-than-life personality and the story of how his church, Bennett's Chapel in the tiny little town of Possum Trot, has adopted over 70 children from foster care.  They have not provided out of their excess but out of a compelling desire to follow God's command to care for the orphan.  Their story has put Possum Trot, Texas, on the map.  (Just in case you were wondering, Bishop Martin reports that Possum Trot is "on the other side on Coonville.")

Will you consider the needs of children at risk from God's perspective and the child's perspective before your own perspective and see how God compels you to act out in faith?

Nugget #5

"Adoption begins with a parent's initiative, not with a child's choice."
"An orphaned child (who was ultimately adopted into a family) has no idea of the pursuit that had taken place on his behalf."
"The gospel does not begin with our pursuit of Christ but with His pursuit of us."
-- David Platt

If you have been involved in any aspect of caring for orphans -- adoption, helping others adopt, fostering, local and global orphan homes, whatever your involvement may have been -- how will you use your experience and your stories to share the gospel?

Thanks for reading.  Now take action.  I would love to hear your responses to the challenges I have set before you today.

4theVoiceless,
Al

What Is the Summit Conference and Why Should I Go?

The Summit Conference is coming to Nashville May 2-3.  What is the Summit Conference, you ask?  So glad you did ask.  This is THE conference for those involved in orphan care ministry, and Nashville is as close as Summit will come to many of us, especially those of us in the Mid-South area.  Everyone I have talked to who knows more than I do about the movement of churches and other organizations toward God's command to care for orphans has said that this is where I need to be. 

Here's what the Summit 9 page has to say about the conference:

The Christian Alliance for Orphans’ annual Summit has become the national hub for what Christianity Today recently called, “the burgeoning Christian orphan care movement.” Summit IX on May 2-3, 2013, at Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville, TN is expected to draw 1,800 to 2,000 pastors, grassroots advocates, organizational leaders and church ministry heads. Alongside more than eighty workshops, the unforgettable plenary sessions will include David Platt, Randy Alcorn, Michele Bachmann, Bishop & Donna Martin, and other global leaders. Summit inspires, equips and connects for adoption, foster care and global orphan ministry.

For more information about the conference, check out the Summit FAQ page.

Interested in going?  This would be the year.  If you attend CHC and are interested in going, let me know.  We would love to take a group.

I'm going.  I hope to see some of you there.

Earlier this week, the 4theVoiceless blog hit 5,000 page views in less than a year.  Thanks for reading. Awareness matters.

4theVoiceless,
Al

My Lowest Point as a Pastor

Eighteen months ago I was at my low point as a pastor.  You couldn't have looked at me and known that at the time, probably, but there was a storm stirring in me.

During the previous summer, I had read a really harmless-looking little orange book called Radical, and it had intensified every area of my life as a Christ-follower.  I made some, well, radical changes to my own life, and I led my small group through a study of the book over the next few months -- with mixed response.  Most of them revved up their walk with Christ...for a few months.  Some continue to pursue Him with passion today.  I don't think it was as paradigm-shattering to anyone else as it was to me, though.  Looking back, I know I pushed too hard and much to quickly for my group members to "get" what I had "gotten."  I probably also gave too much credit to the little orange book and not enough to the Holy Spirit of God that was burning inside of me and that had burned inside of David Platt as he wrote it.


Fast forward through the first couple of months of 2011.  I was spending a few days of spiritual refreshing at my parents' cabin, as is my habit to do most every spring.  This time, I was spending a couple of days at a conference in Hattiesburg.  On February 28, 2011, I watched pastor after pastor take the stage and preach some of the most powerful, Gospel-centered messages I had ever heard.  And yet, this was my low point in ministry.

Over My Head

Several speakers into the conference, it began to occur to me that I was in way over my head; these guys had strings of initials after their names as long as my arm.  (The only initials I have after my name are B.S - draw your own conclusions.)  Each of them seemed to be a pastor, author, professor, advocate of some world-changing cause, etc., etc.  And here's the kicker:  they were all much younger than me! 


Here I was, 44 years old at the time, with my heart pounding to make a difference in this world for the kingdom of God but with seemingly no outlets.  I went back to mom and dad's cabin that night with a very heavy heart, considering my wasted life.  Why didn't God call me to ministry sooner?  Sixteen years as a high school baseball coach -- did I really even make a difference?  Were all the other years for naught?  And how much difference was I making now, even after a call to the ministry?  All these were questions I threw up to God during the night of February 28, 2011.

And then, on Day 2... 

 

God responded.   Russell Moore, in his message on Colossians 2:16-23, made a couple of statements that the Holy Spirit used to interrupt my self-absorbed melancholy.  Here is what I wrote:

• "The only thing that can kill what is killing you is the gospel of Jesus Christ."
• "Why would I allow myself to be judged or disqualified by some idea of what my life and ministry should look like when I am a part of a living being in the body of Christ?"

That word disqualified hit me right where I was.  That's exactly what I felt.  My eyes were on the other parts of the body of Christ and not on the head, Christ Himself.  I was starting to get what God was saying to me, but He had an exclamation point for me in the next message from Tyler Jones:

• "Coveting robs me of the joy of being who God made me to be."

This was one of those statements that made me do a double-take. Looking around, I wondered if everyone else got that like I did.  No, apparently not.  Apparently, that was just for me.  I had done what I always tend to do: Identify the the issue and begin to deal with it.  God was telling me to acknowledge my situation for what it was, the sin of coveting my neighbor's influence.  Before I could move ahead, God wanted me to call my covetousness what is was: sin, an offense against Him.

I don't know about you, but I don't particularly like a fault in my life being pointed out starkly as sin.  But there it was.  That wasn't the low point, though, because God was now speaking to me.  It wasn't pleasant, but it was God.  He was calling me back to my first love, Jesus Christ, and focusing my eyes on the opportunities, small though they may have seemed at the time, that I had right in front of me.

I had two more opportunities to speak to the kids in our church's AWANA program on the grand story of redemption throughout Scripture.  I had my weekly meetings with my discipleship partner.  It didn't seem like much influence at the time, but in reading back through my journal, I am reminded that 12 third- and fourth-graders gave their lives to Christ on March 9, 2011, and that two ladies led people to Christ for the first time that night (not the last for either of them).  And now, I am joining my discipleship partner on a mission trip to Haiti next month as he continues to pursue God in bigger and bigger ways in his life.

Conception

And then there was one more inconspicuous little nugget from March 5, 2011.  I found it tucked into a long list of things I was asking God for his heart about on behalf of our church:  "I pray that You would open our eyes to feel the same about...orphans as You do...."  And thus began my journey into God's heart for the orphan.  I suppose that 4theVoicless was conceived that morning in that prayer.  And because of what we know about God's heart for the orphan and because we as the church are God's hands and feet in this world, we fully expect to change the world.

Thanks for reading.  Now fix your eyes firmly on Jesus and change the world yourself.
Al