When Chris Woodall and his wife, Stacy, got married, adopting children was part of their plan.
“We wanted our family to be a picture of the gospel,” he said.
But before they adopted their first son, Robert, they also got a good look at the importance of a healthy foster home. Robert had been abused before entering foster care and had a lot of behavioral issues when the Woodalls first met him at a school where they worked.
They found out later that the abuse had continued in his foster home, which broke their hearts. So they brought him into their family.
They later adopted another son, Adrian, and Woodall said God “has knit our family through the adoption of two sons and the [biological] birth of an additional son and daughter.”
The needs of children have been front and center for them since the Woodalls first opened their home.
Increasing connections
“As an adoptive parent myself, I want to see more Christians involved in that,” said Woodall, pastor of Pinckard Baptist Church.
So he’s been working on a strategy to help his church and others in the Dale Baptist Association connect more with the needs of children in their area. The strategy — We Care: Foster and Adoptive Ministry — started with a grassroots effort among the association’s pastors to educate their congregations about the need through lunch and learn events and special emphasis Sundays.
Woodall led the way with an Orphan Care Sunday event Nov. 6 featuring the testimony of Amy Atkins, an adoptive mother in the Dothan area, and a message from Rick West, partnership specialist for Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries.
During his message, West said the trauma foster children face will never be forgotten.
“Trauma leaves scars and memories that are there forever,” he explained. “Orphan ministry is both a horrible and a wonderful thing. To be taken from their biological parents is the worst day, and yet it is the best day to see God give them a new family.”
Embracing the message
West recounted stories of several children who had their futures altered for the good by families willing to step in and care for them. He challenged the audience to get involved in foster care ministry in some way, whether opening their home as a foster family or supporting other foster families or childcare ministries.
“Everyone can do something,” Woodall declared.
He said that’s the message he hopes will catch on in his area: Everyone can foster, adopt or support. That’s what Woodall sees as the heart of James 1:27, which says the religion God accepts is to visit widows and orphans in their distress.
While some church members may need to step up and open their homes, others can organize an “umbrella of support” and come around families, providing meals or other resources, Woodall suggested. He said he also would love to see things like quarterly fellowships for families and continuing education.
“Big picture, I would love to see within our association a huge response, to not only see God work in our church, but also see that spread in our association and beyond,” Woodall said.
He is developing the strategy as part of his doctoral project.
“If every church has one foster family, we could take care of the crisis in Alabama, and those children would be in a Christian home.”
For more information about getting involved in foster care or adoption visit alabamachild.org.
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