CAFO2015: A Call to Care for God's Children






Two weeks ago, I attended CAFO2015, the Christian Alliance for Orphans' annual Summit. This was the third Summit I've attended, and as always, there are highlights I'd like to share.

 I have to start with the biggest highlight of all... After two years of trying to convince my sister Lori to attend Summit, she finally made it! It was awesome to have her there with me and even more awesome to hear her share on a panel discussing raising foster and adoptive children of a different ethnicity. Lori -- a mom to biological, adoptive and foster children -- did a fabulous job, and I was a proud little sister. I want to be like her when I grow up.

Big Sis Lori and Me

Another highlight for me was the privilege of leading CAFO's African American Church Initiative. This initiative began with a racially-diverse, energetic group of folks at CAFO2013. It has grown to include over forty people with the same passion -- igniting the African American church with the message of James 1:27: caring for orphans and vulnerable children. It was great to witness a new crop of advocates attend our luncheon. I can't wait to see what God will do with this amazing group of believers.

 As for other highlights, I'll give a brief summary of three...

 1. Jedd Medefind's "Stages of Justice Engagement"

 In the first general session CAFO President Jedd Medefind gave the most compelling talk I've ever heard from him. He listed the four Stages of Justice Engagement: Waking, Advocacy, Disillusionment, and Commitment Amidst Complexity. His explanation of the "Disillusionment" stage was illuminating and convicting. I've witnessed this stage in my own heart when I've struggled with fatigue or boredom or resentment in my calling to serve vulnerable children. Jedd encouraged us to remain humble before God, ourselves and others. He encouraged us to embrace "Gospel humility", realizing that we ourselves are not saviors. As sinners saved by grace, we are actually part of the world's problems. And he reminded us to serve enthusiastically, while remembering that "Instead of our enthusiasm driving our theology, our theology should drive our enthusiasm." 
2. Bishop Aaron Blake's Call for the Church to "Stand Up" for Foster Children

 Bishop's live interview with Family Life Today during Friday's general session was a real treat. Bishop Aaron Blake shared the testimony of his ministry to young men from his community in Texas. Over the years this ministry grew from mentor in the local public schools to foster Dad of five teenage boys. He told the story of the day his foster sons literally burned his house down. Though the fire was accidental, the boys assumed they would be forced to leave Bishop and his wife Mary's home and be placed in other foster homes. Bishop's message to them was, "You boys are engrafted in. Nothing you can do can separate us." That message sunk in, so much so that one of those five sons, Diego, performed a rap for us that morning. The name of his song? "Engrafted."
3. Dr. Karyn Purvis' Call to Loving Discipline

 I'm sure I've said this before... more than once. I LOVE Dr. Karyn Purvis. Dr. Purvis has done more to encourage me as adoptive mama than anyone else on this earth. I've blogged about Dr. Purvis a couple times before, but I just have to mention her again. Dr. Purvis' Connecting While Correcting workshop reiterated her oft-spoken theme, "Preciousness. This is always the message. Our children must be reminded that they are precious." As always, she was practical, sharing tools to discipline our children, especially our children from hard places. She empowered us with tools like "time-in", where we have the child complete a task or chore beside us, instead of time-out, where we send them away from us. My favorite part of her talks, though, are those nuggets, those passionately-spoken words that are stand-alone sermons. My fave nuggets from this talk... "As the parent, you're the coach, not the warden." And the reminder to discipline as God does. "When I'm disciplined by God, I know I'm loved."
As always, CAFO2015 was a huge blessing. Will you join us at CAFO2016 in Orlando, Florida?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ambassador: His Rise, Fall and Rise Again

Image
I recently began a Facebook Group called "A Pastor's Wife's Garden" with the goal of connecting hearts with other pastor's wives like myself. The idea for this group came totally from the Lord one day while I watched a recording of an interview on CBN. The topic of this interview: William Branch, also known as The Ambassador, also known as Duce, and his wife discussing the challenge of his emotional affair with another woman. To give a little backstory, Duce is a Christian hip hop artist that co-founded and led Cross Movement, a rap group that took the Christian world by storm in 1996. All original founding members, including Duce, grew up in Philadelphia. Having earned a Masters degree in Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary -- graduating with honors, by the way -- he began co-pastoring Epiphany Fellowship Church, a growing and vibrant multi-ethnic church in Philly. That is, until he fell into this emotional affair. At that point Duce was asked to leav
Read more

Five Things Not to Say to Adoptive Parents

Image
The Hendricks Clan "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."  Did you grow up hearing that adage? I don't think I reached age ten before I realized how false that saying is. The scars of sticks and stones heal with time. The scars of hurtful words? Many of us will take our share of those scars to our graves. If you have adopted, you've heard your share of ill-timed/insensitive questions and comments. Many will come from the lips of perfect strangers. This can be annoying, but in the end, feels rather harmless. Yet sometimes the offenses come from the people closest to us -- parents, grandparents, siblings, long-time friends. Some of those words have left scars on your soul. And maybe on the souls of your child. This post is not only for those of us that have adopted. This post is for our family members, our close friends, our fellow church and community members. This post is for our loved ones who may be very happy for us, b
Read more

The Shooting of Michael Brown: What I Know for Sure

Image
It's been exactly two weeks since Michael Brown , age 18, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.  Other than a few discussions at home with my family, I haven't talked much about this volatile situation. I've wanted to share about it here in Deep Waters , but I've wanted to speak intelligently about it. There's just so much I don't know about this case right now. And then I received an email from a sweet sister-friend that told me she'd checked my blog for my reaction to the Ferguson crisis. She encouraged me to "weigh-in" here, and I knew I needed to break my silence. I feel like I did when I wrote about the Trayvon Martin crisis back in May 2012 in "Our Sons Are Trayvon." I feel the way I did when I wrote about the verdict in the Zimmerman trial back in July 2013 in "Zimmerman Found Not Guilty/The Church Found Guilty" . I feel like there's so much I don't know. I wasn
Read more