Above, a village caregiver feeds her child at the Good Shepherd's Fold feeding program.

November 2015 – Faced with sorrowful orphan eyes, one’s first inclination is to wrap the child in loving arms and supply every need. Oftentimes, however, rushing to aid with well-meant intentions is not the best response. Even established ministries are rethinking traditional approaches as they face unique demands arising out of their own contexts.

Rethinking the orphanage
For 40 years, Look Unto Jesus Ministries has served children living on the streets in Bangalore, India. Founder Helen Singh and her late husband Sundar brought children into their own home. (See “Rescue the perishing,” AFAJ, 3/13.) When their first child was born, 25 children already lived in the house.

“There have always been these children living in our home. I grew up with that,” said Maurice Singh, who has helped direct the program since his father’s death in 2009.

They later constructed a children’s home to shelter larger numbers of children. Then, in 2014, the Indian government began aggressively enforcing the Juvenile Justice Act. In the name of protecting children, the law forbade teaching any religion other than Hinduism to children in residential homes. LUJM was faced with a hard choice, to turn the children away or take Christ out of their ministry.

“We are not working just to feed and clothe children, but to spread the gospel,” Singh said. “The purpose for all we do is to lead people to look unto Jesus.”

LUJM arrived at a means of doing both, transferring the children to foster care with local church members. As a result, LUJM has seen the work of the gospel multiplied as the children act as witnesses in their villages.

“Priya is one nine-year-old girl who saw that family members were troubled and unhappy, so she shared with them what she has learned about the love of Jesus, and that family was saved as a result of her testimony,” Singh told AFA Journal.

El Ayudante (eanicaragua.com) is a Nicaraguan ministry that was compelled to make a similar, sudden change. When the government instituted Project Love in the name of reuniting families while ignoring the problems that caused broken families, EA was forced to transition from a fully residential orphanage to supplemental care before and after school, and discipleship and training for families. EA is also recognizing potential for long-term impact.

“They’re not just taking care of these kids until something better comes along, but equipping them to make a better future,” said Nick Dean, former El Ayudante mission team liaison and current staff writer for AFAJ. “These kids are the future pillars of the society. They are the seeds in the community to create change.”

The western church can learn from these adaptations when it comes to orphan welfare, or any ministry, in any country.

“You’re not going to know some things until you’re in a situation,” Dean said. “We’ve got to step aside and let the culture and people work for themselves, and support them in that effort, not do for them what they could do if given the resources.”

Steve Corbett, author of When Helping Hurts, told AFAJ, “The motivation is genuine compassion, but when we have certain pictures in mind of what’s best and just go and do them, that doesn’t meet the real needs of a society. (See “Aid that empowers,” AFAJ, 2/14.) We don’t have orphanages anymore in the U.S. Why don’t we? Because other methods keep people connected to their cultural context, their family context, which is very healthy. That’s what good, community-based care does.”

In state run orphanages that still exist in countries such as Russia, Ukraine, and China, serious shortcomings have surfaced, including neglect, lack of emotional development, and high rates of homelessness and trafficking.

When David Gotts first visited China in 1993, he saw firsthand the reality of understaffed orphanages with only one staff member for 30 to 50 kids, four babies to a single crib, children who gave up crying or speaking because no one responded, and children days or months away from dying.

Today, International China Concern (chinaconcern.org), the ministry Gotts founded, is working with the government and society to alter that. ICC works with disabled children, and exemplifies the transformative results of moving to a better model.

“We are trying to elevate the government system by showcasing a standard for deinstitutionalizing in a way that is sustainable and workable for the native culture,” said Kyla Alexander, China operations director. “By doing the hard stuff [working with the disabled], we become real partners and build trust over time.”

ICC creates a family environment for children by placing them in homes of six to eight children with a caregiver. Beyond that, it provides services within the government structure and does outreach to bolster families and prevent child abandonment.

“The job starts with keeping the family preserved and well,” Alexander said. “Our vision is to bring along the government, Chinese nationals, and the general society.”

Leading the way to healthy families
While the organizations cited above were to some degree reacting to government decisions, other ministries have taken the same direction on their own initiative.

Good Shepherd’s Fold is in Uganda, where the norm is for orphans to be taken into individual homes in the community. As a ministry that operates on a larger scale, GSF seeks to simulate a family atmosphere with separate houses for every eight to ten children and a housemother. Many of these children are social orphans who still have a parent unwilling or unable to provide for them, so GSF looks beyond simply housing children and concentrates on reestablishing them in families.

“We’re trying to rebuild families, address discipleship, and build churches to get to the core reasons why children’s homes exist in the first place and prevent the crises that bring children to us,” director Mark Gwartney told AFAJ.

As with the ministries cited above, GSF’s goal is not only setting up a better approach to orphan relief, but also influencing family and community.

“Managing an orphan home and taking every child that comes along because of whatever tragic circumstances is limiting,” Gwartney said. “Our hope is that in the years ahead, the orphan home of Good Shepherd’s Fold will not be necessary. We don’t want to perpetuate the orphan home, but to bring the Word of God to bear on the deeper issues in the community.”

Forgotten Voices (forgottenvoices.org) is another ministry in Africa taking that vision further by keeping in the shadows while the limelight stays on local efforts. They do this by leaving leadership to the indigenous church.

“In the church, we already have the tool to do the work that ought to be done,” said spokesperson Otto Monroy. “Missionaries have been investing in the African church, and that has yielded fruit with huge growth in the past 100 years. Yet, with the orphan problem, we’ve turned to institutional models such as orphanages and sidestepped the church we’ve spent all that time building.”

The goal is to serve families so kids stay in the homes they already have. This aligns with the cultural scene in the three countries where Forgotten Voices is active, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia, where the majority of people have adopted a child into their home.

As Monroy pointed out, Forgotten Voices is not starting something new, but advancing work already being done by native churches. Forgotten Voices looks for those already serving, where God is at work, and then provides funding for church leaders to capitalize in an income source that will carry the ministry independently into the future on a larger scale.

“Our endeavor is to do that quietly so people are aware of the role of the church rather than knowing about Forgotten Voices,” Monroy explained. “It inspires ownership – local involvement in the church where tithing and volunteering go up – and sustainability, so if we disappeared tomorrow, the work would continue.

“Forgotten Voices is about a return to what has always been true of the church: addressing needs and being the agent of change in a community – salt and light.”

Ministering in the U.S.
Church headship is not applicable only in African countries. In the United States, 4 Kids of South Florida (4kidsofsfl.org) takes a similar approach by bringing the church to a position of leadership in government child protective services. As a private agency, 4 Kids receives government contracts to care for children, and then recruits people from churches to foster those children.

“Our goal is to infiltrate the foster care system with Christian families,” explained Katy Mills, public relations director. “We work with the church to take back the care of children, because for centuries it was the church that took charge of that task.”

The group is not shy about stating its connection to the church and its motivation to work with Christians. But it earns government trust by taking the hardest jobs in the whole gamut of services for ages 0 to 25. From foster care to independent living programs for those aging out; residential maternity homes to Christian counseling for troubled families; emergency care shelter to reunifying biological families, 4 Kids cares for what it calls modern widows and orphans and enlists the church to step up and take responsibility for the needs of the community.

“In south Florida, there’s a huge conglomeration of people from all over the world; it truly is a melting pot,” Mills said. “We really are in the thick of a global crisis.”

The need for orphan care is indeed one of global urgency. First and foremost, it behooves the church to take up this need, as it has done historically in obedience to the biblical exhortation to care for the fatherless. (See “The gospel and adoption,” AFAJ, 7-8/12.) At the same time, the church must look with humility at its role and the appropriateness of all traditions – old and new – so that it adopts a healthy approach that sustains family, culture, and church leadership in each community. 

November is Orphan Awareness Month. Orphan Sunday is November 8. National Adoption Day, November 21, calls attention to the 100,000 children in foster care in the U.S. waiting for adoption (nationaladoptionday.org). Domestic adoption can be pursued through Christian organizations such as Bethany Christian Services (bethany.org) and New Beginnings (newbeginningsadoptions.org).

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Look Unto Jesus Ministries and Good Shepherds Fold are affiliated with Global Outreach, a missions sending agency that collaborates with over 140 missionaries around the world.
globaloutreach.org 800-961-9244
Look Unto Jesus Ministries facebook.com/lujm.india
Good Shepherd’s Fold good-shepherds-fold.org