Why Families Are Failing

While my last post addressed a hard reality of the foster crisis and the church, it was not an exhaustive explanation. I’m not sure we can completely define the cause for the crisis, as there are multiple layers. Nor am I sure it is the best use of our time attempting to do so. With that said, I do want to explore the conversation a little further. Because this crisis should not be in existence when you line up the numbers of children/churches and you layout the call of the church. And if we do not at least have an understanding of why, even if it fails to offer a complete answer, we will not know how to move forward with solutions. 

As the wife of a pastor, one of our greatest and most constant struggles is lack of volunteers. Which I believe provides a significant insight into why the church is so uninvolved in this crisis. This problem within the church is a result of the same problem causing much of this crisis outside the church. Our churches are filled with members who are spectators rather than participants. We have failed to teach the most basic truth for a follower of Christ, that it is not left for the super saints to take up their crosses. It is in fact, the most fundamental mark of a true believer. The consequence is cultural Christianity. As Christians, we have accepted a “religions affiliation” Christianity rather than a disciple view of our faith. As individuals, we attend church and have our moral stances but we are not living transformed, surrendered lives.

Now consider the progression with me. Our relationships are only as healthy as the individuals making up the relationships. Thus, the result of this discipleship deficit is that our churches are filled with spiritually infant believers who are living in spiritually infant relationships. I do not say this critically of church members but of church leaders. Our lack of diligence over the decades in discipleship has been to the detriment of the family. The result is marriage and family relationships functioning for the earthly rather than eternal. Unless we have such Christ centered view of life and relationships, we will not have the heart to sacrifice and serve for the sake of others. We will continue to enjoy the benefit of Christ’s sacrifice and service for us, but we will not strive to share it with others.  We will not desire to steward our time and our family for the sake of the gospel. We will resent our spouse for serving others, we will place our own kids above the needs of other children, we will see our time and our family as ours to control and keep our own.

The reality is that many marriages and families making up our churches are in their own forms of crisis. They are unhealthy and hurting. They function without margin. They are not Christ centered. Thus, they are not Christ proclaiming. They look more like the worlds definition than God’s. They are their own idols. Which has resulted not only in families falling apart but in families failing to function with God’s vision. Marriage and family are God designed kingdom partnerships with kingdom purpose. The church must capture a high and holy view of marriage. A better, eternal view of marriage. Where churches are filled with homes of kingdom partnerships, spouses and children teaming together for the glory of Christ. The condition of our families within our churches directly impacts the condition of families within our communities. When our own marriages and families are falling apart within our churches, we are not present to help the failing families within our communities. Until Christian families view themselves with such God designed significance, there will be no desire or room for such sacrifice and service-inside or outside the church. They will continue to function at full capacity, with no room to serve. They will continue to function self, spouse or child centered rather than Christ centered. They will continue to idolize itself above its God given mission. Here is what I can tell you. Family only works when it works the way God designed. Even our best intentions to build strong marriages fail, because they focus on the individuals rather than teaching the individuals to focus on Christ. Therefore, until the individuals making up the homes in our churches are being transformed into the likeness of Christ, the families in our churches will continue to fail.

All the while, our communities are filled with children who live with the consequences due to the brokenness of their parents. Parents who needed the church to be lighthouses but were not, so they’ve turned to addictions. Parents who are so poverty entrenched that they needed the church to help them find a their way out, but we didn’t, so their children are neglected. As a result, our communities are producing traumatized children who will statistically grow up to repeat the cycle, become homeless or end up in prison. And the church was not there to prevent nor to stand in the gap. Because those within the church were too consumed with their own lives and broken relationships. It is a cycle that must be broken or the moral, crime, poverty and drug crisis of our culture will only continue to escalate. Individual Christians must come to a place of healing and wholeness in Christ, in order for their marriages to be whole and healthy, in order for their families to be whole and healthy, in order for churches to be whole and healthy, in order for churches to impact the broken families within its community.

The goal of Christian family is not good Christian homes. It is gospel centered homes. If we want to see our own children loving the gospel, they must see us living the gospel.

 

You Are the Answer

My heart is a big mix of emotions. My office today is our empty foster room. I’m not sure why I did this to myself except that I felt God leading me to lean into the ache of my heart. Not just for missing our girl. When you love a child for 16 months through their most significant seasons of development, it is such loss. And unfortunately, psychology is my education so my mind tells my heart that she will have abandonment issues. And my heart cannot bear that burden. I must give her to Jesus again and again. Because if anyone knows that Jesus gives children much grace for the failures of parents, I do. He heals. Because He healed me. So I know there is hope for our girl. Because just like I had family stand in my gap, so does she. And my parents know that none of my words are in bitterness, but with the greatest gratitude for the work of Christ in both my life and theirs. It is my own story that has led me to stand in the gap. It is the circumstances of my childhood that fills my heart with compassion for these children.

My hurt is not only for her. And perhaps somehow for the childhood I did not have, which comes in unexpected waves of grief. But for every child who walks this same road. Who does not have what God knows they need. And for the selfish neglect of His church to stand in the gap. We cannot claim His name if we do not carry His heart. We have loved our own comfort and convenience more than Christ. And these kids have paid the price for our self-consumed lives. This is not His fault, it is ours. We cannot ask Him why these things happen to these kids. Here’s the thing. They have lost parents because we have not been in our communities leading them to Christ. And we have not come to their rescue to love them as Christ when their parents cannot.

There are so many myths about foster care. We cannot arrogantly look down on bio parents for their addictions and choices when we have not been there to help them out of their pit and walked with them towards Jesus. It is a myth that they can just get it together. We cannot assume that entering foster care is the trauma because for these kids, being in the neglectful, abusive home is the start of their trauma. At the same time, we also cannot assume that entering the home of a stranger, even though it may be better or safer, is not equally terrifying. It is it’s own trauma. It is an unfair and uneducated myth that these are bad kids. No, they come from bad circumstances that have resulted in bad consequences and resulting behaviors, through no fault of their own. And the most damaging myth is that kids are resilient. Because it lets us off the hook. They have the potential to be resilient, but resiliency requires relationship. I could nerd out on verbiage like ACE’s and the lasting adverse impact these children face. I will refrain. Here is what you need to know. Through safe, stable loving relationships, these children can have hope-filled futures. Your role re-wires their minds and brings healing to their hearts.  We want to see things black and white, but when it comes to the mess of sin, it is not. It is both and. It is trauma to stay in the chaos and it is trauma to leave the chaos. It is all trauma because it is all not God’s good and perfect design. These myths must stop being our excuses to excuse God’s expectation of us to enter their chaos. God does have an answer to this mess and it is us.

This is love, that we lay down our lives. We do not love Christ because we have not loved the least. We have kept these kids from coming to Christ because we have not been His hands and feet of safety and protection. We have not opened the doors of our homes. And He says it would be better for us to tie a millstone around our necks and drown in the sea. You see, we want to blame the parents. When we are the ones with Christ. Thus, our silence is the more sinful. Because we know what He has commanded. But we have settled for a self-righteous religion, foolishly believing that if we live our upstanding moral lives, then we are living obediently to our Savior. It doesn’t take much reading in the New Testament to learn that Jesus condemned such pride.

Church, we must repent of our sin. We will answer to Him. These kids are paying the price for our pride, this love of ourselves. We are our own idols. May I have the liberty to say, our own kids are our own idols. As if they have more value because they were born to us “good” people. Have we forgotten the gospel we claim to believe? That we were once just as lost and dead and wretched? The love of Christ leads to sacrifice, submission and surrender. Anything less is a false illusion and sin.

Start somewhere. First in your own heart. There is no productivity in comparison and pointing and blaming. If we each take personal responsibility in our sin of neglect, true change will begin to take place. Ask God where you have been selfish, ask Him to turn your heart towards Him, ask Him how He has called you to step out in obedience to serve these kids. Ask God to reframe your perception of fostering, from burdensome to beautiful. Yes it is certainly hard because these kids are from hard places, but you are seriously doing brain work! Then take the step of asking questions to those of us in the trenches, begin having conversations and praying with other believers about how you can join together and actually BE Christ. Then just do something. This isn’t just “my thing.” This is Jesus’ heart so it must be all of ours.

And let me end with some grace. I realize that much of our disobedience is simply due to a lack of awareness. That was us for years. But once we become aware, we are responsible. My heart is that all of us as Christ followers are without excuse. Further, our lack of willingness may also be due to lack of support. That is my second goal, that by bringing awareness, an army of support is forged. Lastly, know that God knows what you can and cannot do. There are seasons and how you are called now may look different than in another season. May I lovingly say, though, that obedience always requires sacrifice. And there is never a convenient time to sacrifice. So examine your heart to make sure you’re not confining your calling to what you think you “can” do. Christ followers have the singular calling to lay down our lives. As with us, God is currently moving our foster advocacy in a new direction that will actually allow us to better serve these kids in a greater capacity and is a better fit for this season of our family. He will ask you to step out in obedience in the way that YOU can best serve these kids, with your gifting and circumstances and even your own story. But it will all push you out of your comforts and convenience and require great sacrifice.