By Dr. Rick Morton, SVP of Engagement, Lifeline Children’s Services
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana recently issued a statement that deserves the attention of every pastor and every Christian family in America. He named a truth that most of the country would rather not hear.
Here is what the senator said about adoption in America:
“Many of the children waiting for adoption are teens. In fact, infants younger than one month old account for 62% of all domestic adoptions in our country, despite being just 2% of children eligible for adoption in our foster care system. The other 98% of these kids and teens in foster care are not even considered by most couples seeking adoption.”
Let those numbers sink in. Ninety-eight percent of the children legally free to be adopted in this country, most of them older kids and teenagers who have already walked through more loss than most adults will ever know, are not even on the radar of prospective adoptive families.
Senator Kennedy went further. He celebrated infant adoption and honored the courage of birth mothers who choose life, as we do at Lifeline. But then he said this:
“Now, the government can’t fix this problem. We can’t. Moms and dads can. And we need moms and dads across this country to try to step up and fix this problem. So, I just wanted to take a minute today to encourage parents in America to think about becoming foster parents. There’s no higher calling. Pray about it.”
Thank you, Senator. You are exactly right. And because you have given us an opening, let us press a little further into what “moms and dads can fix this” looks like when the Church takes her place in the story.
The First Family a Child Should Call Their Own Is Often Their Own
Here is a truth that sometimes gets lost in well-meaning conversations about foster care and adoption: for many children in foster care, the best possible outcome is not adoption. The best possible outcome is going home, to a restored and strengthened family of origin, and staying home.
The foster care system exists because families break. But families that break can also, by the grace of God, be healed. Parents struggling with addiction, poverty, trauma, or sin can be transformed when the Gospel comes to bear on their lives and when a faithful community surrounds them through the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is exactly what Lifeline’s Harbor Families and Families Count ministries are built to do. These church-based programs equip and mobilize congregations to come alongside biological families in crisis, providing mentorship, practical support, spiritual discipleship, and the kind of long-term presence that a caseworker, however dedicated, simply cannot offer. When the Church shows up, children go home. And more importantly, they stay home, because the home itself has been changed.
Senator Kennedy is right that government cannot fix this. But neither can foster parents, acting alone. Only a community animated by the Gospel can do the deep, slow, costly work of family restoration. That community has a name. It is the local church.
For the Teens Who Will Age Out, the Church Must Be Family
And yet we must be honest. Despite our best intentions, despite faithful prayer and faithful work, some children will exit the foster care system without a family. Each year, roughly twenty thousand young people age out of foster care in the United States, walking into adulthood without the safety net that most of us took for granted.
These are the kids Senator Kennedy is talking about. The 98 percent. The teens.
For them, the Church must become extended family. Not metaphorically, but practically.
Lifeline’s Heritage Builders ministry equips churches to do exactly this, by positioning adults from the congregation to become part of a teen’s state-mandated Independent Living Plan. That means real believers teaching real job skills, real life skills, real financial literacy, and building real coaching relationships with young people who have no one else. It means helping teens find belonging in the body of Christ, where they can know that they are not alone, and that they are loved by a Father who sets the lonely in families.
A Response for Foster Care Month
May is National Foster Care Month. If Senator Kennedy’s words, and the Scriptures behind them, have stirred something in you, here is your invitation.
Pray about becoming a foster or adoptive family, particularly for the teens Kennedy named. Ask your pastor how your church can engage Harbor Families, Families Count, or Heritage Builders. Give generously to ministries doing this work. Volunteer to surround a family already in the trenches.
And reach out to us at Lifeline. We would love to tell you more about these church-based programs and how people in your church for whom adoption is not the call can respond with the love of Jesus. Not every believer is called to foster or adopt, but every believer is called to care for the vulnerable in some form, and we can help your congregation discover the shape of that calling together.
The senator said a country’s people are only as strong as their families. He is right. And the Church, filled with the Spirit of the living God, is the strongest family-making force on earth.
Let’s act like it.
