What Happens When Faith Communities Get A Seat At The Table

What if the fastest way to shrink the foster care system is to prevent entries in the first place? We unpack Florida’s results-driven approach that invited churches and nonprofits into a formal partnership with state agencies—without crossing constitutional lines—and turned compassion into measurable change. By treating faith communities as essential partners in prevention, crisis care, and reunification, Florida built real-time bridges between caseworkers and congregations and saw foster care numbers drop dramatically.

We walk through the simple moves that changed the tone and the outcomes: 40,000 thank-you notes acknowledging existing service, a “red phone” straight into the governor’s office for pastors and ministry leaders, and a tech platform that alerts nearby churches when a caseworker logs a family’s urgent need. Often, the missing piece keeping a child safe at home was as basic as a bed. When churches delivered that bed, they built relationships that stabilized families long after the request was met.

The results speak for themselves: 2,200 churches collaborating statewide, a 34–40% reduction in foster care population from roughly 23,332 to under 15,000, and an estimated $248 million in annual taxpayer savings. More important, thousands of children avoided the trauma of removal because support arrived upstream. We also share a step-by-step playbook any state can adapt: map the faith landscape, extend an authentic invitation, centralize communication for faith leaders, deploy a needs-matching tool like CarePortal, and offer multiple on-ramps for congregations to serve within legal and ethical guardrails.

If you care about child welfare reform, faith-based community impact, and practical policy that works, this conversation offers both the vision and the toolkit. Subscribe, share with a policymaker or pastor, and leave a review with your state—what’s the first step you’d take to build this bridge where you live?

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Faith And Policy
• 2:38 Introducing Eric And Florida’s Context
• 5:25 Rethinking Church–State Collaboration
• 8:20 Building Florida’s Faith Initiative
• 12:00 Thank-You Strategy And The Red Phone
• 15:45 Solving Neglect With Care Portal
• 19:40 Measurable Wins In Foster Care
• 22:45 Playbook For Other States
• 25:10 Final Charge And Closing Notes

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton, wallbuilders.com to learn more about our entire organization and then wallbuilders.show to learn more about our radio program and also catch up on any shows you might have missed over the last few weeks and months. Today's program, we're going to take you back to the Pro-Family Legislators Conference and hear a special presentation from a guy that was actually in Ron DeSantis's administration. Big part of helping to allow faith communities to work with government to serve communities. And then, took over the Florida Family Policy Council. They call it the Florida Family Voice and they do an incredible, incredible job at impacting the state by getting churches and people of faith involved and then showing them how to be involved in the legislature with everything that's going on politically. So, Erik's, just a fantastic leader at that doing a great job. And we wanted him not only to share with the legislators at the Legislators conference, but also for us to be able to share that with you here our WallBuilders listeners to our radio program. So, we're gonna jump into that presentation at the legislator’s conference. We will be able get it all in today this one's short if you were listening yesterday, you heard Bob McEwen yesterday and the day before also speaking at the conference. But we'll get the whole presentation in today. So, stay with us. We're gonna take a quick break when we come back, we'll jump in with Erik at the Pro-Family Legislators Conference 

Rick Green [00:02:38] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Jumping in with Erik Dellenback at the WallBuilders Pro-Family Legislators Conference speaking on the importance of faith-based organizations working with government for our community. 

Erik Dellenback [00:02:50] My hope for the next few minutes that we have together is to give you a little bit of, maybe a perspective shift as we talk and to give you a bit of the story of what happened in Florida and maybe offer that that could be something you could use. I'm so grateful for David and Tim and, and Matt, how cool is it? Like, I was just thinking what a joy it is to be a small piece, to be able to share with you the influencers of our culture? Like that is a huge honor for me. One thing he mentioned my time with Governor DeSantis and now for Florida's Family Voice. I wanna go upstream from that just for two seconds so that you can know how I think. I spent my first 12 years in college football, putting on football games, got to start the ACC football championship. That's nothing to do with today. But what it did was in that moment, there was a time in my life doing that, succeeding at that, that I realized that life better be about more than the thing we think it's about. And so, all of a sudden, I found myself starting the Tim Tebow Foundation with Tim Tebow in my guest room. Spent seven years running right next to Tim. We formed all kinds of stuff together, left Tim Tebow in 2017 to go work for Chris Tomlin, who's a Christian singer. And we got to start a foundation that was called Angel Armies, now it's called For Others, an amazing ministry geared at foster care. And then ultimately ended up in the governor's office of this newly elected governor, kind of unknown. If you weren't a Floridian at that time, Governor DeSantis won by less than 1%. So, like, it's interesting, right? When I hear people stand on stage and say, there's little tiny moments that might shift the course of history, I really won't get into who the other candidate was, but praise God that DeSantis won by 0.8%! Because yeah, I have applauded that one often. As we get our time together, the reason I share that kind of background of my story is because I need you to understand two things. I'm coming at you today from a position of not of humility, of genuine belief, that I have never one time been qualified for the thing that God had me facing. Not one time. And by the way, I embrace that. That doesn't bother me at all. The second thing is I need you to know that in my life, and I suspect some of your lives, there's these moments I've seen things that I can't unsee. And those things start to alter the trajectory. Maybe today, maybe today on the stage. I tell you what, I'm gonna have some AI discussions at home. And maybe there's something that you hear today that does those pieces. I'm here to speak to two types of people who I believe represent this entire room. One that believe that church and really nonprofits have a place in government. And maybe some in this room that say, no, church does not have a place in government, I can tell you my Uber driver on the way here is in that camp. We had a fascinating discussion our 11 minutes together. Let me speak first to the group that might be hesitant of what is the relationship between church and government, or maybe when you read it on paper, you read church and state and had a heart palpitation over those two things being so close together. Friends, I don't think in this room I need to tell you that maybe the mis definition of the separation of church and state might be one of the most damaging things that's happened in our culture. I also don't, I probably need to tell you, but I don t want to ever miss a moment to say what Thomas Jefferson was writing to the Danbury Baptist. My Uber driver also thought it was in the Constitution, but what he was writing to the Danbury Baptist is still imperative. That government not interfere with the business of the church and that they're not being a national church. Nothing's changed. Those things, we'd have a unanimous vote on that in this room. And yet simultaneously it has caused the lack of conversation of church and state, which is extremely damaging. So let me give you a couple of things for those of you who might be on the edge about this. one, I'm gonna just start bold and say, I don't think church or government, faith or government can be fully effective and efficient without the other. I think it's interesting that church would government would say, okay, I think we need them. I'm not really sure how, but I think we need him. Church has long been on the other side of potentially saying, no, I don't, I don't know that we need government. Can I remind you that God created both? And that those two cannot be fully efficient without each other. Another thing that's just at a very simple kind of, again, I want to be very practical, when I was in my time in government, we realized that like, how does government and faith sit together? This is a 30,000-foot picture. In government, government most of government exists from the moment crisis begins to the moment crisis ends. Okay?  Good government might start to look upstream Right? So, where's faith exists? Well, I would contend that faith exists in prevention. Faith exists in love and compassion during crisis and community and reunification on the other end. I don't know if this shapes something for you, but that means that government is limited not faith. Like when people are like well what the reality is that government has a has bounds to it. And I think in Florida, we've tried to push those bounds, but the great reality is that faith pours into each position of a crisis. Let me share the Florida story. A couple of prefaces. One preface is that I don't ever wanna be standing in a throne room somewhere and have to say that I took credit. So, all honor and glory in my next few minutes is towards God and what He's done in Florida. Secondly, is there's a whole ecosystem of people. Some of them are here. Mike Watkins is here. I don’t know, he's somewhere back here. And leads one of our lead agencies. Florida has an amazing privatized system of care for our foster care children. And I'll talk about that in a minute, but there's an ecosystem that made Florida successful. But I want you to understand how simple and basic some steps are that you can do in the 35 states represented in this room. So let me give you, and I'm gonna try to go stats, but I'm going to take a little bit of time on them. We started the Governor's Faith and Community Initiative in 2019 when Governor DeSantis got elected. Now, what he said was, I want faith and community to have a seat at my leadership table. Can I tell you that up until recently Arkansas has kind of done the same thing, which we're super grateful about. Up until recently, I was the only person in the state that had a faith and community title and sat on the 12-person leadership team of a state in the executive office of the governor. Now, that's a bit, you're like, okay, well, so what, why'd you start the initiative? Here's Florida's stats and I want you guys to know them for your own state. Florida's Stats are there's 17,000 Christian churches. 17,000. There's 20,000 faith institutions. Our state breaks down, Pew Research says our state breaks down 70% Christian, 3% Jewish, 3% all other faith, 24% no faith. Man, if you're like, that's interesting, you should know that for your state. Because what I'll tell you, I'll save the suspense and tell you that every single state in America, and I don't wanna really name who the bottom one is, but on Pew Research, some have Christianity as high as 80 something percent Christian. The lowest state has 57% report as Christians. You understand that just out of the gate, that means that not even all faith, all faith to us was 76%, 70% Christian, 3% Jewish, 3%, all faith. That's what government represented. But do you understand that means that they are the largest people group in the state, day one? So how is it that we've been somehow convinced that the largest people group in the state would not have a seat in this conversation? I might also add that if faith talked about faith before they talked about being red or blue, we'd solve every major problem in our state. Because 17,000 churches, you know that Florida has 110,000 nonprofits? Blew my mind. So, when you think of why, and so if you're back there at your state and you're arguing, why would we have a governor's faith and community initiative? I would contend because the stats say so. Let me give you a scope on the nation. This is something I'm very, very passionate about right now. Spend a bunch of my time on. Fifteen states in the United States have a faith and Community initiative of some variety, fifteen, just in case there's some of us that would immediately have the wrong idea, I'd like to share with you that 10 of them would be what we'd call a red state and five of them are blue states. So, it's not. It's not a party line thing. There's 15 states. Now, most of you in this room, I hope, no, there's 50, which means there's 35 more that don't currently have a faith and community initiative. I would go so far as to say, some of you might think, well, yeah, but that's because they don't have a DeSantis or they don't have a governor's faith and community liaison. Maybe they don't t have the 70% Christianity I quoted. You still have God. And one of my contentions today is I believe every state should be driving towards having a faith and community initiative in their state. I think it's a fairly easy thing to say, but I also think that we have the results now to show you as to why. And so that's my passion today is to give you the results, to give YOU the ammo, to have the conversations in your state where faith becomes a priority because you just heard it said on this stage it has to be at the state level. So, the very first thing we did, this is how you'll know I'm simple and it's easy. You know, the first thing that we did is? We formed a governor's faith and community initiative, and we sent out 40,000 thank you notes to every church, every faith institution and every nonprofit that we could identify. You guys know, cause you're on the inside of government, government doesn't know everything that people think they know. I had to go; we had to really work to know what that was. We have a somewhat organized system, but we had to go figure out who those people were. And we sent 40,00 thank you notes out that just simply said, we don't even know how to thank you, we just know that you standing on the front line makes a difference in the lives of the most vulnerable people in the state. And we want to say, thank you. And we wanna tell you that if you'll tell us who you serve, we'll tell you and connect you and I won't tell you we'll connect you with the highest person, the secretary of that agency.  Guys, it's that simple. Like, if you miss everything else, I say, like the very first thing we did was just recognize that they exist and that they serve. I didn't validate the ways they serve. I didn't tell them that how they do it is exactly perfect. We just simply said we realize a few things. And by the way people say to me all the time; well, why would you thank the church? Well, I'll give you a couple really easy ones, one the church serves the community better than government. Hope that's not newsflash, right? So, they serve them better. They stay longer. The moment the church ever pulled out of their communities the government would implode. But maybe the one that gets both sides kind of interested is they serve the vulnerable to the benefit of the taxpayer. And I don't wanna make this about money. It's not about money; there's a hundred other reasons that are better. But I'm telling you that every state should think about acknowledging that there is a group out there that is serving the most vulnerable, saving taxpayer dollars, serving better and serving longer. You probably would say, I might have interest in those people having a seat at the table. And they'd be able to discuss. Because the truth is we have a language gap. Really simple, in case you've never thought this before, you know, James 1:27 that pesky little Christian verse about widows and orphans. Orphan, the word orphan is a taboo word in the Department of Children and Families. It was a foster care or adoption, I suspect most of you would know that. And so, isn't it interesting that even our wording of the thing that we're most passionate about on stage on a Sunday is not the same wording that we are using in government? And that has again caused these confusion points. So, we send this letter out, this thank-you note, and 5,000 churches respond. And I'm just gonna share some of the data. Five Thousand churches respond and they tell us who they serve. I had 27 categories of who they served. And I said, which ones. And the top you would figure highest served elderly, homelessness and feeding. Twenty-Seven on the 26th one was adoption. The 21st five from the bottom of six from the bottom was foster care. Is it perplexing to you that churches in our state would not be serving in foster care and adoption? 

Rick Green [00:14:24] Quick break everybody, we'll be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:15:34] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show, jumping back into the Pro Family Legislators Conference, Erik Dellenback speaking from Florida, of course, with the Florida Family Voice, but at our Pro Family Legislators Conference on the importance of having faith communities work with the government for our community. So, let's jump back in with Erik. 

Erik Dellenback [00:15:54] We started asking the question, why do churches not serve in foster care and adoption? And we came back with three fundamental answers after spending a year talking to pastors. One was that we had to open our front door for interested foster parents. Two, we had to: one pastor said it like this, everything you ever do is come to us and ask for something. Right? I just want you to think about that by the way. If when you think of the church in your state, you're like, I wonder what they can do for us. We might have the wrong posture already. And so, we went out and formed, cause they said, that's all you ever do is you ask us for things. So, we went and formed a governor's red phone. If you don't, if this is an easy thing to ask in your State, we have a phone number that's exclusively for faith leaders right now and ministry leaders that goes directly into the executive office of the governor. We don't hand them off. We, they asked their question and we try to get their answer. Why do we do it again? Going back to, because the faster we answer their question, the more they're able to serve the most vulnerable in our state. And so, we started saying to them, we value you. We will do before we ask. And ultimately the third thing we heard was, well, government, we don't agree with who should be able to foster and adopt essentially the church didn't agree with what government says a family is. That's fine. That's a reality. I think somehow, we have taken, and somebody shared this, it was either Jaco or Glenn, just said, like, somehow, we've come up with the fact that if we disagree about something, it gives us an excuse or a license to do nothing. That is not a license, to do nothing. That was a place to have a great conversation. And we did. And we addressed it and we talked and we conversed with pastors all over the state of these 17,000 pastors. And we started to build out a system where pastors could have a unique and special way to plug in to the work that they were doing. Can I tell you, what's harder, right, than sitting in a congregation and hearing that you're supposed to care for, Matthew 25 would be scriptural, James 1.27, and you would be hearing, I've got to care these people, but when you stand up to leave church, there's not a physical, tangible way to do that. It's why when there's a hurricane, you know, we're like, Texas, well, here we are, the two hurricanes, the big hurricane states, maybe North Carolina. And when we have a hurricane, I'm always fascinated by the fact that churches just grab chainsaws and pitchforks and run to the hurricane. And it's like, man, the heart is right, but we have done nothing to help them know how to most effectively and efficiently help. And so for us, we started to fill out the rungs of the ladder and we started to say, here are ways that you can be involved in foster care. We started with foster care. And the reason I share that is because I had a stat that I saw that I couldn't unsee the anthem of my life. In Florida, and it's true of most of your states, pretty close to this, of the children removed and brought into foster care, about 20% were being removed for abuse. Eighty percent because of neglect. If you haven't heard that and you're in the legislature, go check it out in your own state. But here's the thing, if 20% are being removed for abuse, that means foster care will forever exist because we will keep those kids safe. But the 80% being removed from neglect, why? And you guys, I don't know if you've heard, there's an incredible organization called Care Portal, and Care Portal started measuring what was the number one physical need that was not in a home that was causing a child to be removed. In the state of Florida, it was a lack of beds. Again, if you're a faith person, if you are a faith and I said the reality of a child staying with their biological family in a safe environment is due to a lack of beds, do you not have something well up within you that says I can build, buy or donate a bed? And so, we just started realizing, and maybe this is what you need to hear. Our states don't have a resource problem. We have a connectivity problem. We had 17,000 churches meeting on Sundays and now Thursdays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays talking about serving the most vulnerable. And we had a government who was standing in the homes of the most of the vulnerable and the connection was not happening. And so, we just realized, maybe I don't wanna oversimplify this for all my smart government people in the room, but we realized that government really functionally does three things. We do money, we do policy, and we have information. And the great reality is that we figured out that that information is sometimes that we're standing in a home about to do a removal. When we put Care Portal in place, it's an app. It's very, very simple. And that app allows a caseworker to enter what's happening in that home. And that need of a bed goes out to every church in the area that signs up. We have counties right now. It is all 67 counties of Florida. We've counties right now meeting needs within 17 seconds. And church is delivering a bed to this family. And oh, by the way, that family is not entering a second need. You know why they're not entering a second need is because when the church sees that they exist, the church sees all of it. See, I think as me, you, all of us, I think we're all in the business of helping people see things they can't unsee. To the glory of God. And what we're doing in that moment is we're saying, yes, it's about a bed, but it's really not about a bed. It's about seeing a family. And once the family is seen, it changes everything because they become a faith family. Some of you might be like, that's all adorable. What happened? Well, let me tell you what happened. I say that Florida is the most faith and community friendly state in the nation. Here's why I say it. We have 2,200 churches right now working together to serve the most vulnerable. I would contend, how do you get 2,200 churches to work together on anything? I got to start Night to Shine when I was with Timmy. We were super proud of that. We had 39 denominations and I think it takes everything. But you know what? If we talk about five topics in church, we'll agree on two of them and disagree on three of them. But the two that we agree on are loving God and loving his people and serving the most vulnerable. And so we've taken that tact and said, that's what we're gonna focus on. And 2, 200 churches are working together. What's more impressive is that we are seeing the results trickle over to foster care. Again, there's an expert backstage. I think you can hear from Jack Bruhn in a second too. Friends, when I got to the state government, our foster care numbers were two, three, three three two, 23,332 children in foster care. I don't round it. I don't estimate it. Two, three. Three, three two. Six years later, by opening the door and letting the church faithfully and legally through all the things, procurements and all the right things, the church went upstream. You know, government gets accused, right, of bailing the boat, that's all we ever do. But the great reality is, that is all we have the time or funding to do. So, we need to lean on our faith and community partners. When I left in May, our foster care numbers had just dipped below 15,000. I know you're like, are you sure? Yeah, actually middle of April, we were at 15,227. Shortly thereafter, we're at 14,957. It's more than 8,300 children not in foster care. It's a 34 to 40% reduction. And hey, for the ones that aren't necessarily like, hey, I still am kind of on the fence, $248 million in savings per year to the taxpayer. Okay, so again, I'm not making kids about money, but I'm saying when you're in an argument and someone's like, I don't understand. Why would I give faith to seat at the table? Ah, because... They can reduce the thing. So, the child, but the best way to care for someone that's going heading towards the state system of care is to not let them get in the state system care and have the most traumatic moment of their life. And the church can do that. And so, we are seeing these incredible results come out of Florida. And I do believe that God is using the most vulnerable children on our, in our country to be the ones that unite the church and change government. So, I'm going to end with this. Here's three things that I want you to consider, especially you legislative members in the room. One, form a Governor's Faith and Community Initiative or a- Legislative Faith and Community Initiative. Just start! Do something! Send thank you notes. Michael Scott says it's a win-win-win. Well, if you don't know who Michael Scott is, that's a whole other discussion. But Michael Scott's is a win, win, win. Everybody wins, government wins. The kids win, the church wins because you allow them to fulfill their mission. So just do something! Use Florida's results. We have procured products. We have written legislation that you can have. And so, we could just hand it to you because my passion again is getting every state to consider having a faith and community initiative. Have conversations with your pastors. Listen to what they have to say. Think about a red phone. Think about way to honor their time, their validation, the work they're already doing before you ask them for more. And then fundamentally, be prepared to give them resources to help them do the role that they are supposed to be doing anyways. See, we're not teaching anybody to care about people. You understand that, right? Government doesn't need to teach a pastor how to care people. But sometimes government might be the way that tells a pastor how to for people in that community. And so that's a big piece. I was reading Nehemiah the other day, man done this. And Nehemiah one through six is about the rebuilding of the walls. And I've been thinking a lot about that life, family, religious, liberties and marriage. Thinking about those walls being rebuilt. And I was looking at the role of Nehemiah. You know what Nehemiah did most? Nehemiah just simply reminded people of who God is and what He's capable of. And I was thinking if I had one message to share with this entire group, I'd be like, do not forget that! Do not forget who God is and what He's capable of in your state. Because the great reality is that you don't know what game God's doing. You don't what chess level He's playing. Because the truth is, we thought it was about foster care and we thought it was a governor's faith and community initiative. But you know what ended up happening? We were the first state in the country to beat an amendment, a constitutional amendment for abortion. First state in the country. You know how we did it? Because we had 2,200 churches already talking to government, already in relationship with each other, already caring for foster care kids, already caring adoptive kids, as we don't know what God's doing. But I do know this, if we stick to the plan, God will be glorified. And there is nothing that was more impossible than the founding of this country. And if God was in the business of the impossible back then, He was in business of building arks back then for rain that we didn't even know would exist, I would just say the only thing we can't do is nothing. God bless you guys. Thanks for having me today. 

Rick Green [00:25:50] Alright everybody out of time for today. That was Erik Dellenback from the Florida Family Voice. By the way, wherever you're listening throughout the country, almost every state, I think there's a couple of states that don't, but almost every state has a, has a pro family organization, a organization that is not just helping churches to lead in the community and that sort of thing, but connecting them and watching the political process, literally monitoring the legislature, working with the elected officials in the state, all of those things. So, if you are not familiar with your family policy council in your state, look that up and get involved with them. We have great partners in Delaware, for instance, the Delaware Family Policy Council and Nicole Tice. They run our Patriot Academy out there. Same thing in Idaho, same thing in multiple other states. So, I just encourage you to get connected with them and be a big part of what they're doing in your state because they are making a huge difference. All right, folks, thanks for listening. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.