The Foster Care Crisis the Church Can’t Ignore

In this episode, Brody sits down with our friend Jordan Bird to talk about the foster care crisis and why the church cannot ignore the needs of vulnerable children. Jordan shares his journey into foster care ministry and helps us understand the real challenges foster families and children face every day.

We also discuss what Scripture teaches about caring for vulnerable people and explore practical ways anyone can help—through prayer, meals, encouragement, respite care, and supporting foster families in their community.

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Transcript

Why Foster Care Cannot Wait

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hey, I'm recording this uh the intro to this episode after I just had a conversation with Jordan Byrd. Jordan's a longtime friend of mine. He was a pastor, he's a youth pastor, then a church planner with Acts 29 Network. Good friend, good brother. Um, he's now doing a a lot of really cool work with an organization called the Restore Network. And they they what they do is they work with churches and families and communities to help meet the need of children in crisis, the most vulnerable children within our communities. They're specifically working in the state of Illinois, but what we got into in the in the episode was addressing the issue of the need for foster families, um, for people to support foster families, for churches to be involved. If your church is not involved with that need in your community, um I I hope you'll listen intently and maybe the Lord would would prick your heart and bring conviction to your mind and heart to do something about this. Even if you're not gonna foster children, there's so many different options, um, needs that are are available to God's people to step into this space or this gap and help the most vulnerable among us. Get impassioned a little bit in this episode is something very close to my heart, something I'm very passionate about because I believe it's such a clear biblical teaching to rescue those who are the most vulnerable in our society. And I feel like most churches are just not doing a great job. Just to be honest, not being critical or judgmental. Most churches are not doing a good job. Some are. There's I I looked it up and I referenced this in the episode. There's about just under 16,000 kids in the state of North Carolina in need of placement or are in placement. So 16,000 kids in foster care uh in the custody of the state. There are just over 16,000 Christian churches in the state of North Carolina. It's just crazy to me the numbers. If every church would commit to get one kid taken care of, we wouldn't even need the Department of Social Services. We wouldn't need, you know, non-Christian foster families. What an incredible platform for the gospel. So my challenge to you would be on your drive to work or at the gym or while you're, you know, taking this road trip or sitting on the lawmower and you're listening to this episode, open your heart and your mind and ask the Lord how you might get involved. It's not a question of am I called to this? God has called the church to minister to the vulnerable among us. You are, I'm telling you right now, you're called to this. There's no one who's not called to this. What level or what role you play in it, that's something you might need to talk to as a married couple or if you're a single individual to talk to with your pastor and see how you might get involved. But there's a need, and we have an opportunity, and Christ expects us to do something about it. So don't ignore that and walk away. After you listen to this episode, you will be without excuse. And uh I pray that the Lord would give you direction and guidance in that. So thanks for that and welcome to this week's episode of No Sanity Required.

Snowbird Memories And Culture Shock

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Welcome to No Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

Um, I was I was this morning, I was JB's behind the camera.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Hi.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

So everybody's missing JB. A few episodes here, which I don't know what order episodes are coming out in, but when JB, when you don't see JB, she's still here. JB's always here. But um this I was recently in a conversation with the Element kids, and something came up about me coming up there. So I came, you were you were a youth pastor.

SPEAKER_05 4:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

And you said, I want you to come up and speak. I think it was for a D now. And you and you said the magic words. You're like, I'll get you somewhere to hunt.

SPEAKER_06 4:23

Yeah. I can't pay you a bunch, but I'll get you a I'll get you a hunt spot and a deer tag.

SPEAKER_04 4:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 4:27

That was it, man. You're like, all right, I'm in.

SPEAKER_04 4:29

I'm in. And Little came with me. Yep. That was a sweet property, too. Those people moved away, right? They did.

SPEAKER_06 4:37

They're down, I think they're in Florida. Louisiana or Florida. Yeah, somewhere, yeah. Yeah. They moved south on the coast. Yeah, the Hawkins were down there recently, I think, with them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 4:44

That's good people. Yeah, man. Yeah. 20 years ago. Yeah. Well, that was probably like 19 years, yeah, 18, 19 ago. 20 years ago is the first time I was ever here and we met.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

So you came to Snowbird 20 years ago. Yeah. Summer of 06.

SPEAKER_06 4:58

Yep. It was a 19-year-old kid that took over a youth group that was already slotted to come here. Billy Dye was bringing students here, and he was he was leaving the church, and they asked me to take over for the summer or for to lead their youth for the summer. So I showed up and they were talking about snowbird, and so I brought kids to snowbird. I had no idea what I was getting into. But then went back as much as I can ever since.

SPEAKER_04 5:23

So it's funny because we were talking before we started recording about things. Snowbird people come now and there's a wild feel to it. Like I was talking to a I was talking to a pastor last night of a, he's a youth pastor who's got like 10 kids here, but they've got 200 kids at another camp this week. Okay. They couldn't get in, they're wanting to get in. He's finally got 10 spots. He's I brought 10 students. So he pulled like 10 seniors off and brought them here. A big, very um almost like a metropolitan church. And these kids are, I think it's upper middle class for the most part. It's culture shock for them. And so they're in a culture shock.

SPEAKER_06 6:04

And I was telling him, I was like, pulling into town, I'm sure they're just like everything.

SPEAKER_04 6:07

The town, the camp, and I told him, I was like, brother, you should have you cannot imagine. So you know, Tuesday night we're wrestling pigs. Yeah. Were you out here for that? No. Okay. So remember the old days we used to do pig wrestling, steer wrestling.

SPEAKER_06 6:21

There's video of me. There's video of me doing, I don't know, catching some kind of deer or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:26

And we would let student pastors and students do that stuff. So we didn't do it for 10 years.

SPEAKER_06 6:31

Yeah, I banged up my shoulder at what you're doing at like.

SPEAKER_04 6:33

Oh, it was intense because we would have four or 500-pound steers and you got to get them on the ground.

SPEAKER_06 6:38

Me and me and one of my senior boys, yeah. Yeah. It was like, we're trying to wrestle this thing. Well, I grew up on a cattle farm, so it was fun for me.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

Like absolutely, you didn't have any problem with it. And you knew how to take one to the ground, but it's funny because Austin Scott is our production guy, and he's got uh we're this is part of that team. JB's on that team. Um back in the spring, he said, I want to bring back some semblance of the redneck games. So for SWO 26, we had the redneck games every week. Okay. And he uh he said, I want to get pigs.

SPEAKER_06 7:14

Is that what Swamp Fest was?

SPEAKER_04 7:15

Yeah, it was Swamp Fest. The new version of the Redneck Games.

SPEAKER_06 7:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

Okay, so he wanted to get pigs. So I'm like, all right, man, get pigs. Well, back when you first started bringing students, kids chased the pigs, yeah, not staff. Yeah, we can't do that no more.

SPEAKER_06 7:29

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, my daughter was even like she picked up on my oldest love's adventure. Like, that's probably why we're here. Is like she she had gone to another student camp the last three years and love camp, and like was talking about working at a camp. And I'm like, hey, hey, hey, if you're gonna work you're gonna work at a camp, I need you to at least have experienced Snowbird. Just because I I love how y'all, I know how you do your that program and your investment into those staff and the way you care for them and pour into themselves. Like, hey, I'm not gonna make you come here, but I want you to have at least experienced it. Um, because her first year of going to camp, our church had switched to uh a different camp in Kentucky. And so anyway, uh, so she just loves the adventure side. So she was up for doing everything and uh and she was bummed that there was no more pirating on the on the river. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. And she was like, that's a safety safety thing or insurance thing. I was like, Yeah, I'm surprised it's taken that long to I'm sure that's a consistent conversation with your insurance coverage.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Well, the the reality is we had to stop that not because of insurance, it was because of the Gorge Association. People don't want you to have fun. What was happening was snowbird trips were the funnest trips on the river. So everybody's going, our customers don't like that they're not having as much fun as snowbird. And so we started getting pressured.

SPEAKER_06 8:47

They just didn't show you the time.

SPEAKER_04 8:48

Because they've got these different rafting companies. There's one major company, the biggest company on the river, who does by volume, they take as many people down the river as all other companies combined. And they, you want to have a not fun river trip, you go take a trip with them people. And so they but they have the biggest voice in the gorge. There's a gorge association that works directly with the Forest Service, and that's where our pr the pressure came from. It it for it's come in two waves. It came a few years ago where they said, Y'all got to calm down on the river. I'm like, okay, I get it. We're we we were probably a little out of control. So we got guys, we got guys rollerblading off a picnic rock, you know, literally wearing rollerblades and splashing other companies.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

And wearing a chicken outfit.

SPEAKER_04 9:37

Chicken outfit with the big mascot chicken head. It was out of control. Because these companies are all trying to sell it subjective, but yeah. It's subjective. But here's here's what it is. Those companies are trying to sell this adventure river trip. And I'm like, it's a class two river though. I've run the new, the golly, though, co it. You know, I we you run a legitimate big whitewater river and you realize, oh, this is just like a float trip.

SPEAKER_05 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:00

But these companies here want it, they they sell it as a real whitewater experience, and it's awesome. But it's awesome as what it is for what it is. A group can go down the river, have a blast. You get a whitewater experience, but you get to play and goof off. And so, yeah, we've just we've so we got a call from uh the the company we partner with. We can't get

Risk Management And A Softer Generation

SPEAKER_04 10:25

a permit. There's a limited number of permits to run commercially on the river. Well, those have been unavailable for 30 years. So we've always run on like a special use permit, piggybacking on another company's permit, but we got to follow their rules. Well, this company has really done a good job of defending and protecting our sort of way of doing things, but finally they were getting so much pressure, they started getting threatened. Their permit was getting threatened. So it ain't got nothing to do insurance, it's got to do with a bunch of people that are killjoys that don't know how to have a good time. Karen. They're a bunch of Karen's. Yeah, dude. Nanahala Outdoor Center. I know none of y'all listen to this, but you're a bunch of Karen's. Yeah, it's it is. We were talking the other day about this was we were in a risk management meeting, and we were talking about the reality, and I'm not picking on I know we got a lot of people listening to this that that come to Snowbird and attend camps and conferences. But the reality is our risk management uptick in activity is noticeable, and it's because people are softer, weaker. Uh guys we got guys on staff getting hurt doing the most basic life movements.

SPEAKER_06 11:43

JP slapped.

SPEAKER_04 11:45

Like the most basic life movements. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. Where you're like, wait, you got hurt doing what? Now, when you say you got hurt, what do you mean? Well, I went to the ER. Oh, so did you need stitches? Are you concussed? Are you no, it's I needed to get an MRI and an and I needed an Ortho to look at it. It's just crazy, man. Yeah, it's crazy. And and I think, like I know that not everybody's gonna behave the way I behave. Sure. Not everybody's gonna raise their kid the way I raised Chuck, you know, especially when we're talking about boys. But it we are softening our society, and it's not just here's here's the interesting point to this. It's not just we're softening them by we're softening them by not allowing like the lifestyle is not hardening joints and muscles and bones. Yeah. Right. You know, connective tissue, ligaments aren't strong. It's not just we're too easy on them, or we don't let them climb on things because they might get hurt, Lord forbid. And there is that, but in general, the sedentary lifestyle of Americans, kids are they're they break easy. Yeah. Where, you know, when when you were a kid, you climbed so many things that the ligaments in your fingers, wrists, elbows, if you broke a bone, it was usually a bone because your connective tissue was strong enough that the bone couldn't withstand what you're putting it through. Where now kids are like dislocating stuff and having soft tissue injuries. Yeah. And it's because they're just extremely sedentary. It is interesting. And so when we you so back to where we're gonna do this pig thing, I said, Austin, I don't know how this will go. You know, it's a different breed of teenager now. And and we're in this world, like I'm committed to you, you're gonna reach the world that you got. Yeah. That's right. And I believe that there will always be exceptions to the societal rule. And I believe a lot of the kids that come to Snowbird are the exceptions. We see we see the the best of the best of the generation, but generate generationally as a whole, there's this softening that's occurred. So um we had to he he drilled into it, and what we had to come up with is only our staff can do the pig wrestling, which is crazy because for years it was so fun throwing three or four suburban kids in the pen and saying, chase that live, chase that wild animal, you know, because those pigs back then were wild. Yeah, we would trap them, they were wild hogs. And and we would we would do some dental work on them so their tusks couldn't do any damage, and then we would let kids chase them around.

SPEAKER_06 14:32

My daughter loved the episode that you did with your brother and your cousin about the early days of snowboard. She's like, they did. I was like, yeah. I was like, some of that had stopped by the time I came, but like a lot of it was still a lot of it was still happening in OCD. It's funny, like that's thinking about Paul saying, like, I'll become all things to all people, so that by any means I might reach some. It's like, yeah, but do we have to become soft to reach a soft generation? But like there's a lot, there's a little bit of it, but like, but also let's call like I love that's one of the things I love about snowbirds, like you I haven't heard you rail on the generation, you know, like the new generations. Like you love teenagers, you love students, and so you find the good. I, you know, Dave Ramsey does the same thing. It's like, no, there's there's good in these generations, like there's uh, but you're also calling them to biblic. There's biblical standards and biblical things that that don't change. The generations may look a little different, they may be softer. And the, you know, and the world isn't requiring the hardness that it did several years ago physically, but it's also missing it, you know what I mean? Like it starts to show up, like, you know, and there's voices that call that out, you know. But you listen to uh Jordan Peterson and guys that are saying, like, hey, this you take this away from boys, like you get a bat, you get a society that crumbles. Like it's that's right.

SPEAKER_04 15:43

Yeah. In 12 Rules for Life, he he has that one whole chapter where he talks about if you continue to emasculate and feminize a generation of boys, you'll end up with two obscene versions of manhood. The soft, predominantly homosexual version or the rogue, abusive,

Teaching Strength Without Losing Love

SPEAKER_04 16:05

out of control version. Yep. And so it's critical that we get this right. Yeah. We have to teach boys what what manhood looks like. We have to teach girls what is expected of men. Yep. And vice and and and vice versa. We got to teach girls what God expects from women and and teach clear defined gender roles and distinctions, and then and then force and push both to do hard things. But I um I can remember like my daughter Laylee, who's an adult now, and I remember she was like 10 years old. And I we she would just go do anything I wanted to go, go jump off of anything, go jump into anything where it's like January snow, and I said, I'm gonna go jump in the river. She said, I want to go. And I'm like, okay, the dude that's gonna be married to that girl, you better be squared away. It ain't gonna go good, you know. And and so I would say of girls, raise, we got to raise a generation of young women that are gonna expect and demand that men be what God's called them to be.

SPEAKER_05 17:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:10

And that's man, it's so important. And the one of the things I love about the the arena that Snubbard operates in is we're able to really speak that into young men's lives. And I think part of why we've seen the growth we've seen since the woke revolution of the last 10 years, like we took off in 2020 when wokeism was just exploding. Yeah, we spoke out against things, we spoke out for things, but we articulated it well. We did it unapologetically, and that appealed to young men. Yeah, you know, because there's something hardwired into the heart and brain of a man that he wants that, you know, and he wants to be challenged, he wants to be pushed, and he wants to do hard stuff. And and um there was this there's this old story, I've heard it a hundred times. I'm listening to uh the Tom Hanks podcast on World War II right now. Okay, haven't heard of that? Phenomenal. Really? It's incredible. I I've I'm through like seven episodes, and it sounds it's it listens like you're watching a documentary. Okay. It starts with the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, and it goes through the war. But it's, you know, the World War II generation is such a unique generation. But I just listened, yesterday I was on the mower and I listened to uh um this the episode was on Guadalcanal, which I didn't know much about, but it was early in the war. It was uh it was an island in the South Pacific that we needed to be able to maintain air and sea power, and but the Japanese needed it for the same reason. So we're fighting over this little island, and we lost like 2,500 dudes, and they're all 19 and 20 years old, and they're they're dug into the trenches on this island for 72 days or something at this point in the story that I'm listening to, and they're out of food, they've got dysentery, malaria, and they're just fighting. They're just fighting, and it don't help to complain because there's nobody there to listen. And Japanese are gonna come keep getting off these boats and coming up this beach, and you just keep fighting or you're gonna die. And I'm like, the toughness of two generations ago, we're not that far removed to say, oh, we're just soft. No, our like our people that we come from are some of the toughest people in history, but they're also the people that built the greatest country in the history of the world. And I say that unapologetically, like we're gonna be fine. We just need men to be men, boys to grow into that, and girls to to grow into the women God wants to be.

SPEAKER_06 19:38

And men needs to be, and and what men, men needing to be men, that manhood needs to be defined. Because if not, because there's a lot of guys, you know, you talked about this a couple episodes, you know, ago with biblical masculinity around there, there's there's there's a craving for young men to you know to be discipled, to be, that's why, you know, that's why Jocko and you know, um all of these guys are getting a platform because there's a you know, I guess a market for it like that. Because there's there's a craving. And so, and most of their stuff is not unhealthy, but it's not biblical. But then there's guys, you know, I don't know, that's in there. So if it's not molded and shaped and disciplined, uh, it's it doesn't go away. The that that that energy, that aggression, it's in, it's in, you know, it's in young men, whether we like it or not, whether you like it or not, whoever, you know, but so yeah, learning to channel it, learning to redeem it, uh, and point it in the right direction, it's it's good for society, but it has to be defined. Because a lot of people are saying different things about what it means for men to be men, and and that, you know, some people shut off from the conversation right there because they've heard that defined as whatever.

SPEAKER_04 20:52

And you know, biblically there's there's been the I think two thoughts. There's been a war on masculinity and but a war on boys and men that started coming out of the the sixties. The civil rights movement was kind of run in parallel to that whole hippie free love movement. And I think when we tend to think of the 60s now, we think, at least I think more of the civil rights movement, but subsequent, immediately subsequent and sort of adjacent to that was the rise of modern liberalism that turned into progressivism. And if you study like sociologic sociologically, if you look at what came out of the late 60s, it was the rise of feminism, the installation of Roe v. Wade, and the war on boys started in the 70s. And there was there was this time where boys were celebrated for being boys, there was an expectation of it, but then they started being punished just for doing boy things. And now we see we're we're a generation downstream from that, and we see the effects of it. I mean, something is simple. As when I was in school, if you got in a fight, when I was in elementary school and into junior high middle school, if you got in a fight, there would be a little, you know, like an investigation and what caused it, why did it happen? You might get some detention, you might get in school suspension, whatever, but whatever. And then I remember in high school, they instituted this thing. If you get caught fighting at school, you're expelled. Expelled? Expelled. Dang. And it was like got pushed back, and then it was this debate at the school board level, parents, and so they walked it back to where, okay, first offense is like three days of out-of-school suspension. That was more what I had. Yeah. Yep. And then, but then eventually they they started bringing SROs. I never went to school with cops at school with SROs, but then it became like an arresting offense in certain school, you know. And I bring that up to say, I'm not saying we should condone fighting, but let me tell you something. Boys are gonna fight, and ain't nothing wrong with that. Ain't nothing wrong with it. A couple 12, 14-year-old boys just duking it out over something. They're learning how to deal with conflict. If you, as a woman that's listening to this, can't understand that God built men to fight, we're built for that. And conflict resolution, you got to learn it. And one of the best things that can happen for young boys is that they tussle and grapple and wrestle and punch and you know, but it doesn't mean we need to teach them to just love and be violent. Right. But we're teaching them conflict resolution. And if you take that away and start to punish them, like it's a teaching, it's an opportunity to teach them. Doesn't mean we need to condone that they deal with all of their conflict by fighting. That's not what I'm saying. But what they're doing is trying to figure out how to deal with conflict. And for a kid like me, I knew one way to deal with conflict, and it was to fight. I didn't know how to communicate, articulate, say words that would that would de-escalate. I didn't know how that worked. And what we've done is we've removed the ability to deal with conflict, conflict resolution, and we see in the last eight years what that's turned into in the way people go online and people say things and do because what you want is a man that's capable of aggression, right?

SPEAKER_06 24:21

But not while like not uninhibitedly aggressive, right? Right. But you you want a man that is capable of violence when it when it's needed for protection or whatever, but then that should be getting, you know, uh matured, like the maturity level of that conflict resolution should be growing. But for young boys, yeah, like my wife, we've got boxing gloves at our house, our boys get in. Like, she's like, all right, go outside, put the gloves on and go outside and go to the living room. I'm tired of y'all, like just working out deal with it, you know. But like, yeah, if they're still doing that at 20, like we got a problem. That's not that's not that's not great. But like, but there's also something healthy about a young man knowing he can defend himself and his family because he's thrown a p a punch and taken a punch. And if he hasn't, there's an insecurity that is is just there. Like I I experienced, like I was, my dad wasn't around, and so like I didn't have that. I was a you know, only child, and so I I didn't have that. So I got to be an older teenager. I was always a big kid and uh pretty good with words, so I could talk myself out of like you know, most fights. But I got to be like 17 and I was like, I need to know if I could fight, you know. So like so like that meant me and me and some buddies getting boxing gloves and just you know, just going at it. Just because like I needed to I needed to know that I could. And I think when that again, if that just means you're just picking fights in the street, like, all right, that's not what we're that's that's the difference. That's not what we're calling them into. But like there's there's something that that is needed in a man to know that he has what it takes. Um and if that's not there, then you get you get insecurity that actually comes out even more dangerous way. That's ultimately more dangerous. You you think you're you think you're protecting the world or culture or whatever from uh violence and danger when you're calling out these parts of masculinity, but in reality you're just you're just forcing it into the shadows in a in an even more horrific and harmful and systemic and demonic. Like, you know what I mean? Like that that that aggression that that doesn't go away. It just need it needs to be um it doesn't go away if you change the laws and change the dislike that's right. It's it's gonna, you know, that's why that's why whatever I'm not a big video gamer, neither are my kids, but like look at the video games young men play. Fighting game. Yeah. They want to fight. They wanna they want to they want to go to war.

SPEAKER_04 26:48

Yeah. Hey uh I I want to say one thing and then I want to circle back to where I think scripturally we root all this, which is 1 Corinthians 16. Let everything you do be done in love. Act like a man, be strong. What you do needs to be done in love. But uh Tuck, um he's living you

How Fatherlessness Shapes A Culture

SPEAKER_04 27:10

know in South Florida and playing football. Well, years ago, one of the reasons he went, he made the decision to go where to Florida Atlantic is because there's uh West Palm, Fort Lauderdale, mainly Fort Lauderdale is kind of like a hotbed for professional training. Okay, sure. Uh Fight World, baseball, football. Yep. So there's all these facilities down there. House of Athlete is one of them. Uh one called XO's, one called um Um XPE Sports. And you go to these places and you literally you can just walk in off the street, and there's, oh, those two guys were in the Super Bowl this year. There's the UFC middleweight champ. Right. There's, I mean, it's just professional athletes, and it's like the culture down there. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. Well, we were down there. I went with him, he was training there a few years ago. And they was training with a group of NFL guys and a few D1 guys, and in walks Vitor Belford, the former UFC champ. And we hit it off, struck up a conversation. Um, one of the coaches there says, Hey Vitor, can we? I want you, I want you to meet the Holloways. He introduced, he's like, This guy's a pastor. And Vitor's a real outspoken believer. So we hit it off. Well, Tuck is now, right now, this summer, Tuck trains with Vitor one or two days a week in the cage. And he's like, Man, I don't know how I don't know when football's gonna end, but when it's over, I'm gonna fight. Is he? Oh, yeah. He's like, I'm gonna fight. So that's pretty exciting. But um, so he's been he'd been just training at his gym. But that I think there's several guiding biblical principles for this. And then I want to get into the content, the topic rather of the day. That because all this ties into that. Yeah. Because the epidemic that we're facing um of fatherless homes, sure, all is tied back to this. Sure. They don't know what to fight for, they fight for their wrong thing, or they don't fight, or they run away. You know, men either abdicate responsibility, abandon responsibility, abuse, or they make excuses. And so Genesis 2, 15, 16, God says to Adam, the Lord God put the man in the garden to work and keep, provide and protect. Man's gotta provide, he's gotta be a provider, he's got to be a protector. If you're not, you're going to be unfulfilled. God built you, wired you. As much as a woman is built for nurturing, she can still be a fighter. A man can be a nurturer. But what we're hardwired for, our default mechanism is to fight and protect and provide and rescue. And so God gives that instruction to the man. Then you come on down, you you come downstream through redemptive history, you get to Deuteronomy, God is instructing the kings. Now, this is before there's any kings in Israel, but he's writing to Moses. When a king comes into power, there's three things he needs to do. He needs to not he know he needs to not build up horses for himself, not take multiple wives, and he needs to keep a copy of the scripture and read it daily. So I'm like, okay, that's actually that's good for kings, but it's also good for men. Sure. Like, don't don't accumulate, don't become obsessed with material, possession, collection of wealth, whatever. Be faithful to your wife and love the word of God. That's a pretty good simplify it. Let's keep it simple. And then you come on downstream some more, and you get to Paul's words in to the Corinthians, in both in 1 Corinthians 15 and in 16. The last verse of 1 Corinthians 15, he says, Therefore, brothers, be immovable, be steadfast, always abound in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. And you come on down 12 more verses, 13 more verses, and he says, Stand firm, be strong, act like men. Let everything that you do be done in love. We've got in that the framework for how to be a man. Love, protect, fight, compassion, do the work of the Lord, which is the spread of the gospel, the raising up of a generation. Like men have a very clear path forward to be who God's called us to be. Don't pursue and chase the things of the world. Love what God's given us in terms of responsibility, embrace it. When men get off the rails, they do one of those four things. They either abdicate responsibility, they abandon their responsibility, they abuse who God's entrusted them with, or they avoid. They avoid how many dudes come home, they avoid the conflict. They go to the shop, turn wrenches on their Harley, you know, or crack a beer and watch their shop TV, ESPN, whatever. Like avoid. What we're left with now is we are living in the most affluent culture and society in history, but also the most fatherless. Yep. And as a result, there's a call for men to not just do these things with their own sons and daughters that God's given them by marriage or by birth, but to enter into the societal gap and do what we've got to do to be what God's called us to be in this area or this arena of fatherlessness. Yep. And I think for you, your journey started. I'd like to go back because and I'd like I'd like to talk about just briefly, you you already mentioned this, but I was gonna ask you because I know your story. But single mom, only child, no real relationship with your dad. Yep. And that really influenced, obviously, sure, what kind of a young man, what kind of experience you had growing up. Yeah. But it's also been very motivating for you rather than disable you as a husband and father. What I've watched in your life is it's motivated you to become the man that God would have you to be because you know what it's like to not have that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:53

Yeah, it pretty quickly became a part of my, you know, my testimony. Pretty like getting saved as a you know, early teen, but and then late into teen years, starting to ask those questions and figuring out like, oh man, like I, yeah, I just didn't know my dad. Uh I had a stepdad for 10 years, but he was real passive, didn't really know what to do with me. I just, we weren't close. Um, yeah, so you get to be you're a man about to leave the house, you start asking the questions like, who am I? Do I have what it takes? Whatever. And so, so for me, following the Lord got quickly tied to that, and like him, you know, healing that father wound and with some resources and some books. And and then some young men. I just like found some young men are like, hey, let's like kind of in a similar boat, like let's search the scriptures, let's read some books, whatever. And so, so yeah, that was always been a part of my my story, my testimony is the Lord redeeming that, being a father for me. And that that sounds real, you know, I don't know. It's it's it's not real tangible or material because but but giving me uh the scriptures, but then giving me men, giving me, you know, I think as a young man, I always like I hoped I'd find that one mentor that could be that all in all, or whatever, and you know, probably just looking for a dad, you know. Yeah. And that never happened. But what but what he did give me was like a man here that taught me how to like work on my house, right? And a man here that taught me how to like work on my car a little bit. And then, you know, it's like I didn't necessarily want to be who they were as a husband. Not that they were terrible, it's just like I would they weren't inspiring or whatever. But then, you know, and then you know, that was one of the things that I love being out here. It's like there was a culture of masculinity. I'm like, all right, like these are men, like these are men that are they're not, they're not soft, but they're not they're not um just macho obnoxious, aggressive for the whatever. It's like, oh, there's there's a there's a archetype for like what it what it can look like to follow, uh follow the Lord and be a man. Anyway, so yeah, um, and then yeah, becoming a dad was like uh I was eager to be eager to be what I didn't have. And uh and so yeah, it absolutely motivated me. I was ready to raise boys, yeah. And then I had three girls, bam, bam, bam. That's all I could, it's all I could make. Uh so uh which was ended up being awesome. You know, it wasn't what I you know, my wife and I were both we were in we were in youth ministry when we first got together and married, and so man, junior high girls are a lot.

SPEAKER_04 35:30

A lot.

SPEAKER_06 35:31

And so we were like, uh, man, we'll have as many boys as we could afford, but this second we have a second girl, we'll be we're gonna be done because that's just too much drama. And then obviously the Lord was like, boom, boom, boom, one, two, three girls. And so um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:45

Um and she comes, she's uh a sister among all sisters, like a girl, all girls in her family, or she got a brother.

SPEAKER_06 35:52

She got an older brother and then she's a middle, and then she got a sister. Okay, I don't know why I thought she was older. She, yeah, she just um she preferred to hang out with a brother and and his friends rather than girls. She just did she didn't do the girl, the drama stuff. Like she just never has, and still doesn't. Like she still is just like I can't, I can't.

SPEAKER_04 36:09

She's a very cool girl, cool mom. So walk me through now

Jordan’s Story From Pastor To Foster Dad

SPEAKER_04 36:13

your family, walk me through uh the family dynamic ages, biological kids, other, you know.

SPEAKER_06 36:20

Yes, we had those three girls biologically. That's they're 15, 13, and 11. So our two old the 15 and 13-year-old are here for camp this week. And then um 11-year-old, and then we got you know, got into foster care, um, not necessarily to adopt, like we weren't against it, but we just wanted to help, you know, and reconcile families if we could and help kiddos when they needed it. Um and we had a few placements, but uh a couple of them, uh a couple baby boys came to us different times, but you know, their their case ended up going to uh to adoption. And so we adopted two boys through through foster care. So they're uh seven and six.

SPEAKER_04 37:00

Um they're savages.

SPEAKER_06 37:01

Yeah, they're 15 months apart. The younger ones bigger than the older one, so they look like twins and just from a age standpoint, and yeah, they're just it's different, man. It's fun, like it's you know, that's what we wanted was you know, boys were looking forward to it. But then we raised these girls and they, you know, they play constructively. Oh, yeah. You know, they like build stuff, dolls, or whatever. And boys, it's just destructive, yeah. Our girls were looking at, they were looking at videos from when they were little and they were seeing our house, and like they were like, our house used to be like decorated and like clean. Like, yeah, this was before your brothers came along. Like, we ain't we're not hanging anything on the wall right now. Like, that's just we're maybe we're about to get back into that season, but man, when they're two through five, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:41

It's just it is it is funny. It's uh having raced both the early years, the girls are so much easier. Yeah. But there's a there is a switch where when they hit the teenage years, it becomes very difficult to be a girl dad.

SPEAKER_06 37:57

I saw this dude on YouTube or something the other day talking about being a girl dad is a lot like arriving at a uh in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, and all of a sudden the people make you their their their king or their president, and they're coming to you with all this. He's like, and every day they just bring you all this stuff, and you don't really understand what they're saying, or sometimes you do understand, or they bring you all their stuff to solve, or whatever. He's like, and some you know you don't really understand, or sometimes you do understand, you don't really think there's a problem at all, but they do, and so you don't really know what to do. And um and so true, yeah. And he's like, and it's just but they want you to solve all the problems, and he's like, Yeah, that's kind of what it's like being a girl dad, and uh and they still seem pretty grateful for you most of the time, but then so and he was like, So I recommend it, and if you figure it out, let the rest of us know.

SPEAKER_05 38:41

Let me know.

SPEAKER_06 38:42

Yeah, no, I mean they're great, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:43

And it's but the thing too is when boys, boys are crazy and wild, and then but when they hit the teenage years, they're still crazy and wild if you do it right. They're still sure boys, but they're pretty simple, sure. There's no complexity, there's not a lot there, not a lot to figure out, yeah. There's I call it fog, not a lot happening. From about 13 to 18, they're just in this fog. It's the fog of I don't know if it's testosterone starting to spin up and ramp up. I don't know. It reminds me of, you know, I'm a big hunter and it reminds me of the rut, the rut with a young buck. And you're like, why is that buck walking down the middle of the hardtop? The paved, I've not seen him ever before. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I'm watching this six-point buck who's an uh an adolescent buck, and he's walking down the middle of the highway.

SPEAKER_06 39:30

Two years ago, I watched the same buck make circles around me the whole season. What is he doing? And then occasionally I would see a bigger buck, and he and he'd be on it, but then that younger one's just like trying to find the same trail and even makes like a 50-yard circle around me. Yeah, it's a teenage boy. Like he's not smart. He's like, I know, I know I'm supposed to care about this smell. This means something. Where's she at?

SPEAKER_05 39:49

You know, like it's just yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:51

But um, it is fun and it is gonna cost you some money to raise boys, um, fixing things, repairing things, restoring things. Um, but in the end, it's all worth it. Um so I'd like to, I would like, you know, we have fostered uh extensively, um, obviously adopted. And I don't share a lot of that on here just because my kids are still in that age, like I don't want to be careful that they don't feel like, oh my dad's gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_06 40:21

You don't want to define their identity for them with people out. Yep, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_04 40:24

So which is I do like to bring people on and talk principles and and application and and and help people feel empowered to get involved and do something about it. You know, I think that can be really helpful. So um after you were a student pastor, you know, when we had you when I had you on here um several years ago, uh you came on and and we talked about that the follow Mars Hill podcast because you ended up going to do the Acts 29 thing you planted.

SPEAKER_06 40:51

I helped plant a church and then I took the complete pastor when we when we planted it, but I took it over, took that over, brought them to be strong, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:59

Um pastored them for seven years, yeah. But you're not doing it anymore.

What The Restore Network Does

SPEAKER_06 41:03

I'm not. Yeah. I'm working with a bunch of churches to do uh foster care ministry, so to call the local church into this, it's a crisis pretty much everywhere. Illinois is exceptionally bad, which is where we're at. And so uh yeah, so calling calling churches into this space, the community at large, but we focus on, you know, uh churches. Um work with uh a nonprofit called nonprofit called the Restore Network that um we're community gods people recruiting and supporting foster families while advocating for a better system for kids. And um really the way I say it is like we're here to help the local church embody James 127 in their local community. Uh and that started for me because we were I was confronted by the need in our community. Like uh I we did have a heart for the the kid that didn't have a home. And so Riley and I thought we would raise our own kids and then we would adopt some older kids that were, you know, waiting and you know, we're a little tougher to find homes. That was our that was our plan. So we always thought we would adopt uh or have kids in our home that weren't ours biologically, but we thought we'd raise our own first. Um but yeah, I was pastoring. And when I took over this church, I was trying to find ways for like I wanted us to be involved in our community in meaningful relational ways. I didn't want to just do like big events and blow, you know, like things that blow through, whatever. And we feel better for the day and we've maybe blessed somebody, but like then we just kind of go back to our. I wanted to find ways to like get us involved relationally. And so I was just talking to whoever I I would I could talk to about, you know, school officials, cops, whatever, uh, city officials about the the brokenness of our community. And and that led to a lady in our church who was a CASA volunteer, court-appointed special advocate, coming and sharing about the need, like the crisis of foster care in my community. You hear these things and it sounds like it's out there, you know, it's orphanages around the world, and and it it sounds pretty disconnected because it's like these big numbers or whatever. And and so most people don't know that it's right in the shadows of our own community, like it's under our noses. And that was what rattled me. Like I didn't know, like I was a 30-year-old pastor, like I was pretty naive. Like I knew people that fostered, but I just naively assumed that all right, there's people who want to foster and there's kids who need homes, and that's all going good. Um, and so when she told me stories about kids in my own community being pulled out of their home because it wasn't safe there, and then sitting in agency offices for hours, days, and sometimes longer, um, because they couldn't find homes. Sitting at the office. At the agency office. One store in particular, she told me there's a sibling set of five kids, uh, not super old, you know, probably young teens down. Um, and she was at the office with them, and she had her husband bring them happy meals, and she's sitting there waiting with them while the caseworkers are trying to find homes, which in most cases is just going down a call list of licensed foster families, just saying, Hey, I've got these kids, can you take them? And they say, Yes or no, and then they called the next person. And that went on for hours. And um, and then this caseworker came out and was exhausted and just looked at Vicky and knowing that she was a Christian said, like, is there anyone in your church that we could call to take these kids? And uh and Vicki had to say no because most of us just anyway, so I didn't know. Like that was like a slap in the face moment for me. I'm like, that's here, and I was like, surely that that's like that was an exception, right? And she was just like, no, like she gave me one of those, like, oh no, sweetie, like this is all the time. I'm like, in our community, and she was like, Yeah. I was like, well, that that's not okay. Like, we gotta like we can't be the people of God. Like, we're Bible Bell, like from Illinois, but we talked about earlier, like we're more southern culture, like we're very southern Illinois. So, like, there's churches, churches on every corner, like almost literally. Like, this can't be, these two things can't happen in the same community and and us be okay with it. So I was like, all right, we gotta do something. I don't know what, I don't know what it is, we have to do something. Personally, I was like, all right, that's a conversation for Riley and I right now. Like, what all right, we thought we were gonna wait until we raised it. All right, we'll do we'll become foster parents right now. But then also corporately as a church, like, what do we do? So yeah, I uh I had a friend that was in the the St. Louis, the Metro East area of St. Louis, and uh I knew they were doing something with foster care with their church, and so I called him. I was like, what, dude, I just found out there's a crisis in our community. What are we what are we supposed to do? And so he pointed me to the Restore Network, which was a super young uh nonprofit organization that had been started by a single church and was partnering with the agencies in their community really well, and had raised up some foster parents in that church, and then the agency came back to them and said, Hey, can you get us some more of them? And they were like, I think we're kind of maxed out. They had like 11 families out of a church of like 200 that fostered, which is significant. And so that that led it to becoming a network of multiple churches and a nonprofit. And so at that point, it was just a couple counties, and so I was like, Well, we need that. Like, we're gonna do something. So if they're willing to come down here, like, can we can we start a you know an office or branch down here? So that's what we did. We were partner church for a while. My rather I became licensed foster parents and um yeah, I mean, we got to, you know, see a beautiful reunification with our first first kiddo was awesome. We got the love on the bio mama and build a relationship with her and you know, hand her kid back on a court day and joyful tears and still get invites to birthday parties and they show up at church and like great, you know, story. Um had a couple other short-term placements, but then our boy, you know, pretty quickly our boys came to us as uh pretty early placements, and they their their cases ended up needing uh adoption. And so so yeah, Riley worked for for this org for a while, and um and and then I was on the board and just you were still pastoring. Yes, but it man, it was just like it the Lord like gripped my heart for this, and so I became really passionate about mobilizing the church to step into this. Like I'm just I just wired in such a way, like if we see, if you see something, like I just can't not just do it. I can't watch the news much because I can't do anything about most of what they're talking about. You know what I mean? Like I'm next to that kind of guy. Like, yeah, I gotta kind of keep a my default will be to be uninformed. And there'll be times where I'm like, I should probably have known that. And and so for me, once I'm like confronted with unreached people groups or like that for me, those were very similar things. Like unreached people groups, I had a similar moment of like, this is not okay. Like that's a church, like it's the same thing. Me or the you know, and I felt anyway, so it's very similar for me. Like, if this is a reality, we gotta we gotta do something. And so, so yeah, I've been a part of the organization for a while, and my heart was growing to want to do more uh for the the restore network. And my long my plan was to like hand it off. It's like, man, I'll see if I can raise up some some other guys to take over some of the ministry at the church, and I'll at the time I was doing you know, 50 hours for the church and 10 hours for restore. Uh and I was like, let me see if I can flip that over time where I can go 30, 30, 40 hours for restore and and still be involved at the church. And so I was working on that. And uh, and then our executive, our founder and executive director had to resign. And so the board asked me to step in sooner. And so in 2023, I I left, left my church as pastor, and I've been doing this full time, which is still still ministry. It's different. I'm working with a bunch of partner churches to to, you know, we lead a team of uh staff that walk alongside foster families. You is all are all those churches in Illinois or you work outside of we're only in Illinois as of now. Yeah, we're very intentional. Part of like changing the culture is like, man, we got to know the laws and the and the intricacies within the system. Uh and it's very different state to state. And so for us right now, we are we are still we're not we're not saying never, but for us, we're in Illinois exclusively for now.

SPEAKER_04 49:06

I looked up, I wanna I want to throw some numbers

The Numbers Behind The Placement Crisis

SPEAKER_04 49:10

out. Um this is North Carolina, because we're involved with DSS in North Carolina, obviously. Um our church, I I would like to talk a little bit about what our church does and get your I just want to get your feedback on it. Um okay, in in North Carolina right now, listen to this, JB, this is crazy. Okay. The uh the most recent number I found statewide in foster care, in the custody of the state, Department of Social Services, 15,870 kids. Okay. 15,870 kids. Almost identical to Illinois, just under 16,000 in Illinois. Active Christian evangelical churches, 16,200. We have 400 more churches than we have foster kids. Yep. If every church would commit to getting a placement for one kid, yeah, we'd have no need. And they would all be in Christian evangelical loving homes with a church supporting them. So my question to our listeners this is crazy. To our listeners, so like in our county right here, Cherokee County. So here, let me let me give Haywood County. My um, I cut this off when I when I uh screenshotted this, so I can't see Cherokee County. Yeah, Cherokee County's 82. We have 82 kids in our county. Okay, our county's small numerically. We're a rural county, we're small. Haywood County, the county I grew up in. Heywood, listen, listen up, Haywood County people. 176 kids in foster care. Yep. The problem is there's not, I guarantee you there's not 176 families doing anything about it.

SPEAKER_06 50:54

Most of them are probably in relative placements, fictive kin or relative placements. In Illinois, I don't know if y'all's stats are the same. In Illinois, those stats only represent the kids that are placed into homes in that county. So that doesn't represent kids that might be from this county or that county that got placed elsewhere because there wasn't enough homes, which happens all the time in the country. It happens a lot. And so, yeah, so sometimes people be like, oh, there's only 40 kids in my county. Well, that's that's only 40 kids that were placed into a home in your county.

SPEAKER_04 51:22

In that county.

SPEAKER_06 51:23

Very often kids that are your kids, but they got placed two, three, four hours away. Because that's the best case scenario when they can't find placement for a kid. The best case scenario is that they just broaden the geographic search and put them further away. That's not ideal for a number of reasons, but that's the best case scenario because the alternatives are they're staying in agency offices, you know, hospitals, mental institutions. Some states put them in detention centers. No criminal, no criminal record, no criminal need. Well, they gotta put them somewhere, gotta sleep them and feed them. I think there's about 13 states that do that. Wow. Um so yeah, it it's uh, you know, the alternative. If they don't find homes, it's not like some it. I think this huge part of the problem. Somebody assumes everybody assumes somebody else is doing it.

SPEAKER_04 52:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 52:08

And it's just they're just not. But the nature of foster care is that this stuff doesn't make the news. We can't put their stories and their faces out there the way that humane society shelters do about animals and whatever. Like, we can't, and even like you're talking about the kids that have been in your home, like you have to honor their story. It's good and right, but that makes it challenging for people to know uh to know the actual need, because if we could tell you their stories, if you could parade those kids through a church or fill a church up, I always use that side a lot when I'm talking to churches of like this how many kids are in your county and care. Imagine I brought them in. Wow, you know, if we could do that, you could see them, you could hear their stories, you'd be gripped. Yeah. But but we we can't, and so it just happens in the shadows, and most people just don't they don't know about it, like me. They're just and some people do know about it and you don't know what to do, and that's real, and that's part of what our org does is try to and that's part of what I need.

SPEAKER_04 53:07

I want to talk about here. We we had to take a break there because it started storming and we couldn't hear each other. And I don't know if y'all were hearing that, but um, but getting back to where we left off, I you had said something about making the need known. You know, if if you could go in front of a church and say we could fill this church, we could literally fill this church with people that that need a home, need a provider, provision, need protection, need advocacy. Yep. Because we get into that, being a guardian adumer or being an advocate. And here's what freaks me out.

Go Send Or Disobey

SPEAKER_04 53:47

This scares me about the people that profess to be Jesus followers. Here's what freaks me out is that people are gonna listen to this episode, and then when they're done, they're gonna move on to Rogan or ESPN and the next their true crime podcast or whatever, and never give it a second thought. There's a scene in the movie Hotel Rwanda where if you're familiar with the Rwandan genocide, um then you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, you should go read up about that a little bit. It's a it's a crazy story. Happened in 1994 or five, mid-90s, where two tribes, the Hutus and Tutsis, one tribe tried to eradicate the other tribe. And neighbors, friends, coworkers, it just kind of overnight went crazy. And there's a point, I don't forget how many millions were killed, but there's a point where this guy in the movie, he's he's talking to a journalist and he says, You've got to put this on the six o'clock news. If you show these pictures, show these images, show the despair. If Americans will see this, they'll realize how what a problem we have and they'll help they'll want to help. And this news correspondent says, unfortunately, they'll look at it, they'll see it, they'll be stirred momentarily, and then they'll go back to their supper and not give it another thought. It freaks me out to think that a Christian would listen to this and go, oh, 82 kids in foster care in need of a placement in Cherokee County, North Carolina, 200 and whatever, 100 and whatever in Haywood County, North Carolina, and then you can just go right down the those are the two counties close to me because they're my two home counties. Bunkham County was close to 300. That people will listen to this that live in those counties or live in North Carolina or live in Illinois and go, man, that's crazy, and do nothing about it. I'm telling you, if you're listening to this and and you are a professing Christ follower who has been redeemed, adopted, that's right, saved by God's grace, you have a responsibility. And you you were talking when we went on break there about the Piper quote on missions and how you apply it. I think that's a good approach.

SPEAKER_06 56:07

Yeah, I've always loved John Piper talking about unreached people groups, is not just the responsibility of the four of the foreign missionaries that we send and pray for, but like that's the responsibility of the church is to reach them with the gospel. And so each one of us are either gonna be the goer or we're gonna help send by support, prayer, encouragement, you know, short-term trips, money, all those things, or we'll disobey. So we either go, you send, or you disobey. And and I and I use the same language when talking to churches about caring for the vulnerable. Whatever the vulnerable is, like, you know, our thing is we don't call them orphans in the states because we have a foster care system, which is a good thing, but it's still a vulnerable child. Like that's what's being spoken of there in in James and other parts of the you know, the scriptures. And so it's not just for you know, the people that are called to foster care. I don't even like that language. Like, I don't I because I think it usually is given as an out. People say, oh, well, they're they're they're called to that. That's so good. I'm so glad they're called to that, or whatever. And so they look at people like us that have done it, and they'll I think sometimes they think it's easy because we had this, like it's it's not a I don't really think it's a special calling. I think it's just a it's a it's an obedience. I think it's following Jesus requires that you see the world that you you're living in in a in a missional way.

SPEAKER_04 57:28

Like I would I would say it's a calling for the church. Yeah, it's a calling for all Christians. And you as a Christian right now, you either say yes or no. Yeah. There's not a I'm not called to that. We have another quote up on the wall in the coupe. It says, Why wait for a call when you've been given a command? Yeah, dude. We have been given clear biblical commands to care for the vulnerable. And if you're not taking part in that, you are living in disobedience. You're saying no to the one who saved you. You're saying no to the one who says, I am angered when people do not care for the vulnerable. That's right. I mean, it it there are certain things that break the heart of God. There are the there are things that stir the Lord to anger, righteous anger, and not caring for the vulnerable of our society, widows and and and orphans and children that are in compromise situations. You're not doing anything about that.

SPEAKER_06 58:22

This is what James, like the book of like James 127 is a flagship verse for any any of social justice work. Like I get it. And it everybody expects me to quote it and preach. I get it, because it's you know, pure religion, you know, undefiled religion, whatever your your translation says is that that cares for widows and orphans in their time of need. And like, so I think sometimes people think, oh, that's just a banner verse for us crazy people that are doing, and you're like, oh, we're I'm glad you have that. Like, you know, your varsity team or special forces of Christianity or whatever, like you're gonna go do this thing, and we're glad you have that verse. But no, I it's a A, I think it's a summary of a whole bunch of prophets calling God's people to be God's people. B, you look at that context in James, and it's very much the passion that was coming out in you just then. That's what James is seeing. He's what, 30-ish years removed from the you know, ascension of Jesus, Jesus' half-brother, and he's pastoring the church and he's finding out like how the church members are responding to people in need in their community. And he's going, Whoa, whoa, you somebody needed food and clothes, and y'all just prayed for them? You didn't give them food, you could have given them food and clothes, but you just prayed for them and said, That's my tran, that's my yeah, you know, my paraphrase, obviously, but like I think the essence is is fair. 100%. And he's saying, No, no, no. Like you you don't get to just claim to be a Christian and then not not respond. So this way he goes on, you know, James 127 is there, but chapter two gets into like faithful that works is dead. It and so it's not that you need works to save you, but it's like if if that faith, you know, if your faith did not compel you to respond to those that are needy, in need in your community, then can that faith save you? That faith, right? Like it's not that faith alone can't save you, but like you might need to check your your faith because we were the vulnerable. Like, like, right? Like we were the hopeless. I get it. The kids in foster care, they're not your responsibility. You didn't make the mess. I get it. But Jesus didn't make our mess either. Like, right? Like we were the vulnerable ones. We were the ones, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Um, he didn't have to leave his throne. It like foster care is incarnational work. It's getting into the mess. It's it's it's it's bearing the burdens of the brokenness that's in our community. These kids don't get to choose whether they're there or not, but we can choose whether we'll we'll enter it with them. And so, yeah, yeah, Matthew 25, like it's just Matthew 25 is sobering and I think connected to the to that same sentiment of like and I Matthew 25 is if you don't know it, it's this judgment day parable. Yeah. And it's really sobering. It's scary, it's dramatic.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:00

Yeah, it's scary, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:01:01

It's it is a scary parable. People don't like most of them, you probably never heard a sermon on it, honestly, because it's like it's tough. But it's talking about, man, there's gonna be a ton of people that are arriving, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:14

They're gonna say things like, We cast out demons, we did very spiritual, churchy things. We proclaimed in your name, and we cast out demons, and we did this, and we did that. We were very spiritual. We held worship services where people raised their hands and we went to church and and had events and uh tithes for years, tithes for years.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:36

We gave of our resources, voted a certain way, and yeah, all those things. And she's gonna go, I don't know you.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:42

I've never known you. No, man. Maybe, maybe the conflict you dealt with in your life, maybe the reason you struggled the way you did is because you we were never in a relationship with me.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:51

And they go, Whoa, whoa, whoa. And then he lists off these things that are like they feel like social justice work of like, well, you didn't, you didn't give me water when I was thirsty, you didn't visit me in jail, you didn't give me clothes when I was naked. And they go, Well, when did we when did we pass by you? Like we would have given you something, Jesus. And he goes, Yeah, when you didn't, when you ignored the least of these, you ignored me. But what I love about that passage is the people who on the other side of the people who are being welcomed into the kingdom, they're just as surprised. Wait, what? They're going, wait, when did we do that for you, Jesus? And he goes, Yeah, when you did that for the least of these. And so it's not, you know, back to James saying, like, faith without works is dead. It's not that these people were had their checklist of like these things I had to do to get into heaven. Like, oh, I care for the vulnerable. Jesus, did you see me? I, you know, I I visited, you know, when you were in jail, I did like, no, they were just, they were surprised because they weren't doing it out of some obligation or checklist. They were, they were following Jesus. When you're following Jesus and you've had an when you've had a an experience where you realize you were the vulnerable one and you Jesus drew near to you and saved you, even though you didn't deserve it, then you respond differently to the needs in the world. And it's not out of a look at me, let me post on social media. It's not a virtue signal. It's a I just I'm just loving the people that I'm encountering. And that's what that's what I want to push back against. Like, oh, they're called to this, or they're like, no, I I think that's one of the things I love about snumbers. Y'all don't just do student ministry just to turn, like, not even to turn a profit, but like not just to bring in income and do a thing and build a platform. It's like, I know the ministries that are like flowing out of here, related to foreign missions, related to caring for the vulnerable, pinwheel, all those things that are like, no, we're just and you're like, well, did we have to do those things? We could have just done student ministry. It's like, well, no, no, we're not here to just do student ministry. I'm speaking for it. Seems like you're just here to follow Jesus. And doing student ministry is a big part of that calling. But like, that doesn't mean you go, well, cool. Um, foster care is somebody else's thing or adoption. Like, I know a lot of your team is adopted, and you know, that like, and so I love that because I think that's what it people go, well, I don't think I've been drafted onto that team of Christianity. I'm just more here in the space, and it's like, ah,

Reunification And The Cost Of Love

SPEAKER_06 1:03:57

I don't think it's scary, man.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:59

Yeah. If someone has that mentality, it's it it's scary because according to James 2, uh I go, okay, is this person or according to Matthew 25, is this a person that is potentially unregenerate? It's scary.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:16

You've got to wrestle with that for sure. Yeah, it should be scary. Like you need to reckon with that passage. And honestly, I haven't talked about this a ton. Whatever you you were saying, like this scares the death out of me, or whatever scares me to death. This became hard as a pastor because I was gripped by this and I became passionate about it. And my I won't say everybody, because there's some people that did follow me into this, and I'm grateful for them in our church. But a lot didn't. And a lot did exactly what you just said, where I was giving them clear numbers about our community and clear action steps. I wasn't just laying a burden on it and being like, like I've given clear action steps, but you know, what the Restore Network. That's what that's what I love about Restores. Like, there's something everybody can do to just take a step and the amount of people that would just move on and not make eye contact with me on the way out or whatever. It became really hard. It was it was really it's just vulnerable to put myself out there like and to to be called into this and to not have more of the church and our leaders like follow me. Like that became hard. I don't that's not why I left the pastorate, but like that's hard, man. It was I I I I can't I don't pretend well. I just don't. And so I know you know what I know because I told you. And it it's just hard for me to continue to abide in this space of like surface level things. Like there's people have good reasons not to foster. I don't mean to say that everybody that didn't foster isn't disappointed. And we're gonna get into that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:53

There's some things you can do where you don't necessarily bring a child into your home.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:57

We're gonna get into that. That's not what I'm talking about. It's like I'm not saying. And if you didn't foster, I started judging you. I didn't feel what that's not what I'm saying. It's just like if you didn't move toward this, we don't care.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:05

Yeah. Man, it it is it is very sobering to think what are you spending your four, five, six productive decades on earth pursuing? And how brief, because James also said it's like a vapor. Yep. It's like in the winter when you breathe, you exhale, and you see your breath, it's gone. That's what your life is like. Then you're gonna stand before God in a Matthew 25 situation and give an account for what you did with what you knew. Yep. And what I'm saying how you live. That should change how you live. I'm telling you that in the state of North Carolina, there's 15,000 kids in need of somebody to provide and protect. And it ain't the state.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:49

Yeah, just if the church will do her job, we don't need DST. The state is trying to do what honestly we've been called. We've been given a command to do. Because there's so many layers of this. Because the foster care is actually set up as a ministry of reconciliation. It's not about taking these kids and hiding from them and adopting them. It's actually set up as putting them back in home. Yeah. To reunify them with parents. Like that's actually what these kids need. And a lot of people say, well, I can never foster because I I can never give them back. And so they pull themselves out right there. But no, that's what that it will cost.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:20

That's a job.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:20

For sure, for sure. But also, A, it's what the kids need. They need somebody to attach to them, right? B, um the the opportunity to be a part of reconciling a family should resonate with the church of Jesus Christ. Like, oh, we get to be a safe place for that kid to land while those those parents are mandated to have the opportunity to get the resources they need, which we can also show up there, church, right? In in those the lives of those bioparents. Love on them. And then if they can turn their life around, like we get to give their kids back to them, is that gonna hurt you? Yeah, it's gonna hurt. Does God know about giving up a son for the sake of reconciliation? Yeah, yeah. Like we like we get to we find him there and we experience him there. But so yeah, the state's trying to do reconciliation because every kid, when the case first opens, the goal, the legal goal is to return home, as it should be. And first, like people need to set with that too and go, like, yeah, it should be hard for the state to take our kids. Now they should move a little swifter, they should have a better system of efficiency to not allow that to carry on forever. I get it, that's true. Illinois either the worst or 49th every year at permanency for our kids. Our kids stay in care longer than almost any other state. And that's not okay. But at the same time, we don't want to lower the bar of what it like. We want it should be hard for the state to take our kids. But so yeah, they're trying to do reconciliation and they're not equipped to do it. And they need families that are willing to give that sacrifice and love on this kiddo for a season and in a lot of opportunities, a lot of cases, build a relationship with the bioparent. Not all, right? We've had about half of our placements. We've been able to build relationships with the bioparents, and others, it just hasn't happened because they've been incarcerated or whatever the other things are. But yeah, that's a beautiful opportunity. And then when that's not possible, they need adoptive homes. Okay, that's still resonant. That still should be a thing that the people of God run to. Um, and the state's trying to do it. They they they don't have the resources. Um, they don't have families. They they're throwing more money at it, right? They'll give you more money if it's a harder case, older kid with more medical needs. If you'll keep him in your home, we'll give you more money. That's the only resources they have. They they desperately need the people of God. We've abdicated our responsibility as the church. That's why the system is in the state that it's in. You could fuss about the system. Plenty to fuss about. It's broken, it's messed up. But the primary reason it's broken is it doesn't have enough people. And God's people should be the ones filling up that system. And if we could fill up the system with people, it can have an opportunity to reform. It can have an opportunity to be better. But right now it's in survival mode, it's in crisis. It's it can't reform its policies and procedures, this hierarchy of needs if you don't have enough families. You can't do it. Um, and so the the church has an opportunity to make an impact and make a witness in in their states. Have you seen the movie Sound of Hope? Story of Boston Chop. Yeah. Awesome story, right? Yeah. And one of my favorite parts is that caseworker going, uh, we don't have any more kids waiting. Like the pastor's.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:25

You know that story, JB? The church in Texas. They just decided we're gonna eradicate the need in our county.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:30

I've heard of it. I haven't seen it.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:31

They adopted like 70-something kids out of like 20-something, like 20, 21 homes adopted like 70-something kids out of one church.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:40

Like a small, impoverished church. And and in that movie, I haven't read the book, but in the movie, they go to a a more uh bigger church with you know a little bit more branding or whatever, and that go to them for help, and they're just like, ah, that's it's embarrassing.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:00

Yeah. Sad, scary, embarrassing.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:02

And I think there's something, I think there's a thread there. I think there's a there's a thread there with people, because some of the people that I've seen be responsive to this need are people that are young and already have a bunch of young kids in their house, and they're like, all right, I'll fossil. And honestly, we're like, hey, like, there's a way to do this that we recommend, and like you're not actually who we were targeting. Like, there's people with empty bedrooms that we were actually after. But I think there's some level, you see the people in that movie, like they were impoverished. Like they I think in some ways they were already uh, I don't know. I don't know if they had to give up as much. Like their life was already hard, their life was already sacrificial to care for each other and whatever. And I think, I think when we're so wrapped up in our own comfort and in our own security and in our own pursuit of whatever, we don't have space for this kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:53

And this kind of thing is like kingdom work.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:55

It's kingdom work.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:56

So what you're saying is you don't have space for like Jesus, like following Jesus. Like Romans 12, 12, 1, is Romans 1 through 11 is like the greatest theological treaty, like incredible depth. And then Paul goes, All right, here we go. And now, what what am I asking you to do with this?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:12

Yep, renew your mind and get to work.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:14

Yeah. Don't be conformed to the image of this world, like don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewable of your mind. That by the test by testing, you might discern what is the will of God and it's good, acceptable, and perfect. We love that verse. We love those, but like what does it actually mean? How's that actually changing if you just quote it or put it on a coffee cup? And again, it's about fighting sin. It's not just about fighting, like it, it's it's holistic, but like not being conformed to this world, that like the world has told us this is how we're supposed to live our life. We're supposed to have two and a half kids, comfortable home, you know, whatever level of income.

Comfort Culture And The Call Of Jesus

SPEAKER_06 1:12:54

I don't want kids to be able to play whatever sport they want and all the all these things. And when that's your mindset, yeah, this doesn't make sense. This doesn't make sense. This is gonna disrupt all that. But but like you said, to turn away and to say that's not me, you be careful there. Like, I just just I think you need to reckon with those passages we were talking about earlier because I I think that's the kind of thing when Jesus says you're gonna lose your life to find it, take up your cross daily. I don't what do I don't know what people think that means. Right? Like it's so ethereal and like fluffy, and I say it, but like it's this, man. It's responding to the the needs he puts in front of you and giving of yourself. Like, and again, it's not just this, it's not it's not only this, but it's not less than this, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:48

Um think about how are you spending your money, what are you doing with your time, and the giftings God's given you, the abilities, what are you doing with that to build a kingdom? And I man, I'm telling you one thing that is crazy to me is how many people like I that and it that I know really well, whether it's extended family or friends in my social circle of people that have so much money at their disposal, they could retire right now, but they're freaked out that they're gonna not be able to retire to the lifestyle that they think they want to live. And then to leave enough money to their kids that they can live, continue that lifestyle or or be educated at the highest university, you know, of their choosing. And then, but you know, I know I talked to a guy who's like, Man, I know, I know that guy could just be done working and throw the rest of his, he's got maybe 10 to 20 years of productive life left because he's maybe 60. And I'm like, dude, you got at least a decade here potentially to really make gospel global impact. But he's like, well, I got to do this one more deal, and I got to sell this one more piece of land, and I got to build this house, and I gotta, because why? Because there's a quality of life where you go on two cruises a year and buy mama a new car every four years, and there's this standard of living that you've decided you want to adhere to. And in the meantime, we're not rescuing the perishing. Yeah. And and we're letting this like like the most vulnerable among us just roll into adulthood where now we do have a problem because they're 20, 25, 30, and now they become a problem on society because they perpetuate the cycle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:41

And it's not their fault. These kids are in foster care. It is not their fault. They're true because of sin done to them.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:50

Abuse, neglect, or abandonment. It is not their fault.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:53

Isaiah 53 is speaks to it. God, through the prophet Isaiah, is speaking to Israel as a nation had been given clear instructions on how to deal with the vulnerable among them, and they weren't doing it. Which before I'd like for you to speak to Isaiah 53, I'd like to do two more things. Speak to Isaiah 53, and then I'd like to give people, let's come up for air. I'm gonna try to back off the throttle, take my hand off the throat here. It's heavy, and say, okay, what can you do if maybe you're not gonna adopt or foster, but what can you do to encourage and help? But I want to say this there's a scene in the Bible where there's this widow, and I think I might have mentioned this in a recent episode. I can't remember. But there's a scene where this widow she puts in the only money she's got. Did we talk about this in an episode recently?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:47

It might have been with Element.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:48

I was talking to Element about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:50

I remember you talking about it, but I don't remember when.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:53

Well, we'll bring it up again. If it was in an episode, it's been kind of front and center in my mind. So you've got this widow who puts the last bit of her money into the plate. And then you've got the the showman who wants people to see what he's given, and he prays out loud. And then you, you know, similar to the story of the guy who says, God be merciful to me, a sinner, and he prays in his heart, and then the other guy's praying big and flamboyantly. Yeah, and then but you've got the widow who puts the only bit of money she's got, and it's a very little bit of money. I think what Jesus is so angry about is that the widow should have never been in that situation. These are religious Jews who know that Deuteronomic law, like the law of Moses, the the what God had instructed them as a people to do is take care of that lady. Yeah. She shouldn't have been putting her last two pennies in that. That's right. They should have already, she shouldn't be in that predicament, but she is. And I think we see in that that Jesus was not okay with the way she was being taken care of. And yeah, but Isaiah 53 is this that God is speaking judgment on his people because they've neglected the vulnerable among them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:08

Yeah. And 58, it those are connected, very similar passage, but chapter 55. I'm sorry, 58. I meant 58. Well, uh, it's not the only one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:16

53 is the passage about by his stripes. It's the passage.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:19

Yeah, but why aren't you hearing our prayers?

unknown 1:18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:22

He goes, I'll tell you. Like, because you're and he goes, I, you know, I know you're I know you're going to church. I know you're giving. I smell your incense. I hear your songs. But again, my paraphrase, you're stepping over the broken and the hurting on your way to these services. So stop it. Don't, don't lie to another, don't sing another. Like, go and he, is this not the sacrifice that I that I that I require? Is this not the the Sabbath hole? Like to go and loose the bonds of those that are bound, to go and help to and he and he says to bring the the the homeless into your home. Like that's radical. Like bring them in those into your home. Like, is this not what I've called you to? And so basically saying, like, I ain't answering your prayers. You're you're not, you're not live, you're not, you're not living out my image. Um do this, and then I'll shore up your walls. Do this, I'll answer your I'll be your strong, you know, your stronghold. I'll do like go and and and give yourself in the community, and then we'll do some stuff together.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:25

Yeah, that's so good.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:26

We will make a name, like then I'll be known. Like, and that's what like I try to tell people like, listen, man, like we we see this in small, like we get to be a witness into the agencies in the state agencies where we're at because the impact we make makes them go, who like we've literally been at, who are you people? And we get to say, we're Jesus people. And I love that witness. And I and I'm praying for the day in Illinois and beyond that the system of child welfare has to take note of like, I don't know what happened, but we don't have children waiting on homes anymore. We got we got families waiting on kids. And somebody has to say, uh, I think that's the church. The church showed up. That's like that, that's what we're and and it's you said you said this earlier. It's actually possible. Like it's not actually that crazy of a yeah, absolutely doable.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:19

Just doable.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:19

You know, like and so like that's that's what drives my like I want to call God's people into this and then give them uh, you know, make sure they make sure they know. Like that's step one. Make sure they can't say they didn't know. Because for years I didn't know. And then now that you know, all right, you gotta do something with it. Yeah, what can we do? And one of the things we hear about the most, we

How To Help Without Fostering

SPEAKER_06 1:20:40

hear it all the time. Women, wives say to us, I oh, I would love to foster one or two for years, but my husband's he's not on board. My husband won't hear it all the time. All the time. And I get it. There's some I get it too.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:55

The husband's a coward. I get it. I get it. We're we we're a society full of cowards. Yeah. Their husband is a coward.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:02

Back to what we're talking about. There's yeah, there's I get it. There's a she's the woman has the tenacity. The crisis of foster care, but it started with there being a crisis of actual biblical masculinity. Yep. In multiple ways, on all kinds of sides of that. You know, you could talk about children in the river, like where, you know, do you go upstream, you go instream, whatever? Like some of it's what caused there to even be kids in foster care, but also this crisis that exists when it doesn't actually have to. Yeah, I mean, so I I man, I get it. There, there's sometimes there's good reasons you're you're hesitant. You you're you you feel compelled to protect your family, and you you don't know bringing a kid into your home, what that's gonna mean. And those are good questions. You should care about protecting your family. Um, you should care about how it's gonna negatively impact. Like those those are those are good things. But, and we speak to those. But restore network, I mean, that's part of what we, and you can get a lot of it on our website, but like we walk families through that. Hey, there's a way to do this that reduces the risk of like harming your family. We we encourage families to not break birth order. We encourage families to not take multiple placements at the same time and and and um and to really think about what capacity they actually have. Like, there's a way to approach it with wisdom that minimizes that, the the actual risk that is there. And you don't have to like a lot of people think of a perpetual revolving door, perpetual orphanage. Like if I if I sign up, if I get licensed to be a foster parent, it means I'm just gonna be I gotta take whatever kid they give me forever. That's not the case. Like you can you can set up your license to be like for us when we started, our kids were seven, five, and three. So we our license was for two and under. Yeah, it is two and under. That's the only calls we got. Um, and you so you can set those parameters. So some of that can be um, you know, mitigated, but it's usually not that. It's usually a fear, it's usually a comfort thing, it's usually a security thing. And and I and I think I think I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to protect their family, but I I wanna I want to challenge them to think about what are you protecting them from? Because you might be protecting them from the wrong thing. Because robbing them of like, yeah, is it gonna disrupt their life if you bring other kids into their home? Yeah. Is that always a bad thing? No. Um in fact, it's sometimes what the Lord will use to you know to grow that like if you if if they don't see you living out a kingdom lifestyle, then and you but you protected them from hard, from harm. Like that's not like I don't think that's what anybody wants. But again, that's that when we've let the culture define our narrative of what a life should be like, then yeah, this does this not gonna fit. If that's what the lens you're looking through, and you go, well, if this is what I'm supposed to give my family, bringing another, bringing a kid in from trauma and with heart, like I don't know if I can afford it, all these things, yeah, it doesn't make sense. But when the gospel is redefined how we're supposed to spend our time, talent, and treasure in this brief moment we're on the earth, then now it's a different deal, you know? And my girls, I mean, we hear that a lot, like the negative impact on our kid. I get it. Um, Restore helped us think through because we would have probably just taken whatever age kid. Restore was like, Yeah, we we recommend you don't break your birthroom. Okay, cool. I didn't know what that meant. They told me, and I was like, All right, cool, we'll do that. Um my girls were seven, five, and three when we started. And this has done nothing but grow their love for the Lord and for people. Um I mean, I'll first of all, we had our we had our our first boy and we were waiting on his. We knew his case was probably gonna go to adoption, and we told our girls we weren't gonna foster any other kids until we knew, until that was the moment. And we had just, and so we've been fostering for a while. And anyway, we just moved to a new house, and my kids had their own bedroom for the first time ever, or they all had their own bedroom. Um, and they were super stoked about that. The day we told them that little man was gonna be adopted, like we were gonna be able to adopt him, we thought they'd be super excited and squealing. And they did that for a minute, but then my older two immediately looked at each other and said, We got to move in together. And we're like, What why? They're like, so we can foster another kid. I was like, I I wasn't ready. I was like, I mean, but like that was their heart of like, okay, so this means we can we can help other kids now? And then when we got our other little guy, that's now my both both of us, my sons now, we got him. My oldest daughter, who's always loved babies, always loved babies, baby dolls, babysitting all the babies, that's her thing. She was holding this little guy, five days old when he came to us. Long monkey toed, big long, he's on pace to be like six nine now. Uh long, monkey-looking toed, sweet boy. Smiled, smiled already at five days old. He's always smiling. She's looking at him, she's holding him. And then she got sad. And she goes, I just hate that he's not with his mom. I just hate that she's not getting to experience this. Um seeing that, you know, like yeah, and and she's better for having felt that. And and like she sees the world with compassion now in a way so has it been hard on them when we had to say goodbye to her on one? Yeah, that was hard. Um, has it been hard? Has it been disruptive to their life? 100%. Partly just because they're wild boys, but yeah, so we had conversations about drugs and sex and multiple partners, because you know, you're like, we don't know who the dad is. If we had some conversations with them a little sooner than we probably would have, yeah. But has it harmed them? No, it's been it's been a it has been a uh a good thing for them. Hard you know, like hard, um, but good. And so I I just want to challenge I want to challenge man. I wanted to it because again, I know that you uh you haven't set out and made it's not your thing to be a foster and adoptive dad. Like that's not like a a brand for you. But that's actually what I love is it's like it's just a it's an obedience thing for you, right? So like I that's why I wanted you to speak to, like all right, man, like that at kingdom risk when it comes to caring for the vulnerable. We're you know, and like the the bibli the the the actually very masculine thing of of of caring for a kid that's not your not yours that needs a home, like I don't know, man. What's that been like for you? Did did you always know you were gonna adopt? Like I know you talked about your adoption during a time, but just from this conversation, this perspective, uh, I would love to, I don't know, hear your thought too.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:07

Um yeah. Well, I will say one thing that I'm thankful for with my biological earthly parents is that they fostered and adopted. They fostered a good bit.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:19

And um I remember the story of your dad explaining, explaining to that guy that he was her dad now, which was a which was a butt whooping in the yard or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll never forget that story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:28

Yeah. And that sister that that was over, her kids, uh, her kids came to camp this summer, which is cool. Um yeah, the there's and I remember a guy that lived with us. I my parents broke birth order, and that was a problem. It created some pretty big issues with the guy. I'm the oldest, I'm the firstborn, and there was a couple kids that came in and were older than us, and it created some major

Retention, Support Teams, And Respite

SPEAKER_04 1:28:54

issues, and um, including some violence. And so I learned some things through that. But I I do remember little and I saying, hey, one day we'll adopt some kids, but I don't remember thinking of it as a calling. I remember thinking, hey, as long as the Lord keeps the womb open, we'll have children. And we had several miscarriages. God only gave us three biological children. I don't want to say only as if that diminishes it, but that was the number. Yeah, yeah. We didn't do anything to have less or more. Right. Um, and so uh the Lord, now when we first got married, we uh little was on birth control. And I didn't I didn't know that there was even a debate to be had or anything like that. But I remember once she was off of that, we had three kids. We she's never been back on birth control, and that's just what we had. And um and several miscarriages. And adopting was something that we had talked about early in our marriage, like one day when we're not able to have any more kids, or whenever that stops, whatever, we'll adopt. But we never had taken steps towards it. But I'll tell you what really what really moved the needle for us was when little so we adopted, we finally adopted, but we didn't foster first. We went through North Carolina trying to find a foster to adopt situation, and we kept running into dead ends. It's another story for another day, but it's crazy. Partly because that's not what foster care is set up to do. It's not what it's set up to do because of what's in the world. But but yeah. But it's set up for reunification, right? And we wanted to foster to adopt. This makes it, yeah. And that made it, I didn't realize. Yeah, I know now, but that that's not the best way to go about that. You go, you need to go in with a loose hand and say, hey, we're here to to to to be a safe place for kids that are vulnerable. And so we ended up adopting a couple of, you know, my two youngest children, we adopted. Um, that's a crazy story that one day I'll tell when they're grown adults. Sure. You can't tell the story now. It wasn't, there was nothing normative about it. We didn't like go through this agency or go through this fostering program. It was a crazy story where it was what I would call an independent thing with three different lawyers involved. And but um it was through that that Little started the Pinwheel Tutoring Program that JB's gonna interview Pen uh Little. JB's gonna interview Little about Pinwheel um this fall. And I'm excited about that. Um, I'm gonna get out of that and let just JB and Little have that conversation. But Little was having to spend so much time with our two youngest kids who we had adopted, realizing how far behind they were academically and how much need there was to help them at home outside of school hours. And so she went up to the elementary school and asked the principal and the guidance counselor, hey, we're having to spend a lot of time with our kids at home to get them caught up. Is this a need that you see with a lot of kids? And they're like, oh yeah, most of our kids are we're struggling because parents aren't able or aren't willing or aren't present to help their kids get what they need academically, and we can't get it all done during the school day. So, long story short, the pinwheel tutoring vision turned into a reality, and you know, the the vision was born, it came to fruition. And so out of the Pinwheel Tutoring Program, which is an after-school program that primarily works with kids that are in difficult situations and circumstances, not all the kids in that program, but a lot of them, we ended up with multiple placements and kids in our home out of that straight out of pinwheel. Um, anywhere from two days to five years, we've had kids stay with us that came out of pinwheel tutoring. But also out of pinwheel tutoring, we've seen multiple families in snowbird community and red oak community foster and then foster to adopt and then foster and reunify to family, you know, like every kind of scenario. And for me to answer your question, it's just all come down to how can you be a grown man or woman? First off, let's take let's take your faith out of it. If you're just a wired human image bearer, yeah, who's an image bearer of God who sees a need, how can you not do something about it just out of good humanitarian goodwill? But then if you're a regenerate child of God who has these clear messages in Scripture in God's law and Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Deuteronomy to the Israelites. Here's how you take care of the vulnerable. Jesus reinforced it. Isaiah 58, you see the problem being dealt with by the Lord. How can you be a child of God and not help deal with the problem? And it's like, to me, it wasn't, there wasn't a lot of thinking that went into it. That sign, there's a sign on the wall over here that we talk about here a lot that I've had on my wall since before I was married. It says I have one simple philosophy: empty what's full, fill what's empty, scratch where it ditches. In other words, you need to need to be picked up, pick it up. If it needs to be put down, put it down. If it needs to be dealt with, deal with. Like just do what's in front of you. There's this principle in scripture: do what your hand finds to do. There's need everywhere, get to work. And God's not impressed that you raise your hands when your contemporary Christian band plays your favorite elevation worship song at church this Sunday if you're not doing these things. Yeah. It's the same. That's the application of the biblical, the Isaiah 58 issue in Israel, the temple issue in Jesus' ministry and time, uh, the issue in James's church. God's not impressed that you raise your hands and can sing every lyric or listen to Christian radio or use your social media platforms to give a pro-life stance. If you're not putting your hand to the task in front of you, you are living in disobedience to God's instruction and his word. And it's not like, oh, I'm not called to that. Bull crap. There's not a question of if you're called to be obedient to scripture or not. That's bull. You're you're either creating a lie, you're writing a narrative that you're that's a lie and you're believing it, you're justifying your action. There is always going to be a need for God's people to minister to the vulnerable. So get to work. And if you're not someone who is in a position to bring children into your home, I promise you there are families in your church or community that need your help. So help them. Help them. One of the things that's been so helpful for us, there was a point where we had multiple kids in our home that were not our biological children, and none of our biological children were in our home because we had in that wave of kids, we had empty nested. But we had a house full of kids, and we're trying to swim upstream and keep our head above water. And we had four families in a group because we have a program at our church. I've talked about it on here before, who would bring us meals, who would get a kid to practice, who would, and none of them are fostering. They're all in their like one of them is they can't, they're not in a position to do that right now because they have kids from newborn to seven years old. And that's not where they're at right now in life. But they'd say, hey, you know what we can do? We can bring, we can bring you a meal once a week. We can get that one kid to practice three nights a week or whatever. Yeah. There's things you can do to help. So just quit sitting on your freaking rear end. If you're, I know I'm like being, I know I'm being very heavy-handed with this, but I don't understand how the Church of Jesus Christ is allowing there to be 16,000 kids in foster need in North Carolina, and there's 16,000 churches in North Carolina, and how many people that listen to this that just live in North Carolina are doing jack squat about it and call themselves Christians and will raise their hands at church when they sing their favorite song this Sunday.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:45

That's crazy to me. I don't get it. I don't get it. And so I'm thankful for I'm I'm thankful for ministries like Restore. And I think there are more of those ministries coming online. Sure. But I think it can be as simple and organic as at your local church, just decide we're going to support the people that are in the trenches doing this work.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:04

100%. A lot of what we help churches set up, they could do without us. That's that's fair. I sometimes I say, like, one of the things is getting people to see it. So our neighborhood got hit by a tornado last last May and it devastated, just you know, it's just devastating to see the trees down and the homes, and like you can't ignore that. And so when you see that kind of suffering, you're like, people just come out of their homes to that night. People were neighbors out of their homes just trying to help. Um so the first problem is people just don't see the need. But then when you do, some people don't leave their home because they don't know, they don't have a chainsaw, and they don't know how to help, and they don't know, they don't know what they could do. So maybe they'll take some water. But but some people are just paralyzed by like, I'm not sure how to help. I can't do construction or whatever. And so for restore, so it helps to have like a uh an organization that's kind of mobilizing people, right? Training, screening, can you run a chainsaw? Okay, cool, you go do that. If not, you do this. And that's what restore, like, hey, I say to church, like, hey, we can be that for you. We we can like there's this need in your community. It's hard to start from there and go, okay, what are we supposed to do that's gonna be productive? We'll help you with that. We just mobilize your people. And so, yeah, we do the same things. Like, we help them, you know, take a meal, uh, go shop. Kids come into the care, they don't have much. They go shop for them for that kit. Like, we took a for you, you know, like what's that kid? What's his size? What's his preference? You go shop for them, deliver the stuff to their home. Um, you know, pray pray a team, respite. We're gonna give you a break. We're gonna be your people, like we're just gonna give you a regular break for those kids. Like, and that keeps families, because one of the reasons the system's so broken is because families quit, man. It's not, it's hard. The system's jacked up, it's hard. The kids that you bring into your home, by very definition, have gone through trauma, which means they will be hard. They've missed out on God's good design. And it's gonna take some healing, and it's ain't it ain't quick and it ain't easy. And so nationwide, foster parents quit at a rate of 50% in their first year. So, like, that's the people who signed up to do it. That that's hard, that's the hardest thing is get people to do it. And then when they do it, they'll quit at a rate of 50% in their first year, which means kids then bounce from home to home. You know, a third of kids in Illinois spend time in three or more homes. Uh, nationwide, it's high too. Um, and stuff like what you're talking about can can drastically, we see it drastically change it. When families aren't alone, they've got some support, somebody's bringing them a meal, somebody's giving them a break, somebody's just they're just gonna connect with other people who are doing it. We have 89% retention rate after the first year. Families are still in it. Wow. And we have less than 4% last year that moved homes even one time. And that's not because restore is awesome. I do think we're awesome, but we're awesome because we're mobilizing the the people in the pews, the people in the community. It's not, we have a small part-time staff. We're just push multipliers, we're just a quipper, you know, like, and so yeah, if you don't have a program, if you're not in Illinois, you can't do restore, you don't have a pro your church doesn't have a big, robust program, that's okay. I bet you can find a foster parent in your congregation or in your community. And honestly, even if they're not a Christian, you find out they're that's a great way to witness. Like we get to love on foster families that they're fostering not because they're Christians, but they're just like you said, they're just humans. Um, and maybe they got there through infertility or maybe you know, whatever, but they hear about our supports and they go, hey, can we join? And yeah, we'll serve you. And so you can go serve somebody in your community that's fostering by doing that stuff. Saying, Hey, can I bring you a meal once a week? Rally in your community group, your small group at church. Hey, let's do this. You know, let's mow their yard, let's get them to practice. Like that stuff is culture changing. Because the culture of foster care right now is overwhelm, brokenness, burnout, quitting. And you know, doing a hard thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:52

It's a lot easier when you got people doing it with you. It is. And I get we may have to edit some of my rant. Um, me and Debbie will discuss it.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:00

I think it was I think it was good.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:02

It's appropriate. Yeah, bring it up. I just get it. That's why I asked you to do it, bro. Well, okay. But and I want to so I want to walk a little bit of it back and say to people, I appreciate what you said, is the biggest problem is people don't know. Yeah. I I don't think most people are saying, screw it, I'll just kids. The first problem is they don't know. But now, once you know, you can't just turn and walk away from it. Yeah, but I think a lot of people don't know. I was having a

Trauma, Healing, And Closing Steps

SPEAKER_04 1:41:28

conversation. We were recently at a family gathering with some of my extended family, cousins, aunts, uncles, and I was sharing some uh some difficult things that we've dealt with in these relationships in our home. And they were shocked because in their mind, it's like little orphan annie. We went and rescued some kids, and now they just live in our home and we're all happily living ever after. And I'm like, oh no, oh no, no, no, no, no. We could be right now doing one of them rent, me and little could be in one of them rent RVs all of September, uh-huh, cruising around the Grand Canyon or whatever. That's where we're at in life. But we signed up to nope, we're gonna raise another wave of kids, and it is hard, you know. And I I think I do want to have conversations with people about what it looks like and and help people make those decisions to whole probably a whole other episode talking about the tension of you know the beauty and the brokenness of adoption.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:20

Because so so often people just say they celebrate adoption, they say things like, oh, they're so lucky they have you, and it's like no the reason they have us is because of brokenness, because they they they didn't have what they're supposed to have in their home, their family, their mom and dad. So the gospel allows us to hold beauty and brokenness in the same, you know, tension, but some people don't even know how to do that. And then to think about these kids, like they think, well, okay, they're not in that hard space anymore. They should be okay now. It's like, really? I don't I don't ever remember anybody, like if you watched a kid blow out his knee on the football field or the basketball court, everybody hear, you know, one of those injuries where you're like, ooh, you know, nobody says to that kid in a couple weeks, like, hey man, you're not on the court getting hit anymore. Why aren't you walking?

SPEAKER_04 1:43:14

That's a good analogy.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:15

But nobody does that. They know he needs time, medical treatment, physical therapy, maybe surgeries, whatever. And they're patient with it. Nobody's angry at that kid for not being better just because they're not in that circumstance anymore when it's a physical injury that you can see. But our kids have have sustained deep developmental, emotional, mental, physical injuries. And the fearful and wonderful design of God didn't end after the kid exited the womb. And we talk about that, that passage. We should. We talk about it pro-life, and kids should be, but like the design of God extends into the family and develop like there's so much happening when a baby cries and a mom and dad meet that need, the attachment that the science there should cause us to worship God. You know what I mean? I remember that Louis Giglio, uh, How Great Is Our God years ago. You remember like the stars and stuff. And he's like, you know, some people don't know what to do with science. They think, you know, we can't be Christians and like do the science stuff. It's like God's not up there like worried about what we're gonna destroy. He's up there going, come come check it out again, see what I did, you know, because it should cause us to worship. So there's a lot of talk about trauma and pop psychology and all that stuff right now. As believers, we should go, yeah. Yeah, of course, trauma impacts development. Of course it does. Because God designed us to be raised in this way. And when that is taken from a kid, due to abuse, neglect, abandonment, addiction, mental health, death, whatever, it impacts them, period. And it takes time to heal, and it ain't easy, and it's not all good now, just that they've arrived in your home, that they're not in the circ they're not in the orphanage that they're anymore. So, oh, that's so good. They're they're so lucky to have you. Well, it's a blessing that they're out of the circumstances and in your home now. But no, like it's not it's not that simple.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:08

Right. It is messy, it's hard. We stopped the bleeding, we've got a tourniquet on above the wound here. But now we've got to get, we've got to restore the right blood flow. And oh, that's a good, yeah. Like, yeah, otherwise the the limb's gonna die, you know, and so it's hard, man. But it's worth it. It's worth it to be faithful to God and his commands and scripture. And I I know no one's gonna stand before the Lord one day and go, well, I waited till I was 63 to retire because I was only worth 2.3 million, and I knew I needed to be worth three million to retire effectively and be able to do the things I wanted to do. But Lord, that was good stewardship, wasn't it? Yeah. And he's going, and it's Matthew 25, and it's scary, man. Yeah, but I built, but I went to work days at church and we built um a bathhouse at an orphanage in Guatemala, and so I did my deed, and it's like, man, just be careful that you don't create a value system of good works that you think are gonna bless the Lord and make him proud of you. It's like until every voice, and until every ear hears the gospel and until every vulnerable human is reached. Work to do. We got work to do. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate it, man. Yeah, thank you, man. Appreciate it for coming on. What is uh so, real quick, how can people see what y'all are doing? And even if they're not in Illinois, it can give them some maybe direction.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:33

Yeah, so our website www.the restore network.org. Okay. Yep. And so you can you can see a lot of what we do, you could support. Um, yeah, we're only in Illinois, we're only in certain kinds, you know, there's a process for you know what it takes to bring us where we're, you know, into your space. Uh, but yeah, you can still check it out, be inspired. There are similar organizations elsewhere. We're not the only ones, but um, we have a very holistic approach. And um, so yeah, we're we have as much as we can on our website.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:58

Um, but a lot of what we do is local focused, and so like it can't, you know, it can't be good without people on the people can learn there, even in things that would maybe be applicable where they're at, and they could reach out to you if they've got questions about yeah. Um they reach out to your organization even for just some direction. Yep. We'd be happy to chat.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:18

Thanks for listening to No Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at swooutfitters.com to see all of our programming and resources. And we'll see you next week on No Sanity Required.