Together for Adoption Debrief

Last weekend Lindsay and I attended a conference in Austin called Together for Adoption.  Through church, books, and the wider evangelical world, adoption seems to be coming across our path more frequently, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to explore it.  Below are a few of my reactions to the conference.

Karyn Purvis & Empowered to Connect
Karyn Purvis along with Amy & Michael Monroe led the pre-conference called, “Empowered to Connect.”  From what I understand of Purvis, her focus of study is on how children with detachment disorders can re-learn the basic skills of attachment and connection that they missed in infancy.  The Monroes run a ministry called Tapestry in Irving, Texas that attempts to take Purvis’s insights (in collaboration with her) and disseminate them to the adoptive couples.

There were two things from the pre-conference that I really appreciated.  First, they were honest about the difficulties involved in parenting children from hard places. They encouraged potential parents to count the costs and to evaluate their own desires and expectations as they enter into adoption.  In my opinion, this simple emphasis is full of the common sense and wisdom that is so often lacking in movements that people are passionate about.  Secondly, they intend to provide the training and resources to support couples for the life-long journey of parenting children from hard places.  Not only have they recognized a problem, but they are providing a solution.

There is one huge caveat to my appreciation of Purvis and the Monroes, and that is that Purvis seems blinded to the truth that children from hard places still have a sin nature.  On the whole, I’m not sure how much difference this would make in her methodology since you can’t argue with the terrible trauma these children have faced.  There’s no doubt they need our compassion.  But when you’re dealing with people and you have a grossly deficient anthropology, it seems like you’re bound to err.  All the same, Purvis’s book, The Connected Child, is moving to the top of my reading list.

Panel Discussions
During the conference the thing that I was most helped by were the two panel discussions we attended.  In both of these cases, adoptive and foster families talked about the joys and struggles of the process and of being parents.  The humility and joy of these families really stood out.  If there is one thing that a conference like this can provide, its the opportunity to be encouraged by the faithful examples of other brothers and sisters in Christ.  These couples didn’t downplay the difficulties of adoption, but their profound joy was clear.

Plenary Session
The highlights of the Plenary Sessions for me were Dan Cruver, the guy who heads up Together for Adoption, and J.D. Grear, a pastor from North Carolina.  Cruver spoke on “Keeping the Gospel Central,” and he did just that in his talk.  His talk was a powerful theological and exegetical explanation of adoption, and I especially appreciated the way he explained adoption as our access to communion with the Triune God.  Grear preached from Acts and did a great job of explaining the way our good works commend our gospel proclamation.  Both were well-reasoned and passionate, and both exalted the gospel.

Overall, I would say that the Plenary Sessions were uneven.  First of all, other than the two examples above, the substance of the talks fell far short of the titles.  Instead of explaining how “he Church is the Answer to the Foster Care Challenge,” Dave Gibbons talk amounted to, “wouldn’t it be great if there were no more orphans in your city?” Robert Gelines talk was more of the same, although he at least had a real life of example of how he was working in Colorado to reduce the number of kids in the foster care system.  Matt Carter was supposed to end the conference with “The Church and Social Justice,” and he did talk about those things, but didn’t provide much in the way of explaining how gospel proclamation and social justice go together.  It was more of a slightly angry assertion that they do.

If there is one glaring theological fault of the plenary sessions (and perhaps the orphan care movement as a whole), it was the failure to clearly distinguish our adoption in Christ from what happens when couples adopt orphans. If you nailed any one of the speakers down, I think they would make the distinction, but the environment didn’t really lend itself to such nuances.  It  needs to be stated clearly that adopting an orphan isn’t the same as preaching the gospel.  It can be a great picture of our adoption in Christ, just like marriage is a picture of Christ’s relationship with the church.   And for believers caring for orphans can and should be motivated out of God’s adopting love for us.  Adopting an orphan creates opportunities to share the gospel message with people who might otherwise not hear it.  But adopting an orphan isn’t the good news by itself.  The gospel is a proclamation of good news about Jesus to spiritual orphans.  Christ, our older brother, has become like us so that we can become like him, a son of the Father. Ironically, I heard at least one speaker refer to our adoption in Christ as a picture of the gospel, which isn’t right at all.  Our adoption in Christ is a reality, not a picture or an illustration.  Apart from Christ we really are spiritual orphans and when Christ saves us we really are adopted as sons of the Father and heirs with Christ.

Conclusions
I’m not a big fan of conferences.  They seem like a lot of work and they often feel like church camp to me.  In most cases, I’d rather stay home and listen to the talks later.  But I’d say that attending Together for Adoption was more than worth it.  It provided the opportunity to meet believers who are caring for orphans and talk about issues surrounding adoption.  Overall, the organization’s leadership is sound theologically and they are doing great things to advance the cause of orphan care.  It was also a good opportunity to be exposed to a variety of ministries and to get inspiration for how to care for orphans wherever you are.  If you’re at all interested in thinking about how you can be involved in caring for orphans, I’d definitely recommend that you take the opportunity to attend a Together for Adoption conference.

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