The Ministry of Foster Care

In May, Lifeline began a new series of required classes for prospective foster parents at the Church at Brook Hills. These prospects, young and older, married and single, share a common thread: their desire to be the hands and feet of Christ to children in their communities who are hurting and vulnerable. For many of these families, the classes provide information that is new and sometimes alarming (it is difficult to hear about the abuse that takes place in our own neighborhoods). As one participant put it on Sunday night, “It is overwhelming.” But even with their trepidations, these families seem to agree that foster care is ministry. One meaning of ministry is service. Foster families are servants. They serve DHR by providing much needed transportation to/from doctor’s and school appointments. They serve the birth families by providing safe, nurturing homes for their children, and they serve the children in care by taking them into their homes and feeding, clothing and loving them. Most importantly, they point these children and families to Christ, the Greatest Servant of all.

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross!” --Philippians 2:5-8

Traci Newell
Education Coordinator