Our Courageous Kids

Helping Orphans Thrive

Our Courageous Kids

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Meet Our New Board Member: Chris Thomas

We’re so excited to introduce you today to our newest board member, Rev. Chris Thomas. Chris joins the Our Courageous Kids board replacing Veronica Marshall, one of our founding board members.

We are thankful for Veronica’s two years of service to the Our Courageous Kids team, but are so excited to welcome Chris for this moment in our history.

Chris currently serves as the pastor of First Baptist Church of Williams, AL. He brings to the team a wealth of knowledge about what it means to run a non-profit organization as well as personal connection to orphan care.

We asked Chris to introduce himself the Our Courageous Kid Family and this is what he offered.

  1. Tell us more about your family. 

My wife (Sallie) and I have two adopted sons, both from China. Orphan care and adoption have always been matters which were important to us, but after bringing home our first son, they became deeply personal priorities and convictions.

  1. What’s your professional background?

I have served as a pastor for the last twelve years.  I received my undergraduate degree from Samford University and a Masters in Divinity from Truett Seminary at Baylor University and am currently working on a doctorate in ministry at the McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta, GA.    

  1. What made you excited to join the Our Courageous Kid Team?

As someone who has been in the adoption/orphan care world now for over five years, I have witnessed a great lack of progressive and distinctly Christian voices when it comes to orphan care. Our Courageous Kids is not only doing wonderful, unique, and needed work for some of the most overlooked children in our world, but this organization has at its core the convictions of Jesus’s teachings that do not view orphan care as an evangelistic opportunity, but as a vital part of caring for our sisters and brothers of all ages, races, and creeds around the world.

He recently shared more about his adoption journey over at Elizabeth Hagan’s blog. 

Chris would love to hear from supporters of Our Courageous Kids. What makes you excited about this new movement in orphan care? Send him an email and let him know you’re glad he’s now part of the movement.

 

 

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Connecting with Christian Alliance of Orphans

connecting-puzzleWe always want to keep you posted on the activities Our Courageous Kids is connecting to for shared learning.

Today I want to tell you about the Christian Alliance of Orphans.

Within the Christian Alliance of Orphans (CAFO) you can find the largest collective of Christian based ministries devoted to concerns such as orphan care internationally, adoption, foster care in the United States, child trafficking, and teen runaways.

So obviously I wanted to get to know them.

As a collective body, they’ve said with their actions that it’s our job as people of faith to love all children, no matter what circumstances they find themselves in.  Invisible children will be invisible no more! And faith communities, these advocates say, must rise up and be more inclusive of this calling. To do this and build community among it’s members, every year, CAFO hosts an annual meeting of 3,000+ leaders called Summit.

In 2013 as part of our family’s work with Feed the Children, I attended this meeting in Nashville, TN and loved the energy and enthusiasm of those speaking and teaching.  My curiosity piqued. Like a sponge, I gladly learned what I could about such important concepts as attachment parenting, restorative therapies and what adult adoptees really thought about their institutional experiences from childhood.  It was great to apply what I learned to the kids we met during all our travels.

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So, again I connected with CAFO at this year’s meeting May 5-6th in Orlando. It was great to be in a wonderful community of Christians thinking critically about what best practices in orphan/ foster care looks like.  And again, I left the conference convicted by these stats and all the more excited about what Our Courageous Kids could do to help!

  • Globally there are an estimated 150 million orphans

  • In the US over 400,000 children are in foster care with over 100,000 actively waiting for adoption

  • 70% of children trafficked in the US are foster youth

This is what I know for sure: these are facts few in the church ever talk about. It’s the kind of work we often leave for “someone else.” But, I am confident that God’s heart is always on side of the most vulnerable– children without protectors. The question is: what are we going to do about it?

Want a simple way to think about beginning this conversation in your church?

Each year CAFO invites churches to participate in an Orphan Sunday emphasis. It’s an important day in congregations to raise awareness about children in the foster care system in your own town. It’s a great way to include those whose own stories or stories of their family have been touched by adoption. And it’s also a great day to talk about God’s desire for all of us to be adopted more fully into the kingdom of God.Home-Page-Final-16

Consider hosting Orphan Sunday on November 13, 2016. I’m excited to be preaching at Broadneck Baptist Church in Annapolis, MD this year. It’s as simple as inviting a special speaker. Talking about the foster care system and it’s needs in your community.  Or, creating a call to action. The call of orphan ministry is one we can’t ignore.

-Elizabeth

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