Helping Children and Healing Our Land

J. Michael Sharman

            Ed Lyons of the Persecution Project Foundation spoke at my church Sunday. We expected his message to be an encouraging get-up-off-the-couch-and do-something-worthwhile message and we weren’t disappointed.

            We hear a lot in the news about the civil war in Sudan. Those who flee to the refugee camps often have to drink water from the same watering holes used by the domestic and wild animals of the area. The Persecution Project shows them how to build water wells and create economical filtration systems.

            The very names Sudan and Darfur have become synonymous with despair. The Persecution Project helps train Sudanese pastors to bridge the divide between tribal and religious groups with God’s love and His Word. Moslem and Christian refugees work side by side on the dirt runways to unload and distribute the food and supplies flown in by the Persecution Project’s chartered planes.

            (The watchdog group, Charity Navigator, gives the Persecution Project its highest four-star efficiency rating for having 91 cents of each donated dollar actually going to the intended work and only 9 cents used for administrative and fundraising work.[1])

            But this past Sunday, Ed didn’t talk that much about what Persecution Project was doing, he told us what other small country churches like ours were doing to bring peace and healing to our own country.

            Ed bragged long and hard on Pastor Robert Gelinas of the Colorado Community Church in Englewood, Colorado who wanted to have a practical way to live out the verse in James 1:27: “Pure and undefiled religion before the Lord is this: to visit widows and orphans in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

            Pastor Gelinas decided his church could help bridge the gap between the multitudes of foster care children waiting for an adoptive family and the many church families who want to adopt but who need help with the training and finances to do so.[2]

His “Project 1.27” began in 2005 with the mission statement “No Waiting Children in Colorado”. Since then, 274 families from 116 churches in 54 Colorado cities have signed up; 242 of those families have been trained; 96 children have been placed into 54 families, and 124 families are ready, willing and waiting to adopt a foster care child.[3] The adoptive families pay only $390 for the entire process, including legal fees, from start to finish.

Ed also told my church about the First Baptist Church of Brenham, Texas. Back in 2003, Suzanne Faske, who had just adopted a handicapped girl from China, was asked if she would start an orphan-care pilot program in her church. Suzanne was stunned when only one person showed up for her first meeting: “The statistics are that 30,000 orphan children die a day. Who could read that and not be motivated?”

Undeterred, she had begun creating a support group for families who had already adopted when she received a request with a three-day deadline to try to find homes for six Kazakh orphans. Homes were found in less than 48 hours – with requests for 24 more children! Many more adoptions and support groups “Forever Families” have been accomplished since then, the Faske family now numbers 15, and the majority of children in the sixth grade Sunday School  at First Baptist Church of Brenham speak English as their second language.

            Ed Lyons did not come to our church to fill in for the newspaper, radio or television and just tell us some interesting or inspiring stories. He was filling the pulpit and preaching to us. There’s a big difference.

He concluded his sermon with the challenge that is now being passed on to you: “What is your vision for how to heal your land? Make it big enough so that when it gets accomplished everyone will know it could only have been done through God’s power.”

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By J. Michael Sharman Click here for bio and archived articles