Why We Adopted
A lot of people hear our story of adoption, and how difficult the current stage of adjustment is, and ask us why we ever adopted. I get it. I wonder sometimes why we adopted, especially now when we are in the midst of hardship. But I keep going back to our vision as a church to be a people who are known by love. The reason we adopted in the first place? We felt Jesus ask us to. We believe adopting kid's like Kamron are part of what it means to struggle for the Kingdom; trying to bring a little more of Christ's Shalom to a broken world.
But to love means sacrifice...love is hard, which is why we often avoid it.
Reminds me of Dave Gibbons talk I recently listened to on this very thing. He begins his story about a pastor of a large mega church was asked by a consultant in a large conference, "What are the characteristics of a strong leader?" People were throwing out words like passionate, vulnerable, visionary, etc. When this young pastor shouted out the word "loving", there seemed to be dead silence. All these other things seemed to be elevated as more important than the simple calling to be loving.
Our Vision as a church and as individuals is simply this....Jesus. To love like Jesus. To love who He loves. To heal who He heals. To be like Jesus. If you haven't read our vision statement for a while, let me encourage you to do so again.
But to love people well is going to hurt. It has to involve sacrifice. Love isn't red ribbons, rainbows and cupids shooting arrows. Love is costly. It involves going to the cross.
I want to encourage you to do two things as a group.
Click the link below and read our Vision Statement. Then click the next link and listen to Dave Gibbon's talk. Then talk about what you learned.