youth ministry

So You Want to Open an Orphanage…

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Do you feel called to open an orphanage? Trust me on this, lay down until the feeling goes away. If you still want to open an orphanage, continue reading.

I wish orphanages didn’t exist. The first choice for caring for abandoned children should be extended family. If extended family is not an option, then children at risk should be placed in healthy families. Unfortunately, placement with a family is just not an option for many children. Most orphanages are filled with children who, for one reason or another, are not adoptable or are very difficult to place. Orphanages care for children with multiple siblings, children with physical or mental challenges, children with an extended family that cannot care for them but still hold parental rights, etc. So if orphanages have to exist (and they do), they should be great, and run by people with vision and the skill sets to make them a fantastic place for children to heal and grow into healthy adults.

On a regular basis, people contact me who feel lead to open orphanages. My first question is always: “Who is going to run it?” Putting up buildings is easy(ish), on-going funding is harder, but living at, and running an orphanage can be hugely challenging and is not for the faint of heart.

Like pastoring, it’s very different once you’re in charge as opposed to watching from a comfortable distance. Running an orphanage is 24 hours a day, just like pastoring. Like pastoring a church, everyone who walks into your ministry will be second guessing all of your decisions and how you’re running things (and they know they can do it better). You not only get to care for kids and staff, you also need to keep government officials AND donors happy, all at the same time. Good luck with that.

On the long list of things that surprise most people is the amount of administration that has to go on. From the outside, people tend to think that the day-to-day parts of running an orphanage are about holding babies, craft projects, and building healing relationships with the children. All of these things go on, but they make up a remarkably small part of the day-to-day hours of running an orphanage. Actually, “child care” is an almost insignificant part of the job. Days are occupied with the mundane: grocery shopping, hosting guests, managing staff, answering emails, etc. Your days and weeks are filled with what it takes to keep the ministry open and moving forward.

Fundraising will take up much of your waking hours for the rest of your life. Just because you’re passionate about orphan care doesn’t mean anyone else cares. Everyone has different passions, callings, and challenges in their lives. Other people are called to serve and help in other ministries, that’s a good thing. That people have passions and interests that don’t connect with orphan care makes fundraising that much more of a challenge. Sharing the needs of your home, sharing the needs for orphan care in general, and sharing your passion is all part of the work. Share with the right people, get the word out, and God will connect the right people to support it.

Here is what they don’t teach you in “orphan school”: the struggles are real. Caring for orphans is very close to the heart of God. If you’re doing it right, the enemy doesn’t like it. You will never have a normal week again. Sick kids, staff issues, government issues, will be the norm. We figure about two significant attacks a year. Hepatitis outbreaks, wells going dry, we went through one season where EVERY couple on our staff went through a rough patch in their marriage. We’ve had children diagnosed with cancer, we’ve had children die. The spiritual attacks will be part of your life, get used to it. The good news is we’ve never gone through an attack God could not use to make the home stronger and cause us to grow. I can honestly look back and give thanks for all we’ve experienced. Don’t get me wrong, we dread the attacks and storms when we’re going through them, but we also know God is so much bigger.

Please know that this work will rip your heart out. And dance on it. And then bounce it around the room. We deal with the worst side of humanity. I could shock you with the profoundly horrific things that have been done to our children. You do not want this in your life. Then, once a child has been in your care for a long time, and they’ve begun to heal, you never know when a social worker will sweep in and say they are going back with family. Sometimes this is good; many times it’s not. Your emotional scars and callouses will build over time.

If this rambling article sounds like I am complaining, please do not interpret it that way. I just want people going into this work to do so with their eyes wide open. I’ve dedicated the bulk of my adult life to orphan care, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The work is challenging, the battles are real, and it can be emotionally and physically exhausting. That being said, I have zero regrets about walking away from my “normal” life running a business in Southern California. Although the challenges can be extreme, the rewards far outweigh any of the battles we’ve gone through.

The graduations where you see groups of your children graduate from high school or college makes it worth the sacrifice. When you’re able to walk so many of the young women you’ve raised down the aisle at their weddings, it’s worth it. When you see children you’ve raised, caring for their own families in a healthy loving fashion, it’s all worth it. If you’re indeed called to orphan care, surround yourself with people of similar vision, give it everything you have, and press forward. It’s a worthy calling and will be the most rewarding experience of your life.

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Random Affection in Orphanages

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orphanchildOne of the realities of orphan care is that everybody considers themselves an authority. Just like parenting styles in a traditional family, opinions on orphanage styles tend to shift frequently on how to “do it better.” These opinions change depending on what’s trending in any given year. In the last few years, there’s been a lot written on the potentially harmful effects of too many visitors on the children in an orphanage. After working full-time in orphan care for over 25 years, I could not disagree more.

The current theory states that having visitors in orphanages on a regular basis leads to attachment disorder problems later in life because the children are bonding with random, different strangers every week. In my experience, children raised in dysfunctional orphanages will have a wide range of emotional problems later in life, just as anyone raised in a dysfunctional family. If the children are bonding with random strangers every week, this means there are many underlying problems in the orphanage already. The bonding issue is just a symptom.

Let’s look at two scenarios:

Scenario 1) In our orphanage we have more visitors than almost any orphanage in the world. In a typical year, we host around 280 groups and have other “drop by” visitors on a regular basis. We enjoy hosting the groups, we enjoy leading them into service and short-term missions, and we believe when well-managed, these visits are healthy for everyone. So how do we avoid the random attachment? First, we have solid, consistent staff and plenty of them. Our children do bond with adults, but it’s with consistent adults in their lives. We have excellent child to staff ratios (about 4 to 1) and minimal staff turnover. Second, although we have a tremendous amount of visitors we intentionally limit the time they have with our children. We limit the visiting hours with our infants and toddlers, but more importantly, we encourage all of our groups to stay with us but travel out daily to serve in the community or with other ministries in the area. Our children see the “visitors” as just that, visitors dropping by to see our family. The majority of children who grow up in our home go on to have healthy marriages and families. In spite of all the visitors, most of our children turn out okay.

Scenario 2) In an orphanage that is understaffed and overcrowded, the children will seek random affection from any visitor that comes through. You can see this when you first arrive in a home. If children above the age of five are running over to hang on you and ask to be held, they’re starved for affection. A normal, well-adjusted 10-year-old doesn’t just walk up to a random stranger seeking physical contact; this is a symptom of much deeper issues in an orphanage. The children are not bonding with the staff and are severely lacking affection. They WILL have problems bonding later in life without a tremendous amount of healing. Most children raised in poorly run orphanages eventually produce children that wind up back in the system and have a tough time with healthy relationships. (Just like too many children from foster care.)

So how does someone, or a mission team, respond to these two examples? If you’re dealing with a healthy orphanage, one that has well-adjusted kids and is well run, continue to back their work. Find out what their needs are and keep supporting a healthy situation. Help them to continue to provide what their children need.

If you’re working with a home that’s not so great, it gets complicated quickly. A few years ago we were helping an orphanage near us that was a pit. The orphanage was overcrowded, filthy, and the children were deeply starved for affection. We were praying for a change in that home but did not have a lot of hope with the current management. With eyes wide open to the situation, we continued to send teams to that orphanage on day trips. The teams would clean, prepare meals, and spend time with the children in need of attention. I would encourage the teams by telling them “This home will probably never change, but for one memorable day, those children can know someone cares about them.” With these “hit and run” trips it was far from perfect, but it was giving these children something.

Everyone knows that eating junk food all the time makes for a lousy diet. In a perfect world, we would all have access to regular, healthy, balanced meals. If someone is starving, the standards drop, and junk food is better than no food. If a child was starving, and all we had to give them was a candy bar, that candy bar would mean the world to them. Long term, you would hope that the situation would change, but I don’t think anyone would withhold the candy bar because it’s not the ideal, healthy option. “Junk food” affection, when it’s the only real option, is better than no affection at all. People not visiting an orphanage to avoid this attachment and bonding problem does not suddenly make healthy bonding occur if the orphanage is understaffed and poorly run.

Caring for orphaned and abandoned children is obviously a complicated issue. It’s an issue that has been around for thousands of years and will not be going away soon. To believe that not visiting orphanages will help the situation is like saying not providing services and meals to homeless will end the homeless situation across America. I wish orphanages didn’t exist, but if they have to exist, they should be great, and they need our help.

Please, continue to follow the fundamental teaching of our Christian faith in regards to orphan care:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

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Service Muscle Memory

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Most people have heard of muscle memory. It’s our body’s way of learning repeated actions so deeply that we can react or move with little or no thought. A trained soccer player doesn’t have to analyze every kick. The player instinctively knows the optimal way to impact the ball and send it in the right direction. Bigger game strategies are worked out, but the instinctive reactions during a game flow from thousands of hours of dedicated, consistent practice. We do this every day with actions that we repeat over and over again: brushing our teeth, starting our car, etc. Whenever we drive somewhere daily and automatically take the same route without thinking about it, it’s muscle memory in action.

Studies show that to create a habit takes about 30 days. The longer we do anything consistently in our lives, the patterns build, and it’s easier to continue those patterns. If you’re quitting smoking the first few days can be gruesome, but eventually, after a few weeks, it becomes easier. If we’re starting an exercise program, those first few days can be hard, but if we keep at it for four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks it becomes ingrained and a regular part of our lives. That’s not saying that we won’t occasionally slip up, but the slip-ups become less frequent if we’re consistent with any habit over time.

So how does this apply to our spiritual walk? It’s important to evaluate our spiritual muscle memory. How do we immediately react to whatever situation comes up? When we suffer a loss in our life, do we react with anger? Or do we trust that God sees a bigger picture? When we feel we’ve been wronged by another person, do we lash out? Or do we forgive, seek to heal, and have grace for others? When we encounter someone in need, do we seek how to help? Or do we avoid eye contact and move on with our lives? Our first reaction to any situation is a good indication of our spiritual health and an example of our spiritual muscle memory in action.

We need to develop and train our spiritual, service muscle memory daily. Only with ongoing, faithful practice of healthy spiritual reactions will we grow in the perfect image of Christ. We need to embrace good service habits and allow them to grow into muscle memory.

One of the many attributes of Christ is service. Jesus spent the bulk of his time focused on those around Him. He spent His time healing, teaching, encouraging, feeding, blessing whenever He came into contact with others. During the last supper, the last night he had with the apostles, Jesus could have taught on anything. He chose foot washing, an example of service with profound symbolism at that time; it was the lowest servants who would perform this act for others. Jesus felt it was important to close out his training with the apostles by giving them this deep, powerful example of service. If we call ourselves a “follower of Christ,” and we are not actively, humbly, serving others in our day-to-day lives, we are hypocrites.

So how do we develop our service muscle memory? Practice, practice, practice. Service doesn’t have to be a huge, dramatic, sacrificial act. We are given thousands of opportunities every day to serve others if we keep our eyes open to them. A kind word to a stranger in a store, providing an open ear to somebody going through difficulties, just sending someone an encouraging message on Facebook, these are all acts of service. Jesus always had His eyes open to those hurting and in need around Him. Daily service to others should be our goal also.

A few years ago my wife and I were traveling on a missions trip to a very small, impoverished country in the middle of Africa. We landed in the tiny rundown airport and inside we faced an overwhelming crush of humanity. We had been warned beforehand to avoid “the people in the orange vests” who would try to grab our luggage to help us move it to the taxis to get tips. After collecting our team and luggage, I turned around, and my wife was gone. After what seemed like a long time, and me having a mild panic attack, I see my wife walking out of the restroom arm in arm with a frail teenage girl wearing an orange vest. My wife had gone to use the restroom and shared a kind word with this girl she noticed at the counter. This young girl needed those words, at that moment in her life. My wife’s service muscle memory kicked in, and she reached out to this girl in need. She didn’t cure cancer, she didn’t end world hunger, but she shared an example of Christ’s love to a scared teenage girl.

Who can you serve today? Go and practice that service muscle memory. Let your life follow in that perfect example of service we see in Jesus Christ.

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It’s OK to Say “No” to Someone in Need.

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We live in a broken world. Unless you’re living in a cave, it’s impossible not to be aware of people all around us struggling with difficulties in life. We see suffering in the news from countries far away, we read about war and injustice in so many places. If we haven’t become too calloused, we see struggling people in our towns, in our churches, and maybe even in our own homes. It can be overwhelming. We almost have to maintain a certain level of denial, or we would curl up into a ball to give up hope. BUT, sometimes, with God’s guidance, we can maintain hope and make a difference in someone’s life. We CAN make a difference. Hang on to that. Seek God’s will with who you should help.

In my line of work, caring for orphaned and abandoned children, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the staggering numbers of children in need. Depending on how you define “orphan,” there are around 150 million orphaned or abandoned children worldwide. If the international numbers aren’t discouraging enough, even the numbers of a single city can be overwhelming. In Tijuana, the city closest to where I work, the figure that’s used is roughly 5,000 children living on the streets. You can’t save everyone, no one can.

Yesterday I was contacted about a single mom with four kids. She will likely die in the next few months from an ongoing battle with cancer. There is no extended family and dad abandoned the family long ago. Someone helping her reached out to us about taking her four children into our home. The details are still being worked out, and we’re doing what we can to help. The four siblings will probably wind up moving into our home at some point. It’s making the best of a heartbreaking situation. BUT, for every child we’re able to help, there are 60, 80, 100 children that we need to turn away. The team here has to make Solomon like decisions every day: Who do you help? And who do you turn away? You can’t save everyone.

Anyone working full-time (or even part-time) in a service focused ministry needs to make hard decisions every day. For every homeless individual you serve, there are 20 more people outside the door. For every family a food bank helps with a box of groceries, there are 30 more families needing assistance. For every child rescued, there are dozens more in danger on the streets.

If we try to help everyone in our sphere of influence, we might wind up helping no one. I work with orphanages from many different countries. I’ve found that just like people, orphanages tend to land into personality types. One type of orphanage that I understand, but dread walking into, is what I call the “crazy cat lady orphanage.” Occasionally an orphanage is run by someone who is so overwhelmed by the hurting children around them that they take in any child in need. That might sound very noble: “I never turn away a child in need,” but it sets up a horrible situation. If the home has space, resources, and staffing to do a good job for 30 children, it can be a beautiful thing. If that same home, with the same resources, grows to 50, 70, 90 children it can be horrible. Lack of food, hygiene, and general attention can make some orphanages a filthy, lice and rat infested nightmare. Last year, one home I visited staggered me, my first thought was “these children would be better off on the streets.” I really liked the director. I think her heart truly was to help the kids, but she was so overwhelmed she became ineffective in reaching her end goal. Where do we find the balance?

There’s a topic that most people don’t talk about. Jesus, in the three years that he minstered on this earth, didn’t help everyone. For every cripple he healed there were hundreds he didn’t. For every injustice he confronted there were dozens he walked past. For every person He taught, there were thousands that never heard Him speak. Jesus fed the 5,000, but there were many others that went hungry. No one would call Jesus a failure, He found a balance and did the will of his Father. That’s all He was required to do, that’s all any of us are called to do. Jesus spent a tremendous amount of time in prayer, He spent time alone, and then went and did what He was called to do. It’s a pretty good model, one more of us should follow.

Whether we realize it or not, we all make decisions every day about who we can help, and who we turn our back on. How many homeless people do we walk past on the way to Starbucks? Are there people in our church, school, or office that just need someone to listen to them? It’s ok to say “no” to someone in need IF our hearts are open and sensitive to serving those in need when we are called. We need to seek to understand God’s will. We need to be seeking His eyes and heart for the suffering around us, and the wisdom to represent Him well.

If you’ve become overwhelmed with the challenges and suffering around you, and don’t help others because you can’t save everyone, please step out and help just one person this week. It will matter greatly to them, and your life will be better for walking in the example of Jesus. If you’re the one overworking, killing yourself trying to save everyone, please have some grace for yourself and take a break. You can also walk in the example of Jesus: say “no” to someone, say yes to helping the ones God is calling you to help, and in all things: seek the Father’s will.

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