Called as a Church to Care for the Vulnerable

“It’s clear to us that Scripture has a particular emphasis on caring for orphans, widows and foreigners,” says Robert+ Balfour, associate priest at Grace Northridge Anglican Church of San Antonio. “There’s an extent to which all three of those are encountered in the foster care system. … “There’s a high call on the Church to respond to that.”

For Grace Northridge, responding to this call has involved partnering with several organizations, as well as taking a mindset that everyone has a role. And it’s been a call that’s been uniquely personal for Robert+ and numerous other members of the church.

About a year after Robert+ came to Grace Northridge as a missional resident in 2017, he and his wife began going through the licensing process to become foster parents. They were one of about six families in the church who were getting involved in fostering—a significant percentage in a church of 300. “As we received different placements, we became part of each other’s support networks,” he recalls.

Their support systems weren’t limited to those directly involved in fostering. Several members of the church had served as CASAs (Community Appointed Special Advocates): those who follow a child’s case, seeking the child’s best interests, providing continuity and serving as the eyes and ears of the court. They organized a ministry that comes alongside foster families. The church also got connected with the South Texas Alliance for Orphans, which as Robert+ explains, “offered certification trainings to help people who are not foster families to be caregivers and to do various support functions and roles to come alongside families.”

The South Texas Alliance seeks to provide support at multiple places in the foster system, from preventing children from going into foster care to helping foster families to coming alongside kids who age out. Grace Northridge found a good fit for ministry in the organization’s Alliance Prevention Network (APN) arm. “The desire is to do what we can to help keep kids from getting into the foster care system to begin with, and oftentimes that looks like providing resources and then, ideally, relational connection to families in crisis.”

Through relationships with Child Protective Services caseworkers, the Alliance Prevention Network learns about practical needs—for example, a family that needs a bed and a dresser to be able to care for a child. The organization then connects the family with a local church, like Grace Northridge, to meet that need.

As church members get involved, they seek to care for families beyond addressing the identified needs. “There are multiple connection points along the way, and ways to serve and help provide for the family,” Robert+ shares. “Several families have expressed just a deep sense of gratitude for being seen and cared for.”

Michael Gundersen, a lay leader at Grace Northridge involved in this ministry, shares about a grandmother and her husband who are caring for seven of her grandchildren. “They have a stable home, and she loves the children so much, but her age and various health issues have made it challenging to maintain. We’ve been able to support her through clothing donations, diapers and Christmas gifts for the family, as well as praying with her when visiting. When we dropped off Christmas gifts, she generously gave a box of snack cakes to our children and a beautiful handwritten thank-you note.”

They were also able to help a couple caring for two young children by delivering a crib as well as Christmas gifts from the church’s life groups. “[The wife] expressed so much gratitude to us for how we’ve served and prayed for her. We’re continuing to pray that seeds that were planted will one day grow, and my wife continues to text with her.”

As church members serve families, they seek to form relational connections, though they recognize the challenges of doing so in light of all these families are carrying. “A lot of these families are in crisis, and they don’t have a lot of margin,” Robert+ acknowledges. So, for each family they support, the church has a member who regularly checks in with the family over a six-month period.

Though getting families engaged in the church is one goal of this ministry, it’s not limited to serving those outside of Grace Northridge. Michael shares, “We have a single Mom that attends Grace with her three young children and serves on the APN response team as well as our children’s ministry. Her husband abandoned their family last year, and she and her children have struggled financially. Recently her car broke down and wasn’t worth continuing to repair. Within five days, the life groups at our church donated enough money for her to purchase another car. We have such a generous community that gives not only their money, but also their time.”

This generous community is making a significant difference in a system with great need. Robert+ shares that when he and Lauren were being trained to become foster parents, they learned that due to a shortage of foster families, 20% of the 5,000 children in the foster system in their county had nowhere to go. Some were being sent to El Paso, nine hours away. It was a shocking realization.

“The need is a little bit overwhelming,” Robert+ admits. But San Antonio has more than a thousand churches, and if each church had just one foster family supported by several other families, this challenge could be overcome. “Every kid could have a home and a supportive community.”

Supported by their church, numerous members of Grace Northridge are making a dent is this statistic, and as Robert+ shares, it’s a ministry that impacts them very personally—himself and his family included. He and Lauren fostered a child for nine months, and a year later fostered another, which resulted in adoption. “In this process, I’ve gained a lot more compassion for these families, for cyclical generational patterns that occur. So many kids who are in foster care, their parents were also in foster care. …  The closer you are to it, the more you realize that the that the stereotypes you believe are not particularly helpful or accurate. And you gain a level of compassion for these families.”

He continues, “Being involved in foster care has really called me to rely more on the Spirit, less on my preconceived notions, to be adaptable and flexible as the Lord leads. … As a foster parent, you know you have absolutely no control, and you can try to exercise that control, or you can yield and just say, ‘Okay, Lord, I trust you.’ … It’s not about me controlling the situation. It’s about me being faithful and present. And there’s a real opportunity to die to self in that.”

He shares that when the first child they fostered was about to turn a year old, they didn’t want her biological family to miss her birthday. They talked to her caseworker and invited her family to her birthday party. “Two months later, she went back to live with her family. We were so grateful that we did that. It was challenging and frightening, but it was a wonderful way to extend hospitality and show the love of Christ.”

He advises other churches seeking to show Christ’s love to foster families to partner with those who already know how to do it well. “The foster care system is quite complex, and we can approach it with the best of intentions, but if we don’t understand some of the complex dynamics within it, we’re liable to make mistakes and cause more harm than we do good. … As the church it is wise for us to come alongside those individuals, hear their stories and hopefully gain some wisdom and insight.”

Then, he encourages churches to identify the needs in their communities and how their congregations can help, whether through fostering or coming alongside at other points and places in the system. “There needs to be support in every facet of it. Yes, the kids need support, absolutely. But so do the case workers, and so do the families, and so do the foster families and so do the judges, the [Guardian Ad Litems]. I think everybody is overwhelmed in this system and dealing with complex and significant, traumatic things on a daily basis.”

He also recommends a measured approach. “Foster care is much more complicated and challenging than people know,” Robert+ says. “I think it’s better to take something slowly and not over-promise. And I think it’s especially important because many kids in the foster care system have a lot of experience with disappointment and expect promises not to be kept … It’s important to commit to what you can commit to and learn and grow as you go.”

As Grace Northridge seeks to serve well, they’re praying for opportunities to have a long-term impact on families and to build relationships with mutuality—ones that go beyond the church just being the one to meet an immediate need. “I pray a lot for people to have a bigger imagination for what their role in this might look like and not dismiss it because it seems too hard or too complicated,” Robert+ says. “And yet, at the same time, I do pray for a level of realism. … My hope is that people would not underestimate the cost, and yet my hope is that people would not be reticent to take their part within it.”

He adds, “As a leader, I’m praying a lot that our people would see the need and respond to it. … We are called to it collectively. … As a church, we are called, whether or not you have a sense of personal call to be a foster parent. We as a church are called to care for the vulnerable.”

Click here to learn how members of All Saints Dallas are serving foster and adoptive families.