Colorado Springs – Evangelical Christians want to ignite a movement in the nation’s churches to help the world’s 143 million orphans, a crisis that evangelicals are calling the “greatest social opportunity” in generations.
Some of the nation’s most prominent evangelicals, including Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, met at Focus on the Family for a conference to rekindle a long-standing Christian tradition of caring for orphans.
At the conference, which runs through Friday, 350 people – representatives of adoptive and foster-care agencies, churches and ministries – will discuss how to build alliances between state foster-care agencies, to minister to HIV/AIDS orphans and to teach churches to do child placement as a ministry.
In the United States, 500,000 children are in foster care and 115,000 children are available for adoption, Warren said. People in the United States adopt about 23,000 children annually from foreign countries.
Warren, whose Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has seen congregants adopt hundreds of children, said it is simply not good enough to talk about faith – live it. He posted several Bible passages on an overhead projector, including James 1:27: “Look after orphans and widows in their distress.”
