This Saturday (April 13), Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, will host an emergency summit to address the urgent foster care and adoption needs in America and around the world.
The one-day event, titled CHOSEN Conference, is expected to be the largest of its kind and will feature speakers Sadie Robertson Huff, Korie Robertson, Jack Graham, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Scott Turner, Gregg Matte, and Shane and Kasi Pruitt.
The CHOSEN Conference will equip attendees through plenary sessions and breakout sessions, teaching people how to provide children in need with loving homes, as well as how to support families who have made the choice to foster or adopt.
An estimated 400,000 children in our nation are in foster care. Of those in foster care, 100,000 children are waiting for a family to adopt them. Nearly 20,000 of those children will age out of the foster care system without ever receiving a forever family or home.
Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, Prestonwood’s associate pastor and pastor of apologetics and cultural engagement, told ChurchLeaders that the “why” of this conference can be found in Mark 9:33-37:
And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
“The greatest people in God’s eyes are those who do for others what they cannot do for themselves in Jesus’ name, and that is why we believe the CHOSEN Conference is essential,” Johnston said.
“In a Christian worldview, every child is a wanted child,” he added. “There is no such thing as an unwanted child in the eyes of God.”
Johnston went on to share that historians frequently point out that “children were held in little regard in late antiquity.” In other words, “listening to ‘children’s talk’ was thought to be a waste of time.”
, Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, will host an emergency summit to address the urgent foster care and adoption needs in America and around the world. ){kind=link}