Why I Wrote This Book
— Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 —
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Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting some short videos about my book, Adopted for Life. This first video explains why I wrote it — and why I hope you’ll read it.
Orphans Deserve Better
— Monday, June 29th, 2009 —
My friend Jedd Medefind and the Christian Alliance for Orphans are launching today a campaign called “Orphans Deserve Better,” to counter the message of the forthcoming Warner Brothers film “Orphan.” I’d like you to consider joining us.
The film “Orphan” is a horror movie about an infertile couple who find themselves with a deranged adoptee. You can imagine the storyline.
The “Orphans Deserve Better” campaign is not a boycott. It’s not a “culture war” screed against Hollywood. It’s an attempt to offer a counter-narrative to some of the worst stereotypes out there about orphans and adoption.
I remember when Maria and I were considering adoption (but before we’d told anyone else) and a friend was telling us about a couple of “wild” teenagers in a family he knew. “They’re adopted,” he said. “And you know how that goes.”
Well, I spend all week every week talking to families who’ve adopted and who are adopting and who’ve been adopted, and that’s just not “how it goes.” The stereotypes about “adopted children” simply aren’t true. This movie reproduces these stereotypes, in the saddest possible way.
Take the time to share with folks your counter-story about the glory of adoption (including your own in Christ).
Adoption isn’t a horror story. Orphans Deserve Better.
Orphan Care and the Great Commission Resurgence
— Friday, June 26th, 2009 —
On Wednesday of this week, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted my resolution “On Adoption and Orphan Care,” while my sons stood on the platform watching. It was one of the most emotionally weighty experiences of my life.
The resolution by itself isn’t going to spark an orphan care movement among Southern Baptists. Neither is my book, and neither are a thousand manifestoes. Only the Holy Spirit can do that as local churches start to embrace a vision for orphan care.
The resolution though was meant to prompt some questions. If one messenger in the Convention hall is moved to simply pray, “Lord, how would you have me minister to orphans?” then the resolution is a success, in my view. If one pastor is prompted to ponder how he could preach on adoption, or lead a foster care ministry among his folks, then the work is starting.
I was overwhelmed with emotion on the platform to see my sons, two little ex-orphans, looking out on a sea of yellow ballots as thousands of Southern Baptists affirmed that we want to be the people who love fatherless children. I realized that, in an alternative story, my boys would still be in an orphanage, not knowing even the name of Christ Jesus. But here they are, at the Southern Baptist Convention, calling by their very presence the world’s largest Protestant denomination to recognize there are hundreds of thousands of children as helpless and alone as they once were.
There’s a long way to go. Literally one day after the resolution vote, I received correspondence from an employee of a Baptist agency saying that adoption and orphan care doesn’t fit under the “umbrella” of “evangelism and missions.” Tell that to the thousands of Southern Baptist children who know Christ today because they are growing up in Christian homes, rather than in institutions or on the streets. And tell it to Jesus who says something very different to us (James 1:27). A Great Commission Resurgence will mean moving beyond short-sighted definitions of “evangelism and missions” as rallies and revivals.
But something is afoot among Christian families and churches of virtually every kind. God is calling the people of Christ to see the face of Jesus in the faces of orphans in North America and around the world. Southern Baptists have affirmed our belief in the authority of Scripture, and the Bible tells us pure religion is defined by care for the fatherless.
We’ve been defined by our commitment to evangelism, and there is no greater field as “white unto harvest” right now as children in orphanages, group homes, and the foster care system, children who don’t know a parent’s love and who don’t know the name of Jesus.
When Satan wars against children, we should be the ones who have compassion on them, even as Jesus did and does.
My prayer is that twenty years from now there are thousands of Southern Baptist pastors, missionaries, and church leaders who started their lives as orphans, now preaching the gospel of God their Father.
The Fury of the Found
— Thursday, June 25th, 2009 —
The Fury of the Found from Russell Moore on Vimeo.
This sermon, “The Fury of the Found: How the Gospel Redirects Our Rage” (Rev 12:7-17), was originally preached on Sunday, June 21, 2009 at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. You can find more sermons and other audio from Dr. Moore here.
A Fathers’ Day Reflection
— Sunday, June 21st, 2009 —
Somebody please help me. I’m really, really depressed, and I don’t know what to do.
As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know I was depressed until a study came out, and I’m at high, high risk. An article by Vanderbilt and Florida State sociology professors, based on data from the National Survey of Families and Households, has concluded that parents are more susceptible to depression than non-parents.
According to the Sacramento Bee’s report, “Parents experience significantly higher levels of depression than grown-ups who don’t have children.”
I still thought I was okay, since I’m a reasonably happy man. That is, until I saw the definition of the problem. According to the Bee: “The researchers suggest that worry is a lifelong cost of having children.” And don’t think it gets better when they leave the house: “Parents of grown children (whether they live at home or have moved out) and parents without custody of minor children exhibit more signs of depression than other parents.”
If this is the “cost” of parenting, and one wishes to call it “anxiety” or “depression,” so be it. At times, I suppose it is, and if so, most of us will pay it gladly. The question that must be asked, though, is why do parents worry this way?
When Doves Try
— Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 —
When Doves Try from Russell Moore on Vimeo.
This sermon, “When Doves Try: The Terrible Tribunal of the Spirit of Christ” (Jn 16:4-15), was originally preached on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. You can find more sermons and other audio from Dr. Moore here.
Adopted for Life: A Diavlog with Russell Moore and Justin Taylor
— Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 —
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Chick Flicks and the Spirit of Christ?
— Thursday, June 11th, 2009 —
To this day, the most controversial radio show I’ve ever guest-hosted for the Albert Mohler Program was on the potential spiritual pitfalls of Christian romance novels. You should see the incendiary emails that lit up my screen, the letters that filled my mailbox! But I stand by every word.
Let’s face it.
The vast majority of what we call romance novels aren’t literature, and they’re not meant to be. Many in the genre are designed to do one specific thing, and that’s to evoke a fantasy for women of an idealized man. For some women, this idealized man is a sexually rapacious predator who will sweep her off her feet and up the stairs. For some women, this idealized man is a Christian leader who will pray with her, and lead the waiter to faith in Christ before proposing to her and whisking her off to the mission field.
One’s explicit and lust-evoking and the other is not. But both are seeking to create dissatisfaction, in many cases, with the real-life man in the La-Z-Boy across the room. Both, in many cases, are seeking to feed off of the temptation to covetousness and discontentment.
But I’m a man so what do I know? At least that’s the question the romance novelists emailing me would typically offer.
Beth Spraul is not a man. She’s a wife, a mother, and a counselor. She’s also one of my favorite former students. Beth has addressed the related issue of the potential dangers of “chick flicks” with the women in her congregation. She’s thinking of films such as Sleepless in Seattle or You’ve Got Mail (or was that the same movie? I don’t know).
Read Beth’s article here, women and pastors who minister to women (that would be all of you in ministry), and think it over.
If you’re outraged by it, remember, I didn’t write it. But don’t lambaste Beth, especially if you’re a man. Her husband is a high-powered environmentalist so he could declare my home a protected wildlife refuge quicker than you can say “Fabio.”
