By Vicky Stinziano
Our Story of Orphan Care
The turning point in our story of fostering and adopting came in 2005/2006. We were struggling to have a second child, and it was a difficult season. As we grew tired in our waiting, discussions about adoption would come up. Jamin was open-minded, but I was not. For me, adoption had always been a hard ‘no’, for reasons that don’t make much sense to me now.
It wasn’t until I began to be resigned that a second biological child might not be what the Lord had for us that my heart began to soften to other possibilities. My adamant refusal slowly dissolved into something of a ‘maybe’. We had no real direction and no specific calling, but we had started to contemplate and envision what it might look like to adopt a child.
The Lord did give us a second biological daughter, and then a third. All the while, He was opening our eyes to the desperate needs of the fatherless and transforming our reservations into an eager desire to adopt. We spent the next few years as fans of adoption, rooting for those who would get the opportunity to walk it out, growing in our appreciation for the profound spiritual significance of adoption, waiting for a word of instruction, and wondering if it would ever be for us.
Then, in November of 2010, during a church service where Foster Care was discussed, Jamin and I each separately felt the Lord say to engage there and to start right away. Foster Care had not been on our radar. We didn’t know if adoption would ever be in our future, but we knew that with over 500 kids in the Foster Care system at that time, we could be immediately loving and serving children in our own community. We started classes a few weeks later, and within a couple of months, we were holding our first foster daughter.
…He was opening our eyes to the desperate needs of the fatherless and transforming our reservations into an eager desire…
Every Child
As our eyes were being opened to the needs of the vulnerable, both globally and locally, we began noticing a much broader movement within the Church. We saw that not only was the Lord stirring in our own hearts, but people everywhere seemed to be awakening to the great need to attend to the orphan and a passion to participate in the work. Many at Summit were discerning a call to act on behalf of vulnerable children. God was moving in the hearts of His people to take up the cause of “the least of these.”
We sensed a need to press into what the Lord was clearly initiating in our church. We began meeting and having conversations about what it could look like to work together, not only to support one another, but also to help envision, equip, and empower others.
What initially felt more like a collective sharpened into an initiative, and it wasn’t long before the Lord gave us clarity of mission and vision that involved various “on-ramps” of engagement and care. The hope was to help connect people with the needs, with the resources, with each other, and most importantly, with the Lord. It was named The Every Child Initiative as a focused work from our church mission statement: Every Man, Woman, and Child.
Over the years, we’ve gained further clarity on how to connect needs with resources to meet them, and we’ve seen that there is a way for every single person to contribute and engage. We’ve added new ministry partners and we’ve watched the Lord cultivate a community of wrap-around care for families who have brought children into their home. A decade down the road, Summit is now steeped in a culture of awareness and care. It’s a beautiful picture of biblical community and hospitality.
What grace and goodness the Lord has lavished upon this congregation as Summit has embraced God’s heart for the vulnerable. We’ve seen the people of Summit being transformed as God’s people engage in an impossible task and watch the Lord do what only He can do.
“What grace and goodness the Lord has lavished upon this congregation as Summit has embraced God’s heart for the vulnerable. ”
And as for our family, our story… it’s unfinished. We now have three biological daughters, one adopted daughter, and two kids in permanent guardianship.
These past 11 years have radically changed us in more ways than we will probably ever know. It has been far more wonderful and difficult than we could have possibly anticipated when we made that first phone call to sign up to foster. I find myself deeply thankful for each part of this journey... the heartache of wanting a child, the pain of saying goodbye to children we thought would be ours forever, the joy of having kids come to know the goodness of God’s love for them, the access and relationships that we’ve gained within our community, the beauty of what adoption has ended up looking like for us, the depth that each detail of fostering and adopting revealed about truth of our own grace stories, the overwhelming blessing of trial and transformation, and the power of the Lord’s presence through all of it.
And really, that is our hope for even more people at Summit. That’s the vision for the future of The Every Child Initiative: that more might get to experience all that the Lord has for us when we are living out His command to care; that more of us would press in to the tragedy of the vulnerable and see the beauty Jesus creates from ashes.
Orphan Sunday
This weekend, at our Summit services, we will recognize Orphan Sunday. We will join with churches all around the world to seek the heart of God the Father and recognize the plight of the vulnerable child. We will take time to see how the Lord might be drawing us in.
Would you prepare your heart to ask for direction and to receive an answer? Would you consider what higher things He might have for you? Would you see how He might be inviting you to care for the least of these?
Let us not miss out on the blessings that He has for us as a people, and the experience of grace and power that we can only know when we lay our our lives down and embrace what it is to uphold the cause of the fatherless.
“Let us not miss out on the blessings that He has for us as a people...”
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27)
To read more about the Every Child Initiative, visit our website at www.everychildswfl.com.