More Than Enough

Next Steps for My Church

Whether your church is just beginning or has been engaged in foster care for a long time, we’re here to help your congregation take its next steps.

You want to see your church caring for children and families in foster care in new or deeper ways.

But your energy as a pastor or volunteer is already pulled in so many different directions. You don’t have time to reinvent the wheel, creating or scaling yet another ministry. 

Let us connect you to the support and tools you need along the way.

“We’ve already felt ourselves take steps that I think save us years of mistakes and years of exploration, because there’s a movement of people who are . . . just incredibly generous with sharing the resources, sharing encouragement, and pointing us in the right direction.”

Kondo

Pastor in Indiana

Let’s get started together.

We can help answer three questions you’re probably asking at your church.

Your church has an essential role to play in providing relational, spiritual, and practical support for children and families in foster care. When the Body of Christ is rallying around families, loving on social workers, and caring for children, it is what it was always meant to be: the light of the world.

But our first goal as the Church is not recruitment or activism; it is discipleship.

Ultimately, we want to see the people of God deeply celebrating the love of God for us through the work of Jesus, and then widely demonstrating that love in our work on behalf of those around us.

As pastors and leaders, we aim to help the people of God live in ways that are decisively different and set apart (holy), and in ways that embody self-giving sacrifice (helpfulness) for people who are vulnerable in our churches and communities.

It’s within that context that we can engage our congregations in the work of foster care ministry. Not every church’s role will look the same, but every church can do something to help fill the biggest gaps in caring for children and families in foster care.

We’ve developed resources to equip you for this process of discipling your congregation and developing a foster care ministry at your church.

Get started with these resources:

Access resources to help your church live out its calling to care for vulnerable children and families while growing closer to Jesus.

Listen to this limited-series podcast designed to help grow your church’s foster care ministry—no matter where you are on the journey.

Read this strategic field guide designed to help your church rally around caring for vulnerable children and families.

It’s hard to know when you’ve reached your destination if you don’t know where you are.

When you know the foster care data for your community, you can set a micro goal for your church—a smaller goal for how your church wants to contribute to providing more than enough. Then you can track and celebrate your progress toward that goal.

That said, the gaps in caring for children and families in foster care are too big to be filled by any single congregation. They’ll only be filled by working together with other churches, organizations, and advocates where you live.

But who is caring for children and families in my community, and how can we do even more together?

We’ve created tools to answer these very questions, helping you discover where you are in the journey to more than enough—and who’s there with you.

Get started with these resources:

Find the data you need to understand foster care where you live and mobilize your congregation to care for children and families.

Explore who else in your community is working to provide more than enough for children and families, and help others find your church’s ministry.

Foster care in your community can feel like a puzzle. But more than enough for children and families before, during, and beyond foster care is possible.

Local networks of churches, organizations, and advocates working and growing together can assemble the foster care puzzle, filling the biggest gaps in caring for children and families.

But like any puzzle, you’ll run into some questions along the way.

Where’s the box top—do we know what this will look like when it’s complete? Do we have all the pieces, or are we missing some? How do we put the pieces together?

You don’t have to figure it out on your own.

Drawing on principles and tools used by leaders like you across the US—both within foster care and in other sectors—we’ve created resources to equip you with the box top, help you get the pieces in place where you live, and equip your community to put the pieces together.

Visit the Next Steps for My Community page to find out how, or start exploring these resources:

Explore the people, ideas, and tools in foster care that will help your community work together to fill the biggest gaps in caring for children and families.

Join a one-week online course designed to help you and other foster care leaders collaborate to reach more than enough for children and families where you live.

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