How People of Faith Can Support Vulnerable Kids and Families

How can we get people of faith more involved in helping vulnerable kids and families and supporting foster and kinship families? Join our discussion with Jason Johnson and Shmuly Yanklowitz. Pastor Johnson is with The Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) and is both a foster and adoptive dad.  Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder & President of YATOM: The Jewish Foster & Adoption Network. Rabbi Yanklowitz has twice been named one of America’s Top Rabbis by Newsweek and is a foster dad.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How can churches, synagogues, mosques, and other faith communities step forward to help families?
• What are the different ways people of faith can help?
• How do we get the rabbis, ministers, and leaders on board?
• Better for the church or synagogue
• What are the biggest obstacles you see for leadership to want to embrace this ministry or program?
• How to get people involved?
• What are the biggest obstacles for people wanting to get involved?
• How can places of faith circle around grandparents and other relatives caring for children?

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Welcome everyone to Creating a Family. Talk about foster, adoptive, and kinship care.
I'm Dawn Davenport. I am the host of this show, as well as the director of the
nonprofit Creating a Family dot org. We also have Tracy Whitney with us today,
because, as you probably have heard, I will be retiring. And as I shuffle off into
the pasture, Tracy is going to be the one who takes my place. And you guys are
gonna be in such incredibly good hands because Tracy has been with us for nine
years and in many ways she is also, people think of me as the voice of creating a
family, but the truth is so is Tracy because Tracy has done most of the writing of
our articles as well as the newsletter. And she also is the heart of our really
large online support group, which you guys know about creating a family. No, facebook
.com /groups /creatingafamily. And one other quick reminder is that we are now on
YouTube. Actually, we've been on YouTube, but we've only been on the audio part of
YouTube. We are now on video on YouTube. So if you're curious about the behind the
scenes, or if you wanna see our wonderful experts. As they speak, or Tracy or I,
you can pop over to creating a family on YouTube and actually see us. So there you
go. All right, today we're going to be talking about a topic near and dear to both
Tracy and my hearts, and that is how people of faith can support vulnerable children
and families. We're going to have with us today to talk about that. Jason Johnson,
he is the national director of the Pure Religion Project with the Christian Alliance
for Orphans, and you may have heard him call CAFO, but in fact it is, but it
stands for the Christian Alliance for Orphans. He has 15 years of pastoral
experience, and he is both a foster and an adoptive dad. He coaches churches and
organizational teams on strategies and best practices related to caring for vulnerable
children and families. We also have Rabbi Schmule Jankiewicz. He is the founder and
president of YATOM, the Jewish Foster and Adoption Network. Rabbi Jankiewicz has twice
been named one of America's top rabbis by Newsweek and has been named by the Ford
as one of the 50 most influential Jews and one of the most inspiring rabbis in
America. Rabbi Jankiewicz is the author of 28 books on Jewish ethics and his
writings have appeared in outlets as diverse as The New York Times, The Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Atlantic. And yes, I'm going to
say that is a very diverse group. He has served as a speaker at the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and a Rothschild's fellow in Cambridge, UK. He and his
wife are also foster parents. Before we jump in, let me say that we talked about
it ahead of time, and both Jason and Smuley prefer that we use their first name,
so that's what I'm going to do. So welcome, Jason and Smuley, to creating a family.
As I mentioned, this is a topic near and dear to our hearts. So thank you so much
for joining us today. - I will thank you, Don and Tracy, good to be here.
- Wonderful to be with you all. - All right, we know faith communities honestly are
some of the best places to inspire people to step up to support families and kids
who are struggling. And specifically, they can, and I would say, should be a good
source for finding foster parents just to cut through the chase and say, "That is
another great place to find foster parents." But as we discuss, it doesn't stop
there. There is so much more that faith communities can do, both to support families
who are struggling and then to support families that are beyond the struggling stage
and are needing intervention at that point. So let's start. I'm going to start by
saying, I'm going to ask each of you how you see churches, synagogues, mosques, or
other communities of faith stepping forward to help families. Schmidle, let me start
with you. What do you see as far as what churches, in your case,
synagogues, what other communities of faith are doing? Well, I could speak about this
for hours, but let me try to condense it briefly. Let me start by zooming out to
say that we all know bad religion. Bad religion inspires hate and division,
extremism and fundamentalism. There's tons of bad religion in the world. But I'm a
big believer that good religion is the best pathway forward to addressing the
loneliness epidemic, to addressing the breakdown of community in general, where people
are having trouble dating and finding life partners, people are having trouble finding
places for spirituality and for human connection. And most certainly on the pathway
towards building families, whatever that family looks like, I think that houses of
worship and religious communities at large are a crucial piece in the puzzle.
And I think that's for a few reasons. One is that it really is a heroic pathway
who care for vulnerable children who have experienced neglect or abuse or trauma. It
requires abnormal levels of commitment to be a part of that journey.
Secondly, we need communities to raise children. We can't raise them in isolation in
justice families. That will create narcissists. That will create people that think
their life is about themselves if they're raised simply with that family unit is
everything and not community. And thirdly, I really believe whatever we want to call
God, that the humility that emerges from understanding how small we are and yet how
responsible we are is so crucial to take responsibility for the millions of
vulnerable children on the planet today. And so I can speak more specifically about
the Jewish community. But let me pause there, because that's kind of my, my first
remarks about the power, power of good religion to play an important healing role
here. Thank you, Jason. How about you? What are you seeing as far as what churches
are doing to be a force for good to help families, especially those that are
struggling? Yeah, I think what we've seen in the last particular decades, 15 years
is and increased awareness and focus on what's happening in our local communities.
For several generations, for all of ages, the church has been actively engaged in
caring for the vulnerable. And some of the primary application of that, we could
argue in the last 30, 40, 50 years, has been largely global in focus from a US
-based perspective. And what we've seen is a growing awareness of what's happening
locally, domestically, and then right in our own backyard and increased awareness of
vulnerable families in our community and understanding that as the church in our
city, what does it look like for us to be a presence and a force for good and
for renewal in our city and becoming aware of this dynamic of vulnerable families
and the issue of foster care, once you become aware of it, what we've seen churches
realize is you can never not be aware of it anymore. You can never unknow what you
now know. And so we're seeing churches really begin to take strategic approaches
towards what does that look like for us to care well for families on the continuum
from preventing families from finding themselves in the system to intervening when the
system does get involved in traditional foster care spaces to looking downstream at
how do we serve and support youth who are quote -unquote aging out of the system
and being sent off into a world with relatively little infrastructure of support.
And the common thread throughout all of that is really being driven by an
understanding of what we fundamentally believe in the church is true, which is that
God is a God who has moved towards us. And in response to that, we want to be
the kind of people who collectively together, as Rabbi has said, not in isolation,
but as a gathered community and capacity of the body, we have the unique opportunity
as one of the most centrally unified gathered community of people on the face of
the planets to affect good together by moving towards some of the very places that
God himself would move towards. And the application of that takes on various forms
from community to community and church to church. But it's just very beautiful to
see a collective kind of movement as a whole from a macro level towards that and
communities all over the country through local churches. I'm so glad you said the
part about, that's what it seems to me is that places of faith or places where
people are coming together who have a like mind, and that's why there's such a
powerful place to find support for vulnerable families.
And as you both said, I'm so appreciative of the fact that we're looking at the
whole continuum because it doesn't begin once the what's the family falls apart. It
needs to begin not just with the members of that community. Although the members of
that community too, it's not that people of faith are immune from having family
struggles. So anyway, yes. You mentioned some of the practical implementation,
Jason, of those taking those beliefs and putting them into action, people moving
towards other people in vulnerable situations. I'd love to hear from both of you how
individual people within those communities are moving towards those vulnerable people
in your observations. Yeah, so ultimately what we believe to be true that hovers
over all of the faith community is that we're not all called to do the same thing,
but everyone can do something. This is the unique diversity of the people of God
coming together with their unique gifts and even places in Scripture describe this in
terms of a physical body, some are ears, eyes, hands, feet, toes. If we were all
right feet, we would run around in a circle all day long and look very busy, but
ultimately be wildly ineffective and we would exhaust ourselves, we would just be
running in circles. So, the beauty of the collection of the people of God is the
diversity coming together in unity. And the application of that diversity is such
that some necessarily need to open their home and bring children in.
And frankly, some do not. I'm not adverse to saying to some,
it'd probably be best if you didn't bring a child into your home. No one, you can
barely feed yourself and tie your own shoes, but that doesn't mean you have a great
place to serve. And so really opening people up to the creativity that God has
given them, the unique experiences, the educations, maybe that they have, the
professions, the passions. For example, I tell a story of a barbecue restaurant owner
that I met in Kansas City several years ago. This is a guy who was very clear
about what he was not called to do, which was to open his home to children, but
he was very confident in what he was capable of doing, which was delivering the
best barbecue in Kansas City to families who were welcoming children into their homes
or catering events that were serving these families for free. And so this is a guy
who said, I know what I can't do, but I know what I can do. I can leverage my
business and my passion for doing this for the good of this community. And it's
more than just bringing a meal, although that's incredibly important. In that bringing
of a meal, it's communicating to these families, your scene, your loved, your cared
for, and we're here for you. And so that's just one example of the creativity and
the diversity that we're seeing happen all over the place. - Yeah, I love that. So
in our Get Home Family Fellowship, what we're trying to address is a lack of foster
families. There's a need for more, and we try to incentivize families to participate
by giving them community to process with, holding their hand through getting licensed
and educating them in the process, and potentially giving them a stipend if they
need the support as well. But we're very clear also, as the pastor said, that we're
not looking to convince people, yes, incentivize, but there are plenty of people, as
was said, who are not right for this. And so we're not looking to persuade as much
as inspire the right, the right people and the right families to participate. And
it's not only if they have the financial means to do this, many people don't have
the character traits to do this, to be really patient and understanding, you know,
someone might be better equipped to offer something else. But I just find that once
you create spaces for participation with the diversity of types of participation,
angels appear from all over the place. And I'll share one with you. We had these
two foster brothers living in our house and we hired a babysitter who we had never
had before. We got her from an app and she came and within like two minutes, these
boys were on her back riding her like a horse around the house. And I said, "Oh
my gosh, where do we find this woman? like these boys were so difficult. And within
minutes, she had, and I pulled her aside, I said, look, this looks amazing. But I
have to tell you, this is going to be a hard day. You know, these boys have a
lot of trauma and behavioral issues and be really hard. And she whispered back to
me, she said, I was once a foster kid too. And I'm ready for this. And there's
people with stories all around us who can really tap into their own journey to pay
it forward. That's beautiful. And if I could just echo that, you know, one thing
that, that I have found to be true and we often say is, in large part, I'm
convinced people want their life to count for something, they want to be spending
their lives in meaningful, impactful ways. And the issue for them is not so much
that I, I don't care. It's more often I do care. I just don't know how it's a
rabbi's point when, When we begin to lay out the diversity in the creativity of
opportunities to wrap around and support families and children to open your home or
to wrap around and support those who are, it is so often the case that it is not
a matter of convincing. It's simply a matter of providing the clarity people need to
act on what's already in their heart. - Love that. You raised such a good point
that In addition, I think people think they want to help, but they're afraid of
getting in over their head. So being able to give, as you have both just said,
the diversity of things that could be helpful, coming in and doing or running a
load of wash and putting up clothes, more importantly, or,
you know, that somebody could say, well, I could do that. Anyway, yeah. Shamily, I
interrupt you. What were you going to say? No, that's wonderful. And I very much
agree with that point. And if you think back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, yes,
we do have some basic needs to care for ourselves, but there are these higher needs
that all humans share to find purpose and meaning and connection. And I really think
that faith communities can be the best of providing those pathways. You know, we've
heard it before, but just to remind us, when a baby is born, their fists are
clenched, and if you see somebody die, they die with their hands wide open. As if
to say, when a baby comes in the world, they don't know yet that they need people.
But everyone who dies has their hands reached out, almost like reaching out for
people, knowing how dependent we are on others. And we can only live for so long
in isolation. And I think the more that we can help people find their passion and
purpose in in service the better. And it strikes me that all of this must come
from the outflow of a really connected community at the ground level.
So if you're in a faith community and you don't connect with on just a regular
person to person level with the person sitting next to you on Sundays or Saturdays,
then you don't have the opportunity to listen to what they may have to offer and
tell them of needs that you know about and vice versa. And so if you don't have
that community for yourself, it's really hard to help them and help yourself see the
value of providing community for those who are vulnerable. That's right. It's
incredibly difficult to know that you are an ear if you're disconnected from the
rest of the body, or even if you do know that you are an arm.
what we see in people is they hear a kind of crisis level language around the
child welfare and family welfare space, of course, which there is a crisis. And when
the crisis language is paired with their sense of,
I don't feel like I have what it takes to make a meaningful difference, or who am
I to really make a dent in this overwhelming problem, then if I don't know where
to start or if I can make a difference, I'm not going to start and I'm not going
to attempt to. And so I think what we have the opportunity to do and what a lot
of people are being really motivated by and are coming to really understand and be
inspired by is every act of engagement, every act of service is meaningful and
significant. Even what we might deem the most simple things carry loads of
significance when connected with all the other moving parts.
So one might say, really, catering barbecue to families? I mean, is that really
solving the crisis? No, it's not solving the crisis. But it is making a meaningful
impact in connection with all the other people that are doing the other things that
collectively are making a significant difference. And there's a lot of freedom and
understanding my limitations but then the empowerment that comes and doing the thing
that I'm uniquely designed to do. - Love that. You know, religious communities in
many ways are struggling like our society is struggling. There is political
polarization which is really difficult to manage. There's economic instability and
concern. There's technologies and new forms of entertainment that religious communities
can't compete with and short attention spans There's a growing scarcity mentality that
you know, there's not enough for me and I'm missing out and Given all that I think
this can't be framed simply as charity Just being altruistic but rather as a pathway
to our flourishing that are thriving and flourishing as people is a part of feeling
a society that we're connected to, and a part of, and I think as pastors said so
well, like, this is not all on the systemic level. There are people who will work
on the systemic level to try to solve problems that the root causes. But most of
us cannot and should not work on systemic levels. We should work on direct service
levels, and just inspire more love and compassion into the spaces where we exist.
Well, that segues beautifully into my next question about leaders. So when we're
moving out of that systemic and taking it on as the personal, and here's what we
can do, here's what I should do, how do you motivate those people in your circles,
fellow rabbis, fellow pastors, fellow leaders in other faith communities, how are you
getting them engaged and how do you see them responding to that? It's - The great
question, you know, at a micro level for the individual church, the individual pastor
in a local community, you know, they're juggling a lot. There's 20, 25 things on
their plates any given day and then the unexpected, you know. I woke up on Monday,
not expecting to get the notice that I'm now doing a funeral on Thursday, you know,
those kinds of things. So there's a lot on their plates. And by and large, We live
in a pandemic of busyness for the average person and family and our faith
communities and our churches are not immune to that. And so often the case with an
individual church, the response that organizations who are advocating for this might
get from church leaders might be, we love what you're doing and we're fully on
board. We just can't imagine adding more to our plates. We're already so busy and
spread thin. That is exactly what we hear. Yeah. And so how do we help solve for
that? You know, part of how we hope solve for that is not by doubling down on,
but don't you understand how urgent the need is and all the Bible verses that talk
about how God cares about this. I think, I think the average leader says, no, I
get that. I totally get that. I'm just unclear on how we could actually do this
well in a sustainable way given the current demands that we have. And so even going
back to what we've previously talked about, recognizing none of this is done well in
isolation, it all happens best in the context of community. And so what we're seeing
with at CAFO and a lot of the work that we're doing in local communities around
the country is helping to really catalyze and convene local collaborative networks,
churches and faith communities and organizations and community partners working together
and sharing the burden in a sense for churches in each individual partner
recognizing, okay, the problem is not all on me to solve, but if our church can
find our best and highest use and then work in collaboration and integration with
other churches and organizations in our local community who are also finding their
best and highest used, then perhaps together we can make a more meaningful
difference. And so the invitation to an individual church at a micro level is not
to do everything and be overwhelmed by it. The invitation is find the thing that
you might be best at. And it might already, frankly, be something that your church
is already doing or a part of. It might require starting nothing new and adding
nothing new to your plate, but do it in the context of collaboration. And there's a
multiplicative effect to the work that you're doing when we're doing it together. And
we often see that that solves for, it's not that we don't care, it's just we don't
know how. And now we're providing clarity. Okay. Now we understand where we can go
and what we can do. And it's taking a step back from the, well, we can't imagine
adding more to our plate. And instead, it actually feels like, actually, we feel
like we can actually start to make a meaningful difference. And it doesn't feel
burdensome. It actually feels lighter because we're doing it together. Many hands make
late work. Yeah, exactly. Jason, can you give us an example of what you meant by a
church is already doing something that can be applied to this different ministry.
Yeah, yeah. So I'll very, very briefly. And crude illustration might be the river
analogy of there's children and families flowing down the river, and there's this
midstream point of engagement where we might call something has happened and it
necessitates intervention. There's the downstream, the further downstream children and
families make it, we recognize some of the social issues that result there, but then
there's the upstream issues of how are these families getting in the stream in the
first place? And what can we do to prevent and so there's multiple points of
engagement on this continuum and by and large faith communities Historically have been
involved at different points of this continuum Doing good work perhaps serving the
homeless in their community perhaps serving in crisis pregnancy situations of mentoring
in their local communities, they're doing a lot of these things already just in
isolation and not understanding the interconnectedness of all of these different
things. And so in many ways, it's less about telling the church, you're not doing
enough, you need to do more. And it's more about helping the church discovery and
the good things they're already doing and the values and the vision that already
exist in their church and how to actually build capacity in those and those things
that they're already doing. Let me take a short break to remind you that we need
your questions to be submitted to us so that we can answer them on the, I was
going to say new, it's not new, the weekend wisdom podcast. It's a couple of years
old now, but the weekend wisdom podcast, that is where we take one of your
questions Can we answer it? So please send us your questions. You can send them to
info @creatingathamily .org. You don't have to put weekend wisdom in it.
We'll know if you send a question in that that's what it's for. So now, back to
the show.
Shemaleigh, how are you engaging with other leaders in your faith community, but also
other faith communities around you? Yeah, I would say I'm largely failing failing in
that. It has been very difficult to get this bumped up on the communal discourse
priority list. The Jewish community is flooded with institutional concerns and rising
anti -Semitism and security needs and other clauses that have been at the forefront
and this is increasingly challenging. What's also increasingly challenging is that I
think there's two identities that are dominating today. The first identity is the
political identity in a hyper politicized era. And the second is the consumer
identity that people love to buy stuff. All the time there's like an Amazon package
showing up at the door and there's an Instacart showing up, you know, somebody's
walking down the road with a bag or something. Everywhere we go, political and
consumption. And I think the third identity that's missing out is the member of
society, the member of a broader community, the arts, the culture, the world of
service, and of faith. And I think where style of welfare has a unique angle is
almost everything has been politicized today. And I think child welfare has been
politicized less than many other causes, in a way that people really can feel like
it's an escape from some of that polarization that our society is plagued with. And
so I try to inspire our faith communities to show how central this has been to
modern and ancient Jewish consciousness. I talk about modern stories like Julius
Rosenwald who built 5 ,000 schools for black children in the Deep South over 100
years ago when there weren't schools. I talk about Janus Korsak who in the Holocaust
was leading an orphanage and was a pediatrician, and he had the chance to escape,
but he went with his 192 orphans all the way down to the Treblinka gas chambers
and was killed. I talk about how our greatest prophet, Moses Moshe, was himself a
foster child who were adopted into the Egyptian empire, and how one of our greatest
women heroes and prophets, Esther, herself was fostered or adopted by Mordechai, her
uncle. The stories that are built into this history that can inspire people to
participate, you know, when you look at around 700 ,000 kids in America who pass
through the foster care system every year, you know, over 4 ,000 at any given
moment, and you look at especially the older ones who age out of the system in the
pipeline where about two -thirds end up going towards prison, homelessness, or human
trafficking. You see something that is not only about charity towards the individual,
but about a healing of a society. When we leave the most vulnerable behind, it
hurts us all. After the Holocaust, the Jewish community was very involved given how
many Jewish orphans there were. And now it's a different reality where we're asking
our families not to bring in Jewish kids. They're non -Jewish kids almost always. And
there's a growing interest, But I admit that I am failing to capture the minds and
hearts to really advance this to the next level. And to all the listeners out
there, I'm open to your ideas. Shabilly, one thing that I'm not saying that I have
been any more successful than you, but one thing that I'm very aware of and that I
have found church leaders, and I would assume synagogue leaders the same, is that
It's good for the institution. It is good for the church. It is good for the
community to have a shared mission. It brings people together. It brings people
closer to the church. And just from a very simplistic, if you are in service with
somebody, I'll go back to my example of washing clothes. So if two people go over
and pick up the clothes and are washing them and go back together, They get to
know each other. So when they see each other on their day of worship, they have
something to talk about. Yes. I mean, just from it just seems to me from a very
practical level. I mean, this and I grant you that there are so many programs and
so many ministries that are competing. So I definitely get that. And that's that's
more what I have seen is. Yeah, but just so important. Yeah. There's one thing
which is that one of the things they say in clergy school is your job is to
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted. You know, but one of the challenges
is, one of the challenges many people who come to places of prayer are coming
because of their own woundedness. And many of the people who feel life is great,
you know, and are really thriving might not show up as much. And those are
sometimes the people that need to be leaned on more. Now, it's not a total binary.
Oh, there's the wounded, and then there's those who are thriving. Of course, we all
have our shadow and our light, and we all have our own woundedness. But I think
that exactly like you said, if people showed up with a sense that this is a place
where I'm coming to serve, a place of shared mission, I'll be very powerful to
transform our institutions as such as opposed to just a place of healing for those
who are wounded and don't have any more space in their life to serve. I'm curious
if Pastor experiences that as well. Don, you bring up a great point.
And so much of the advocacy and the language for a long time, and understandably
so, has been highlighting the Delta between the growing need and the lack of
involvement. And there's not enough foster parents. There's not enough wraparound
support, not enough services. And the Delta is getting bigger and bigger. And that's
been the primary leading language to try to motivate people. And actually I actually
find that to be quite counter intuitive and counterproductive because just the
psychology of people says, tell me what the majority of people are doing and I'm
gonna go with that. And what we've been saying for a long time is the majority of
people are not getting involved. And I think the average consumer to Rabbi's point
in our faith communities says, well, there must be a reason why the majority aren't,
and I'm going to go with the majority. And so I wonder if, and a lot of the work
that we do with organizations who are working with churches and faith communities is
helping them to think through what type of language and advocacy might be more
inspirational and impactful to to their audiences. And perhaps rather than highlighting
how much is not happening, what if we spent more time celebrating what is happening?
And we started to invite people into this kind of aspirational end state. This is
what we're aiming towards. And here's a story of a family. Here's a story of a
faith community. I was just with a large organization in Florida the last couple of
days, and we had a pastor that's connected to this organization share a little bit
about their experience. And I asked them to do it, I asked them to share nothing
about the impact that their involvement has had on children and families. We all
know that the beneficiaries of the work that we are doing ultimately trickles down
to children and families and communities. That's who we serve. But I think there's
also a parallel beneficiary that's equally important to highlight. and it's not just
those that we are serving. It's also those who are doing the serving to your point,
Don. So the question is, the question that will never be asked by a faith leader
because it sounds so pretentious and self -centered to ask but it's an important one
that we answer is how does our involvement in this not just benefit the children
and families we're serving but how does it benefit us as a church. And so I asked
this pastor to share how their involvement as a church has doubled back on their
church in terms of discipleship and formation and growth and connection and that
shared mission. And he just he just beautifully told stories of how going back to
what we'd previously talked about how they have seen just people rise up out of the
woodworks who have said, now that there's clear paths for me to engage,
I'm gonna step into this. And he said, they've just seen people engage in a shared
mission that had they not brought this mission into their church, that their church
would have completely missed out on this good gift that they've seen and how it's
doubled back on them in terms of formation and growth and connection and supporting
one another in ways that they otherwise would have missed on. So I think it's
important that we are obviously always communicating how opening our homes to become
foster parents, wrapping around and supporting those who are doing that, engaging at
different points of the continuum, are serving children and families as the direct
beneficiaries. It is equally important, I think, that we are communicating how those
who are doing the serving are impacted as well. - Yeah, and the church or the
synagogue or the mosque who is doing the serving or who is setting up the program
is benefited as well. - Absolutely, and I would say just on a personal level, and
I'm sure Rabbi can test to this too, our family through our foster care journey and
adoption journey, we've experienced some very difficult things that Frankly, the world
would say, no, the goal of your life is to purposely avoid those kinds of things.
Why would you intentionally move towards those things? But it is through some of the
beautiful things and some of the very broken things that our family has received
good gifts that we otherwise would have completely missed out on. - Amen. - And so,
of course our family has benefited from this. That's not why we do it. But it's
important that, for example, for us communicating with families that are considering,
perhaps, opening their home, I want them to hear. Yeah, it can be very difficult
and it's very disruptive and it's an odd space. But let me tell you how
unbelievably enriching it's been for our family and our kids to grow up in this odd
space. We just did a podcast not long ago with the boy was the youngest person
we've ever had and his mother was on as well. Otherwise, we would not have, we
don't generally have anybody below the age of 18, but he was 15, but he was the
foster brother and they have written a book and he was talking about how he and
his siblings, the siblings already in the family have benefited and how hard It was,
you know, that there were hard things and that there were good things about his
experience of being a foster brother. Something that I have seen work successfully is
asking the church or the synagogue or any place of faith if they would host a
training session for foster parents and stress that one of the options is to be a
respite provider, to not be a foster parent, but to come and be able to support.
And it seems to be an easy way where the synagogue might just be offering their
space, therefore that's an easy ask. And if they would help publicize it amongst
their community, that seems to be an especially the part about stressing that we're
just seeking respite providers, which there's a huge need for. So anyway, have you
seen, have you had success with that or have you seen others? Shamir, do you have
success with that? Yeah, thank you for sharing that and I love that. And what we
ask our family fellows to do, so our fellows are those who are just starting their
journey. They don't know if they want to adopt or foster or if they want to do
anything, but they want to explore it for nine months and we educate them and give
them community. And what we ask of them is not just that they get licensed 'cause
that might work for some, it might not for others, but they become ambassadors in
their community. And so they're the people that then approach their local community
around the country and hold those types of info sessions. So we train them to be
able to facilitate those conversations. So yes, the model you're talking about is
very important to us. Jason, how about your experience with that as a way to have
a community of faith dip their toe into the water of supporting foster care?
Yeah. With respite, and it might vary a bit from state to state, but it's
relatively more longer term extended babysitting, and it's more than babysitting.
For families that fostering is it oftentimes more than 72 hours, maybe a few days
where they're needing someone to watch the kids. It requires a respite provider. In
many cases, and it varies a little bit from state to state, that still requires a
pretty extensive amount of training, almost to the point where you're almost just one
or two steps removed from being a full -on licensed foster parent, but that's a
necessary space. And it's a space in which families or individuals can become respite
providers and again, provide a practical support. We can watch your children for an
extended period of time to give you a break, but again, it communicates more than
that. It's yes, we will watch your children, but the bigger picture is you're loved
in your scene and we're here for you and you're not doing this alone. But I would
also say that one thing that we work with churches and communities on quite often
is really establishing a tiered on ramping model, where if a tier one might be
lowest hanging fruits, we often say tier one could be simple but significant,
obviously, but almost harder to not do it kind of stuff, right? Like it'd be easier
for you to not tell me all the reasons you can't do it because in that amount of
time, you could have just gotten it done, you know, like praying or for families or
bringing meals for families. And then tier two being maybe higher levels of
commitment and time and closer proximity to families and relationships. And then tier
three, for me, would be anything that requires kind of higher level extensive amounts
of training, obviously becoming a certified foster parent or in many cases, a respite
provider. That's, it's a pretty extensive process or CASA or a number of things and
and for communities to have on ramping opportunities that meet people where they are
and help them take their best next steps I think is incredibly important. Giving
them a tiered approach or giving them steps that they that that feel how like how
you said that it's rather than argue with me it's easier to do it yeah yeah yeah
you know it's like if you have children you know I was gonna say it doesn't work
with my children, I'm just going to say I've used that." They argue with you for
15 minutes about unloading the dishwasher. You know what? In the 15 minutes you
spent, you could have had it done in the first five and been hanging out doing
whatever you want the last 10. It would have just been easier for you to do it.
And the tiered on ramp is really a reflection of if everyone can do something and
we all have unique parts to play, we want to have models that reinforce that and
next steps to reinforce that. But it's not a ranking system. It's not tier three as
varsity and tier one as a freshman B team. And maybe one day you'll be good
enough. Not at all. For some people, tier one is their best and highest use. But
what it does do is it meets people where they are and it helps them take their
next steps.
Let me take a break for just a moment to ask a favor of you. We need your
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you can click Write a Review, and you can do it that way. On Spotify, to leave a
rating, a star rating, again, you go to the actual podcast page, Creating a Family,
and at the bottom, there is a star rating there. To leave a review, to write a
review, you actually have to go to the page for this episode and then at the
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you just leave a comment. We will read all the previews, we will look at all the
star ratings and we would really appreciate your help so thank you so much in
advance and now back to talking about faith communities and what they can do to
help families that are vulnerable.
So, for those of us that are sitting every Sunday or Saturday and trying to figure
out are we an ear, are we a leg, trying to figure out what is our best,
or what is the most practical thing that we can do, Shmueli, can you start with
just a couple very practical examples of things that people can start doing right
now that would maybe put them on that on ramp? ramp. Okay, so I'll leave the
practical the pastor. I tend to like the world of theory more than practical.
So the first thing I would invite people to think about are the questions what is
my passion and what's my purpose. If I'm not aligned with my passion then I will
burn out from some path that's not authentic to that you know from from where I'm
best aligned. I think pastor articulated that really well earlier. So what is my
unique passion that if I'm really tired I'll still want to do it? Yes. Secondly,
where is my power? Where am I uniquely aligned to serve where someone else is not
aligned? So that's the first framework I would put out. People ask where is my
where is my passion and purpose and where's my power? The second I would ask is
what's your what we call in Hebrew your your avoda? What's your spiritual work And
where do you need to go in the world to do your spiritual work right now, to grow
in your character and the dozens of character traits? Because being involved in
fostering will expose those vices and those virtues. And it opens this up,
this whole world of potentially thriving on that next level. So one question is
about outward looking, passion, purpose, power. And one question is about inward and
inner life and where what one wants to achieve But here's the last thing I'll say
and again, I'm saying nothing to your question about practical
Yeah, we're gonna tee you up Jason It's just very relative to for me But the next
I think is that it is not hard to live without making choices The world will make
choices for us if we don't make choices The world will tell us what to buy and
what job to do and how to spend our time. So I want to share this short story.
There's a man who died. When he realized he had died, he saw God coming closer
with a suitcase in hand. Here's the dialogue between God and dead man. God, all
right, son, it's time to go. Man, so soon I got a lot of plans still. God, I'm
sorry, but it's time to go. Man, so what do you have in the suitcase? God, your
belongings. Man, my Belongings, you mean my things, my clothes, my money? God,
those things were never yours, they belong to the earth. Man, is it my memories?
God, no, they belong to time. Man, is it my talent? God, no,
they belong to divine providence. Man, is it my friends, my family? God, no son,
they belong to the path you traveled. Man, is it my wife, my children? God, no,
they belong to your heart. Man, then it must be my body. God, no, no,
it belongs to dust. Man, then surely it's my soul. God, you are sadly mistaken,
son, your soul belongs to me. Man, so I never owned anything? God,
that's right, you never owned anything. Man with tears in his eyes and full of fear
took the suitcase from God's hands and asks God, then What was mine, God,
your choices, every choice you made was yours. And I think about that all the time
in a world where we don't often proactively make choices. How can we reclaim that
power to say, "Today, when I wake up, it's a vote of confidence that I'm supposed
to be here in the world, and I'm supposed to be here to fulfill my mission, and I
need to make choices as to how I'm going to do that, and if we can all find that
spaciousness in our lives, I think it's going to lead to powerful things. And that
will lead to the practical avenues of where one is uniquely placed. Yeah.
I mean, I couldn't say it better. And I love the idea of helping people think
creatively about their passions. And as Rabbi said, what's the thing that even when
I'm tired, I'll still do it? Because I can't not do it. And the idea idea of even
how we budget, it's very commonplace and very well understood that it's important to
have a financial budget and a budget is essentially we are making decisions now
about how we are going to make decisions in the moment. And so in the moment,
we don't have to figure it out in the moment. We have already made those decisions.
And I love what Rabbi is saying is how can we orient our lives and make decisions
about how we are going to make decisions that are in alignment with our passions
and the unique giftings that we've been given. And it's not about just live the
same life as everybody else in the world and then add some spiritual things on top,
add some God things on top. The expected response and the common response from that
is, "I just feel like I'm too busy." Well, of course, you're too busy. If the goal
is live the same life that everyone else in the world is living and then try to
add some some God things on top of that. So it's not a matter of add more on
top. It's a matter of let's make decisions about how we are going to make decisions
in terms of the infrastructure of how we do this full thing, how we orient our
lives and align our lives with the unique passions and giftings that we've been
given, And then really demystifying a lot of it. I mean, simplifying it for people
who for a long time have been told this is a really big deal and it is a big
deal and it's major crisis level and it is major crisis level. But implicit in that
is so your response needs to be a really big deal and monumental.
And the average person says, I don't even know where to start with that. And does
my menial bringing of a meal mean anything to the big macro pop?
And what we need to help people understand is absolutely, absolutely, because it's a
Trojan horse of sorts. So there's bringing of the meals, there's providing tangible
goods, diapers or beds for grandmas who are bringing in at grandkids kinship
placements or providing practical, tangible things for families. There's a babysitting
or a respite, as we've talked about. There's utilizing my business to be a foster
friendly business. If you're a foster family in the community, then there's unique
incentives for you and benefits for you in our business. And it's thinking creatively
about what God has put in your hands, the unique gifts and passions, the experiences
you have had, as Rabbi shared in his story, with the babysitter who came over. Hey,
are you sure you're prepared for this? Oh, I am more prepared for this than you
could possibly imagine, you know? Because I am that. I was that. That is my story.
And those stories are all over the place, if we're willing to open up the space to
say, let's think creatively about your story. And I think what we find is people
come out of the woodworks, as we've said, and they go, yes, finally, somebody's are
creating space for me to think creatively about what's possible.
the bio mother's situation, offering words of support and words of comfort and words
of strengthening, having people who are immersed in this feel really good about what
they're doing rather than just feel like they're interrogated wherever they go. I
feel like that's level one, is using the power of words. - It's good, or like
they're the weird oddballs. You know, you're amazing. I can never do what you do.
And there's already, there's already the inevitably People who are engaged in this
are going to feel difference. They're going to feel like right I don't know where I
fit in anymore because our life is so different and helping to train other people
on how to speak Words of encouragement and to them. It's really important and I
mentioned the Trojan horse earlier I think helping people see that in every act of
service that they're doing From the bringing of a meal to opening of your home to
children, that is meeting a real tangible need. And we don't want to dismiss that.
But it is also part of a much bigger thing. And it acts as a Trojan horse to
something bigger. And so bringing of a meal meets a real tangible need. But it's
also a Trojan horse into relationship. And opening our homes to children meets a
real tangible need. But it's also a Trojan horse into the macro kind of breaking of
generational cycles that we're participating in. And I think what's really important
is celebrating the thing that people are doing right in front of them,
but then also reminding them to lift their heads up regularly from the thing that's
right in front of them and look around at the big thing that they're participating
in. And we often say we like we're working hard to eliminate the language of just
and only in this space I'm just I'm just bringing a meal. It's no big deal.
No, no, no, you're not just bringing a meal You're meeting a real need for that
family, but more than that you are communicating something Unbelievably profound of
that family. There's no just in that. Well, we've only fostered one. No, no, you
have not only fostered one You have eternally and generationally impacted the life of
a child and family in ways that you can't
Measure there's no only in that right so constantly Reminding people of the big
thing that the thing right in front of them is connected to I think is important
Let me interrupt just one more time to both thank the jockey being family foundation
for their support of Creating a Family as an organization and this podcast
specifically. Also to remind you that it is through their support that we can offer
you free courses. We have 15 courses on our free course page. You can find them on
our website by creatingafamily .org and then under trainings you hover over that and
a pop -down menu comes up in free courses. Click on that. They are courses that are
really intended for those who are actively parenting and you can use them for CE if
you so need them for CE because we do have a certificate of completion but if you
don't need them for CE they're still terrific courses. So thank you JockeyBeing
family for your support and now back to the show. Before we close I do want to
I've thought of something that it's something that we at Creating a Family do a lot
of work in and that is the area area of what we in the biz call the kinship
space or relative caregivers. And let's be honest, it's often grandparents who are
stepping up to care for their grandkids. Every synagogue, every church, every mosque,
every community of any sort, but certainly faith communities have somebody who is
some grandparent or an aunt or an uncle who has stepped forward. And that could be
an easy entry ramp just to make the leaders, the rabbis, the pastors,
have them recognize that these families have needs, even if they're not reaching out
because oftentimes they're shame and embarrassment or frustration or anger or just the
host of emotions that come along when you have to step forward to raise your
child's child, they have needs. And maybe it's just to have somebody take the kids
for the weekend or take them out on a Saturday or mow their lawn,
fix a meal, take them to soccer practice or tutor them in a geometry.
And those are people who
And I suspect it would be near and dear to the hearts of the leaders. Yeah. And
I'd be curious to hear Rabbi's perspective on this. A couple of things, kinship is
a rapidly growing space, even at a policy level from state to state. And so it's
something that cannot be ignored. But it's also been existing all the time,
under the radar, unofficial, off the books. But another thing is we've found to be
hopeful for some church leaders in terms of the language they use, and how do we
find who the families are? How do we know who these families are in our church?
Well, if we were to say, "Hey, if you're a foster adoptive family in our church,
we would love to know who you are," that's going to obviously a very small cross
-section of people might identify with that. But we have found the language of, "Hey,
if you are currently caring for a child in your home that is not biologically
yours, perhaps through foster care, adoption, or maybe it's a relative. You're caring
for relatives, kids, or close family friends. We want to know who you are. And
we've heard from church leaders that when they use broadening language like that,
suddenly it pulls people out of the woodwork. And then they're able to really know
who they are and find ways to come alongside them. can do not, or at least most
grandparents, do not identify, even if they're licensed foster parents, they don't
identify as that at all. They're a grandparent. We're just grandparents, or we're an
uncle. That's right. Yeah. Shmuelie, we're going to give you the last word. Anything
on kinship or grandparent care? You know, I agree with what Pastor said about the
importance of this rising phenomenon. And I think that there's a humility and not
knowing what direction our life will take and finding ourselves in situations we
didn't always imagine ourselves being in. And I think that that's also part of an
important part of spiritual or religious consciousness of letting go of control. You
know, we're not in total control of our lives and we don't know what the next day
will bring us and being ready just to be a servant and be responsive to the new
reality. And I think that kinship is, it continues to be reinforced,
the value of remaining with family. And the more we can promote that,
I think the more powerful for all of us. Yep. I couldn't agree with you more.
Well, thank you so much Rabbi Shmueli Yanklowitz with YATOM, the Jewish Foster and
Adoption Network, and Pastor Jason Johnson with the Christian Alliance for Orphans.
Thank you so much for being here today. This is such an important topic and we
really appreciate your input and your expertise.