Following the mandate in James 1:27 for Christ’s followers to care for orphans in need, Community Heights Baptist Church in Southwest Virginia has initiated a ministry it calls 127JUNCTION to mobilize its members to care for the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of orphans, said Maegan Brown, its communications director.
Community Heights Baptist Church is one church in two Virginia locations: Richlands and Lebanon. Brown said once a year the congregations gather for one joint service; and in November 2012, it was at this gathering that 127JUNCTION was launched. The 127 portion of the name is from the passage in James; JUNCTION signifies both congregations coming together for ministry, she said.
Children at the Knapp Baptist Orphanage Center in Tanzania, one of Community Height’s ministries.
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“Every person is different with varying levels of commitment when it comes to availability of time and finances,” Brown said, “so 127JUNCTION has multiple avenues in which members can support the orphan population.” It is designed for children under the age of 18 — both locally and globally — who have experienced the absence of one or both parents.
According to the U. S. Department of Census, 43 percent of American children live in a home without their biological father. The number of children living in single-parent homes has nearly doubled since 1960. And over 5,000 children are in foster care in Virginia.
“We’ve discovered that in our area over 50 percent of students are living with grandparents,” said Brown. “The need is great for assistance and mentoring and for Christians to come alongside these families and children to care for them.”
Community Heights at Richlands hosted a training session in February focused on training mentors to work with youth in the Cedar Bluff community. John Sowers, president of the Portland, Ore.-based The Mentoring Project (TMP), an advocacy and training organization that serves as a liaison between faith communities and matching agencies to provide mentors for fatherless youth, lead the two-day training.
“The story of fatherlessness is powerful, destructive and really close to God’s heart,” said Sowers. His father moved out when he was 2, leaving him with a sense of abandonment and shame. He wrote his thesis at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary on reaching the fatherless and through TMP has created faith-based toolkits to mobilize churches in developing mentors and long-term mentoring efforts in their communities.
While in the Richlands area Sowers met with school district and business leaders and community advocates to discuss how positive mentoring often reverses social costs associated with single-parent families. “By focusing on mentoring, I believe that the American church could effectively shut down prisons, end school dropouts, curb youth suicide and reduce homelessness,” he said.
“While much of Sowers’s work is geared toward the fatherless population, everything he taught also related to orphans as well,” Brown said. “He told us that there is no substitute for time spent with a child — it doesn’t matter what you do or talk about. Just being there is the most important thing.”
John Sowers (center with dark vest) from The Mentoring Project trained 22 members of Community Heights Baptist Church to mentor at-risk school children this fall.
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Brown said 22 people who committed to spending one hour per week mentoring a student were trained that weekend. “We are really excited about this, since there is no form of mentoring available in Russell or Tazewell county schools,” she said. The program will begin this fall. Students eligible for mentors would either be in one-parent families, foster care or have no parents. For the first year the mentors will meet with the children during school hours or after-school programs.
“We have families in our church who have been through the adoption process and foster families who have cared for children,” said Brown. Another component of 127JUNCTION offers practical points of connection for parents considering adopting a child or becoming foster parents. Brown said the ultimate goal is for every child to find a “forever family.”
Through its partnership with the Knapp Baptist Orphanage Center in southwestern Tanzania, Community Heights Baptist Church provides financial support for 34 orphaned children. Amanda Lynn is serving the Baptist Convention of Tanzania as the director of the center which focuses on providing orphans with a loving home, an education, training for the future and a spiritual foundation upon which they can build their lives. According to Lynn, the goal of the orphanage is to grow to its capacity of 80 children, while striving to become as self-sustaining as possible through farming and business.
“Every family isn’t able to adopt or foster a child or commit to an hour of mentoring each week, but everyone can pray,” said Brown. “And we’re praying that believers everywhere would be consumed with compassion and a desire to take action for orphans.”
Barbara Francis ([email protected]) is on the staff of the Religious Herald.