“We must help the children”
Texas Baptist bishop talks up fostering and adopting at Every Child’s Hope
Bishop W.C. Martin stepped onto the stage at Landmark Church late last month with a purpose: move Greater Cincinnati’s faith communities to foster and/or adopt children in care, or help the families that do.
The bishop from Possum Trot, Texas and his wife Donna know it’s possible. They adopted eight children of their own – some of whom Martin said were “big problems” for Texas child protective services workers. Since then, 25 families in Martin’s congregation at Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church adopted 80 children from the system.
Martin’s message to the nearly 120 people attending the Every Child’s Hope event on May 30 was clear: if his small church in Possum Trot, Texas can step up to help children in the system, surely churches in Cincinnati, Ohio can do it, too.
“(Places of worship) must step in,” Martin implored. “We have to tell children who have been beaten down, told they are worthless, that they are worth something!”
The message certainly got through to people attending the event. After hearing the bishop and Chris Padbury, executive director of Project 1.27 in Colorado, event attendees sat in on breakout sessions that covered the things that bring children into care, the training and home study process, the foster care and adoptive experience, and ways to support foster families without being a foster parent.