The growth of the evangelical orphan care movement is very encouraging. The movement has grown so much over the past 5 years that it is impossible to quantify its growth. Every year churches by the hundreds are answering the call to care for orphans in their distress.

In light of God’s work to raise up His people to care for orphans, one of T4A’s primary concerns is what the church will be doing 50 years from now. If the church is to care for the orphan for the long-haul, that is, for the next 50 years and beyond, it must must be driven by a robust gospel-centered theology. Practical takeaways that will help churches more effectively care for orphans are essential. But as essential as practical takeaways are, they cannot sustain movements over the long-haul, nor can they result in a movement’s exponential growth. Therefore, if the orphan care movement is to prosper and experience exponential growth over the next 50 years, a robust theology must be at the center of it.

Our prayer, then, is that it will be the gospel itself that fuels our desire and commitment to care for orphaned and vulnerable children. What orphans needs is churches that are moved to serve them long-term by the power of the gospel.

When we were without hope in this world, God came to us in Christ to rescue us, to serve us, to reconcile us to Himself. In the person of Jesus, the transcendent God of the universe “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). God the Son did not become a man for us for the short-term. He became a man for us forever. Even now the man Christ Jesus makes intercession for us, his people. This is the gospel truth that will mobilize us for long-term, self-sacrificial service to orphans worldwide.