My husband and I have mentored many couples considering adoption. Invariably, they are most concerned about their ability to become a true family with a child who seems so different. The international adoption process—the mountain of paperwork, the weeks of travel, and the bank-draining payment schedule—eventually ends. But the new family is forever. What gives couples the confidence to adopt, and adoptive families the strength to continue, is that they have an enduring community around them—a community that is looking unto Jesus and doing its best to simply be the local church.

Just Be the Church

Megan Hill

The church doesn’t need to do anything. That is to say, the local church most helps adoptive families when it simply pursues its unchanging calling to be what it will be in eternity: a gathering of the redeemed from every language and people, united in worship by a common identity and purpose in Christ.

Sure, churches could set up grants and seminars and support groups. But ultimately, adoptive families don’t need resources that are adoption-focused as much as they need a community that is Christ-focused.

Adoption is scary. Twice now, my husband and I have heard a judge tell us, “Congratulations. He’s yours.” With a bureaucratic monotone and a literal rubber stamp, we were finally and completely joined to another human being. One who did not come from my womb, or even our country, and who looks nothing like us.

In the ensuing months of panic—Who is this child? Am I really his mother?—I needed my local church to do exactly what it has always done and will always do.

The church uniquely values children. The rest of the world loves them for their future potential; the church affirms the image-bearers that kids are right now.

In those frightening days following our adoptions, my church—elders, Sunday school teachers, and self-appointed surrogate grandparents—stood around me, reminding me that this kicking, hitting, spitting, screaming child (my child) has a soul that will never die and is precious to our Lord.

My family is transracial and we live in the Deep South. People on the street, in the grocery store, and at the mall frequently question my competency to raise my ethnically different children. But the church encourages me to seek a common identity with my kids in the only place it can be found: Christ.

On a recent Sunday morning, I watched a Korean graduate student talking with an African American grandmother as two blond toddlers cruised between pews. When the local church welcomes people of all backgrounds, it fulfills the Christ-given mandate to make disciples in the nations. The church lives as if our earthly differences are secondary to our new identity in Christ and creates an adoption-friendly culture around this truth.

My husband and I have mentored many couples considering adoption. Invariably, they are most concerned about their ability to become a true family with a child who seems so different. The international adoption process—the mountain of paperwork, the weeks of travel, and the bank-draining payment schedule—eventually ends. But the new family is forever. What gives couples the confidence to adopt, and adoptive families the strength to continue, is that they have an enduring community around them—a community that is looking unto Jesus and doing its best to simply be the local church.

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