International Adoption Center

Kim and I just got back from having Corina go through three days of testing at the University of Minnesota International Adoption Center in Minneapolis. They had occupoation therapists, audiologists, neurologists and physicians run her through every test imaginable to help get an accurate diagnosis for some of developmental delays. It was encouraging to watch this team approach of specialists who are all aware of the special needs of adopted children. We won't have the final reports and recommendations for a month or so, but we left with a distinct impression that we had gone to the right place.

I have a couple of thoughts on how this relates to church life. First, we need to be thinking about ministry from a team perspective more frequently. We have a tendency in America to think about things from a highly individualized perspective. Even in team sports, we ALWAYS award a most valuable player award. Even Michael Jordan in his prime would be hard pressed to beat a decent high school basketball team if it was 5 on one.

Second, it was amazing to see the difference that it made to have service providers who were familiar with the peculiarities of adopted kids. We have seen many professionals over the years, only to be frustrated by their lack of understanding for the difficulties we were facing. It was incredibly refreshing to have people recognize symptoms as something more than the paranoia of crazy parents! These providers recognized that our daughter is "broken" by her experiences before she came to our home and they are able to understand her in the context of this brokeness that is common to many children from similar backgrounds. Professional who measure our daughter against "normal" kids have typically only been able to tell us that she isn't "normal."

What this means for our churches is that we need to have a better understanding of what it means to be "broken," if we really want to help our unsaved friends come to know Jesus. When we look at the guy or gal hanging out in the bar and tell them they are messed up, we aren't really contributing anything of value to them. Somehow, we have to get past being judgmental in order to see that these are people that Jesus wants to redeem. Jesus wants to bring new life to replace the broken and messed up lives of the people that are all around us. We have been called to take the Gospel to them and to do that we have to stop simply condemning them and go get to know them. In the process, we might just learn a little more about how broken and messed up we are.