A mom has been ordered into an in-house drug treatment program and has no family here in Minnesota to help her with her kids.  She has two girls, ages 3 and 4, and she has no choice but to leave them with their father, who is not interested in caring for them.  Three weeks into her treatment program, she asks a friend to go pick up the girls so she can see them on visitation day.  The friends arrives at the dad's home to pick up the girls and they look sick and haven't been bathed since arriving in his care.  She realizes they have lice, and decides she can't afford to expose her own kids to that, so she leaves.  The mom is stuck in treatment knowing her kids are not being cared for.  What would you do?  If she calls the police or Child Protective Services, she will loose them to the foster care system.
Another mom is 17 years old, with a 3 and 1 year old.  Her mother lives in Chicago, and so she is on her own.  She is going to high school, and working a 4-10pm job while her friend watches her kids for her.  This young mom is overwhelmed and thinks she wants to put her children up for adoption.  Her mother is telling her not to do it, but she feels completely at the end of her rope and wonders how she can make it one more day.  What would you do?
Those were just two of the real life scenarios of women in our community that called Safe Families For Children last week.  Every day the hotline gets calls like these.  Every day the volunteers at Safe Families For Children are practicing biblical hospitality.  You know, not hospitality that entails making a nice meal for friends and inviting them over, but hospitality that involves hosting strangers -the biblical definition of hospitality.  Safe Families For Children is a ministry that started in Chicago ten years ago, and is now in over 50 cities throughout the country.  Here is what their website says they are: Safe Families for Children (SFFC) extends community support by hosting vulnerable children and strengthening their families in crisis through a network of volunteers motivated by compassion.  The SFFC movement is based on the perspective that the safety and health of our community children are the responsibility of each one of us and that parents are the key to providing long term safe environments for their children.
So, basically, a host family agrees to care for a child for free, on a temporary basis, while the parent(s) are going through a crisis, ie medical treatment, drug re-hab, transition fro a domestic abuse environment, short term incarceration, etc.  The host family is a Christ-following, compassionate-driven family who simply believes they have room at their table, and an extra bed in their home, to love a vulnerable child, prevent that child from entering the foster care system, and demonstrate Christ's mercy to the parent in need.
I was at the training for this ministry on Saturday, and I came home talking a million miles an hour about it to Dave: here's why we gotta gather other families to get involved, here's why we gotta help our urban church partners to get on board with this, here's why this ministry is so critical in sharing the gospel with those in need, here's why we gotta look for ways we can roll up our sleeves and see this ministry grow....
Dave was pretty amused.  He knows all about this ministry.  The local director is a dear friend of ours actually.  But mostly Dave was amused to see me so passionate about it.  We sat down last night to talk through what it might look like for me to get more formally involved... we'll see what that means in the coming weeks.  For now all I know is that I am SUPER excited about ministry to vulnerable children and their families - that's why we already do what we do in our ministry, and learning about another amazing like-minded organization had really got my wheels spinning...