God himself cares for orphans and expects his people to do so as well. This much is not particularly controversial. It’s barely debatable.

But as we move past the theological and abstract into the practical and concrete, things quickly get much more complex. How we should care for the world’s 150,000,000 orphans?

We all recoil in disgust at the notion that any child should ever be sentenced to languish—untaught and unloved—in a squalid, Dickensian, prison-like institution. This healthy aversion to the warehousing of orphaned children has led many governments and charitable organizations to emphasize family preservation and kinship adoption as alternatives to orphanages—considering these the “best-case scenario” solutions.

It has also driven many of us who do provide permanent residential orphan care to develop healthier models of service. Asia’s Hope, the organization I work for, has spent the last 14 years investing in family-style residential care, where orphaned and abandoned children are placed with full-time moms and dads, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters. They are afforded the best possible education, counseling and life skills training available. Many of our graduates are successful university students, entrepreneurs, and professionals; their success outpaces even that of many of their non-orphaned peers.

Unfortunately, in an attempt to avoid the tragic mistakes of the past, an increasing number of orphan advocates now consider the permanent placement of a child into any kind of residential care setting an out-dated, inhumane, and ultimately harmful option. Some have even called for a moratorium on the establishment of all new orphanages and the closure of existing ones. The proposed Children in Families First Act, for example, will pressure foreign nations to limit the growth of or even eliminate orphanages and group homes as a condition of U.S. aid.

This kind of overcorrection is misguided and dangerous, and risks throwing out literal babies with the proverbial bathwater.

There is no credible scenario under which the proposed alternatives can be implemented for the vast majority of our world’s 150,000,000 orphans. According to some estimates, a child is orphaned every second of every single day, often as a result of abuse, neglect, extreme poverty or mental illness. We are already way behind in providing even the most basic resources for these children; we can hardly afford to discard, disparage or defund improved, improving and improvable care models that are working today.

The practical obstacles to global implementation of alternative care models aside, there will always be some cases in which residential orphan care will provide the best solution for an orphaned child.

Due to general scarcity of resources and lack of social service structures in many impoverished countries, the vast majority of orphaned children alive today will never benefit from the kinds of care advocated by orphanages’ most vocal opponents. As Christians who care about orphans, we certainly need to fund and advocate for organizations working to keep children in their families and communities of origins. But we also need to recognize that there will always be some cases in which residential orphan care will provide the best solution for an orphaned child.

In my experience, there are children for whom a placement with an aunt, uncle or grandparent — or adoption by a member of the community — would provide an experience inferior to placement in a well-funded, properly organized orphanage:

1) When a foster, adoptive or kinship care placement would separate siblings that could be kept together in a residential program.

 So often kinship care or adoption splits up a primary family relationship (brother to sister, for instance) to maintain a secondary or tertiary (uncle to nephew, grandmother to granddaughter). By placing an entire sibling group—intact—into a children’s home, we are actively preserving the most important remaining bonds an orphan child needs to be successful in life.

2) When the child’s status as an orphan would relegate them to an inferior or subservient role within the home

 Children placed with extended family often fall prey to the “Cinderella Syndrome,” where they are permanently relegated to an underclass within the family. The family’s birth children go to school and receive a larger portion of the family’s emotional and material support, while the orphaned children are resented and or treated as domestic servants. In an excellent residential care setting, each child can be guaranteed equal treatment, regardless of their social status or the circumstances that led them to orphanhood.

3) When foster-care or kinship placement is likely to be temporary

Stability and permanence plays a greater role in predicting long-term success for a child than familial proximity or even family size. We see this clearly in American children’s services structures, where kids are bounced back and forth between unsafe and unstable birth families and temporary foster families. On the other hand, when an organization like Asia’s Hope admits a child or a sibling group, we can guarantee permanent, uninterrupted care for the remainder of their childhood.

4) When legal or social factors make adoption or kinship care placement illegal, unsafe or infeasible

In China, the “one-child policy” renders the legal adoption of hundreds of thousands of “extra” children by extended family members unthinkable. To report a birth that violates the strictly-enforced law would put the entire family—and the birth mother most directly—in grave danger of fines, penalties, even prison. In other parts of the world, orphaned children are believed to be cursed, the object of a powerful spirit’s wrath, and are neither worthy of nor entitled to dignity and protection.

A significant, long-term investment is needed in these types of societies, and requires not just NGO generosity, but the commitment of local governments to support, foster and oversee competent social service mechanisms. It also requires the dismantling of deeply entrenched systems of power that lead to injustice and oppression of the poor. As Jesus said, “The poor will always be with you.” Until the Kingdom comes in its fullness, we will always struggle against powerful forces that orphan and exploit children.

We need to reject both overcorrection and utopianism, recognizing that systems of injustice are inter-connected and multi-faceted. There can never be a “silver bullet” or a single solution to the world’s orphan crisis. We should support organizations and individuals doing good work across the entire spectrum of care, advocating for excellence in both new and existing models. We must commit to working together, valuing unity rather than uniformity.

At each of Asia's Hope's 29 children's homes, orphaned kids enjoy all of the benefits of a real, permanent family.

I read today -- and I don't know if this is true -- that construction on an average new church building costs about $6,000,000. That's for 9,000 square feet, seating 288 people and a parking lot for 72 cars. 

That's a lot of money! And based on my experience with church capital campaigns (I did the marketing for a few of them when I was in that business), it can be pretty difficult to raise those funds. Aside from the fact that people tend to be strapped for cash, church building projects tend to tap into a reservoir of cynicism that can cause people's wallets to snap shut and go into hiding.

"Do we really need a new building? Are there better things we could be doing with this money? Should we really be spending millions on fancy buildings and expensive sound equipment when there are people starving to death all over the world?" 

I've heard all of those before, and I'm guessing most pastors have too.

And wait -- full stop -- before I go any further, I should say that I'm not here to criticize churches for building things. On the contrary, I'd like to *help* churches raise those funds. And, perhaps, help orphaned kids in the process.

What if every church embarking on a capital campaign took proactive steps to inoculate themselves against cynicism and enthusiasm-sapping congregational self doubt by building into every fundraising project for themselves a gift for orphaned kids?

Think about it. It costs an organization like Asia's Hope around $75,000 to build a beautiful new home for 25 orphaned children. That's an unthinkable amount of money to a poor child in, say, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. But that's really nothing in church construction costs.

I mean, when putting up a new building, most churches will make $75,000 decisions about carpet. Or AV equipment. Maybe even signage.

What if that $6 million campaign became a $6.1 million campaign, and what if pastors and elders added a new home for orphans into their plans for a new home for their congregation? If church members knew that the money they were giving was also transforming a community of orphaned kids half way around the world, they might be a lot less likely to dismiss the overall campaign as frivolous or unnecessary. 

If you're a leader in a church that's thinking of embarking on a capital campaign in the next few years, I'd love to talk with you about how we can work together to help Asia's Hope provide homes for orphaned kids and help your church raise the funds you need to build or expand your facilities.

If you attend a church that's doing a feasibility study or starting a capital campaign, ask your leaders to contact me. I think this just might work.

Email me or call me at 614.804.6233. 

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in a family with limited financial means. In addition to their day jobs, my parents took on extra work at times -- my dad as a janitor at the church, my mom selling AVON. As a result, we always had enough. But we were never anything close to wealthy.

We lived in a small house -- two adults, three kids in a three bedroom house with one bathroom. When I was 13, my maternal grandmother died, and left my parents a significant but not extravagant sum of money. I remember well three major purchases: a new but sensible Toyota Corolla, a trip for our family to Disneyworld and most significantly, a new house.

Left to right: Me, my brother Steve, my sister Julie. 1984.

I remember feeling as if we had somehow won the lottery. My parents picked out a floor plan, selected a builder and began to make modifications to suit our family's needs -- two and a half bathrooms, a living room with a wood-burning stove, a workshop for my dad in the basement and of most interest to this teenager, a room of my own that seemed huge: I mean, I could open the door without hitting my bed!

I remember vividly our visits to the construction site and our excitement as the house took shape -- first the foundation and cinder blocks, then the framing. When the second floor was finally roughed out, I could actually stand in my new bedroom. I paced out measurements on the dusty plywood floors, and figured out exactly where my bed would sit. I remember lying down on the floor before there was even a roof, closing my eyes and imagining what it would be like to shut my door, turn on some music and tune out the rest of the world in my own private space.

I'm sure my parents were stressed about the money and about the logistics of the project, but I loved everything about the building process. I loved the smells, the sounds, the sights. Most of all, I loved what the new house seemed to represent -- we certainly weren't rich, but we didn't feel poor anymore. I'm sure that our overall financial situation didn't change much at all with the purchase of the home, but as a kid, my stress about our family's fortunes was allayed -- unlike our old place, where everything seemed to be broken, everything was new, and in good condition.

How much more exciting it must be for the kids of Asia's Hope to watch the construction of their beautiful new homes at our Prek Eng campus! Most of these kids can still remember lives of real, not just imagined, destitution. They remember the death of their parents, their subsequent dislocation and the terror of being alone in a big, scary world. Some of our children were themselves heads-of-household facing the impossible task of providing food and shelter for younger siblings after their parents were killed, deported, imprisoned or ravaged by disease.

We've worked hard to provide each of these children everything they need, and thanks to our generous supporters and the hard work of our staff, they've recovered miraculously from the trauma of their youth. The homes they currently live in really are just fine. No one has to sleep outside, and there are gates we can close and lock at night. Mothers and Fathers now tuck them in at night and kiss them gently when they're sick or scared. But for years, I've wanted to do better for them.

The unstable property rental market in Phnom Penh has meant that some of these new families have had to move three, four, even five times over the last decade. And every time we outgrow or break something, we have to decide if it's worth investing in a property we're likely to lose at the end of the year. 

By 2011, our long-held plans for a permanent neighborhood-style campus in Phnom Penh started to take shape: the board approved a capital campaign, and we began gauging key donors' interest in the project. In July 2012, my son and I stood sizzling under the Cambodian sun with a couple of pastors from partnering churches, a few potential supporters and a handful of staff looking out over a nondescript plot of land, completely undeveloped except for a copse or two of tropical fruit trees and some untended and unruly chili plants wilting in the summer heat. We made a bold request of God: "Would you give us this land as an inheritance for our orphan children, and bless us with the resources we need to build permanent, high-quality homes, playgrounds and a school?"

For the sake of the kids and to His Glory, God has answered our prayers! Not only have we purchased the land, but we've finished construction on the school, nearly completed three of the five homes and have started building the fourth! And the homes aren't just adequate, they're beautiful. Each home has separate levels for boys and girls, apartments for staff, generous multipurpose living spaces and lots and lots of bathrooms. There's room for a soccer field and for playgrounds, and there's even adjacent land available that we could purchase if God provides the funds.

Yesterday, my family visited the site with the children from Prek Eng 2. As we pulled up to the gate of our property, the kids let out a cheer. As we spilled out of our cars, they grabbed us by our hands and dragged us, running toward their new house. "Come see! Come see!" they squealed as they led us around. "This is my bedroom, and this is mom and dad's. And this is the kitchen. And here is where we will study!"

"No swimming pool?" I joked. "No, but we can use this," one of the boys laughed, pointing toward the half-submerged septic tanks out back. Soriya, one of the teenage girls hugged me and said, "We can't wait to move in! It will be so nice to have all five homes on the same land -- we can improve our friendships, have lots of fun and feel very good."

In less than two weeks, we'll be dedicating the new campus with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that will be attended by some of the people who helped fund the project. God willing, the campus will be finished and furnished by the end of the year.

But we still have work to do. We've raised more than $600,000 for this project in just over a year, and we haven't even really gone "public" with our needs. But we've seen before, the last dollars are often harder to raise than the first. And we still have about $170,000 to go before we can build Prek Eng 5, outfit the homes, church and school and get the campus ready for full occupancy. 

To be honest, I don't know where that money is going to come from. But I do know a couple of things. 

1. God will provide these funds; and
2. God will bless everyone who helps with this project.

I really believe this. I've already seen God work miraculously on behalf of these kids. He's used rich people, and he's used people of very, very modest means.

The stories of generosity will be told for generations on earth and in heaven. One of these homes was built with funds that came from a family who, along with their children, decided that their house was bigger than they needed. They sold it, moved to a smaller one and gave us the money we needed to provide a permanent home for 25 once-orphaned kids!

Churches have taken special offerings. Kids have done bake sales. Businesses have tithed profits. Families have given tax refunds. Young couples have given money they were saving for downpayments on first homes.

As Proverbs 19:17 says, "He who is kind to the poor lends to God." Matthew 19:29 says, "Everyone who has left houses...or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."

At the risk of sounding like one of those crazy guys on TV, will you talk to your spouse, your kids, your boss and your pastor? Will you ask them to pray about joining us and finishing up this project for the sake of these wonderful children? 

We've set up a giving page on our web site. If you click on "Capital Project in Prek Eng," you can give via credit card. You can also send checks through the mail. And, of course, you can email me directly if you have any questions about this project.

Join with those who have already been blessed by their participation. Together and with God's help, we can do this! I look forward to celebrating with you as God continues to provide for the kids and staff of Asia's Hope.

As my trip winds down, I find that I'm having trouble organizing my thoughts into cogent, bite-sized chunks. The importance of the things I need to say seems to be inversely proportionate to my blogging ability. So today, instead of writing about, say, the progress on the new Prek Eng campus, I'm going to show you pictures of smiling kids. 

We spent the day hanging out with the Prek Eng 3 and Prek Eng 4 kids. I hope you'll enjoy some of my pics. 

5:30 a.m. and the Jumanji sounds are once again emanating from the bowels of this hotel. And there's apparently someone pulling cats backwards through cheese graters on my balcony. Oh, wait. That's the wedding party a block down the street. Judging from decibel levels alone, it seems they rented their sound system from the Rolling Stones' most recent world tour. And then shot it repeatedly and at close range.

Adding menace to the mayhem, government propaganda is blaring from the large and horribly bespeakered pickup truck parked just outside my hotel, courtesy Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party.

It sounds like Clara Peller being bludgeoned to death. With the AFLAC duck.

So let's just say that, while I like the sound of a live goat being eaten by a condor as much as the next guy, it hasn't been the most relaxing morning.

I was hoping to get a little more sleep, as we're planning our own noisy "people's party" tonight, a dance and ice cream extravaganza at the Asia's Hope campus. Perhaps some late-night Gangam Style or Cotton Eyed Joe will be sufficient payback for the aural affliction imposed on us this fine Cambodian morning. I'll throw in some Call Me Maybe if I'm feeling sufficiently retributive.

Sleep-deprived snarkiness aside, we're having a pretty great time here in Battambang. Our little piece of heaven in Battambang, Cambodia really is one of the happiest places on earth. Inside the gates of our community, the sick get healed and orphans get families. It's really extraordinary, and if you haven't been here, you really can't get the full sense of what it's like. If my photos and stories convey even half, it's a minor miracle.

We've spent hour after joyful hour with our kids and staff, and are really going to miss them when we say good bye after tonight's party. Tomorrow morning we will pack up the car and drive to Phnom Penh, where we'll spend a week with our friends and family there. 

I can't wait to see the new campus taking shape in Prek Eng -- just one year ago it was an empty field. Today it's something quite different. There's a church and a school and homes being built. We still need more funding to finish the project, but it'll be amazing to see in person the progress I've been following through emails and Facebook all year.

So, be encouraged. I am. There's a lot of bad, bad stuff going on this world. But there is also profound good. It's a privilege to be a part of what God is doing here.

Even though I'm 8,000 miles from Columbus, Ohio, returning to Battambang always feels like coming home.

After church on Sunday in Phnom Penh, we packed all of our bags and all six of us into the car Savorn graciously lent me, and we drove to Battambang. I made the five hour trip in just four, but we were still too tired to make it out to the campus. We relaxed at our hotel for the evening, and had a nice breakfast in the morning.

We ran some errands, grabbed some lunch and headed out to Asia's Hope Battambang in the early afternoon. What a joy to see old friends and family! Many of our BB1 kids are already grown, and I had the chance to see 24-year old Phearum, who was visiting from Thailand and spend time with 23-year old Chhem, who is finishing her undergraduate degree at a local university. We also had the pleasure of meeting the 25 new kids from Battambang 9! They are still a little apprehensive, but they're getting more comfortable with their new families every single day.

The campus is looking great. It's been two years since Kori has been in Battambang, and she was amazed to see the progress. At her last visit, we had only four homes on the campus. Today, we have nine.  We've expanded Hope Fellowship Church, built a learning center with three classrooms and a silversmithing lab, and added a sewing center where more than 30 of our girls and a handful of our staff are learning the art of tailoring. The footers have been poured for BB10, and construction pace will pick up as the rainy season subsides.

Our campus is taking shape as a safe and affirming neighborhood for our Asia's Hope families. When BB10 is complete, we will have almost 300 children and 50 staff living there full time! It's like a little preview of heaven, where the poor are fed and clothed, and the orphans are placed in families. Amazing stuff, and an honor to be a part of it.  

We played in the hot sun for about 6 hours and finally headed back to the city for a late dinner and bed. 

We drove this morning about a half hour outside the city to ancient Banan temple for some sightseeing and a picnic lunch with our Battambang home parents. I love these guys. They work so hard. They welcome and care for the children as if they were their own. Theirs are 24-hour a day jobs, and it was an honor to be there guests for a traditional Khmer meal -- grilled chicken, wild boar, rabbit, dried fish and rice. 

We're taking a quick break at the hotel before heading back out to the campus for some more fun and games with the kids. We probably won't push ourselves as hard as we did last night, as we're hoping to stay healthy so we can enjoy the next two weeks with our Cambodian family.

Enjoy the pictures -- they can't adequately capture the beauty of our experience here, but maybe they can give you a little taste. 

Well, I finally have a computer. I don't have the correct cables to hook it up to my old one to transfer files, but I'm thankful that I can pull photos off my camera, access Dropbox and write blog posts and emails. 

My status as a technology "have not" has kept me from posting a wrapup from India, and now I'm not sure where to start. We're in Cambodia right now. We arrived late last night, met up with our good friend, Peter Shumaker, and got to bed at about 1:30 a.m. At 8:30 a.m., I preached a short and hopefully coherent sermon at our church in Phnom Penh. Afterwards, we said goodbye and drove to Battambang, about 5 hours outside the capitol. We're safely at our hotel, and we plan on having some dinner and hitting the pool. We considered visiting the campus tonight, but everyone is pretty darn tired. We'll relax this evening and be fresh for tomorrow.

Despite the computer problems, the India trip finished well. The Scarlet City Church team was wonderful, and they took a ton of great photos and video that I can't wait to share with you soon.  I have lots of pics of my own, so many in fact that I can only post a small portion of them here. 

We enjoyed a church service with our Kalimpong staff and kids, and also had the privilege of baptizing some of them. We then took all of the older kids to Darjeeling to visit the zoo. It poured down rain most of the day, and was quite cold. Nevertheless, it was a great time. We said our goodbyes to the kids after a great day, and spent the night in town before heading down to Siliguri. 

We spent most of the day driving through heavy fog. We zigzagged back and forth across the India/Nepal border, but were unable to see much of Nepal. I can say that I urinated in the country along the roadside. Too much information, I know. But I was happy to step foot in Nepal and add it to my list of countries visited.  And I had to pee. Again, too much information, I know.

Along the way, the rain stopped long enough to allow us a short hike into the tea fields. To call them beautiful would be an understatement, and I have neither the talent nor the equipment to do them justice in photographs. I will cherish the memories every time I drink a cup of Darjeeling tea.

We visited a plot of land that we would one day like to buy -- if we could swing the whole piece, we could put at least 10 homes there! But more on that later. We still have to finish our project in Cambodia; let's not get ahead of ourselves... 

We all flew to Delhi, and the Scarlet City guys left for home. My family and Adam hit the city to do some sightseeing. Delhi is an amazing place, everything you can imagine in an ancient Indian city and more. We stopped at a perfumery that has been in business since 1816, and bought some custom scents. We ate more naan than you'd think possible, and may have had closure on tandoori chicken. At least for a week or so. 

I miss India already, especially the staff and kids. Please keep praying for church partners; we desperately need at least two new churches to take over the sponsorship of homes in Kalimpong.

Thank you for making all of this possible through your prayers and financial support. Together we're changing the world. 

Well, today has been a day of both frustration and joy. Frustration? My laptop is broken beyond repair, or at least beyond the kind of repair I can get here. I've ordered a replacement, which will be coming via a friend next week, but I'm frustrated. Aside from the money I've had to spend, I have no access to some of my important files and no way of editing photos. I have meetings this week that require, at least theoretically, some of those files.

Sigh. First world problems, right? 

So I'm trying to take things in stride and not stress too much about things I can't control. I am praying that when I do get the new one, I'll be able to transfer all of the files. There was no impact damage, so I'm assuming the data is fine. 

For now, I'll try to relax and thank God that I have an iPad to keep up with correspondences and put up some posts, rudimentary as they may be. I'm thankful that we have another -- and better -- photographer on this trip. I'll try to post links to Danny Jackson's photos so you can see what's going on in India.

Other than catastrophic technical failure of the ol' MacBook, today was pretty great. We took some time in the morning to explore the town of Kalimpong, wandering its crowded and somewhat chaotic streets. We bought a couple scarves at a local textile shop, and spent an hour or so in the produce market marveling at the sights, sounds and smells.This is truly a remarkable country with many extraordinary experiences to be had. 

After lunch, we joined a large group of our kids and staff at a swimming pool a couple miles from town. The water was quite cold, as the temperature here has been in the 60s and perhaps 70s for weeks, but I had the privilege of baptizing six people -- one staff member, two staff children and three of our teenagers. What an honor to share this important milestone in these people's lives.  

Tomorrow morning we'll join all of the kids and staff for church. Gabe DeGarmeaux will preach, Adam, Janelle and I will sing, as will all of the Asia's Hope kids. It's a long service -- at least two hours, so I hope my own kids emerge with good attitudes intact. But I can't wait. Who knows? Maybe God will heal my laptop while we're in the service. Stranger things have happened.