Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) celebrated 20 years of ministry at its annual Summit last month (Sept.) with 2,400 supporters from 46 countries, including the U.S. Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville, TN hosted the CAFO2024 Summit from September 17 to 20.
CAFO was founded at a meeting of 29 Christian leaders in little Rock, Arkansas in 2004. The leaders sensed a calling from God to “rouse” the Church in caring for orphans at a convened summit. Interest grew and 500 leaders gathered at the same summit just three years later.
According to a report by The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, some 369,000 children were in the U.S. child welfare system in the last data period of 2022.
CAFO President Jedd Medefind opened the 2024 event by encouraging attendees to pursue God’s will.
“God’s great interest in your life is not in what we can accomplish for Him,” Medefind said in his opening remarks.
“Not even the very good work we have been called to do. He could do those things just fine without us if He wished… His great interest in your life runs much deeper.
God’s highest good, Medefind told attendees, is nothing less than “the person you are becoming.”
“It is that you would be conformed to the likeness of his Son,” he added, “That Christ would be formed in you. It’s that every day, you and I would grow steadily more like Jesus Christ.”
The Summit involved contributions about God’s transformational work in communities such as Possum Trot, Texas. Bishop, Rev. W.C. Martin and his wife Donna, from the unincorporated community, attended the Summit.
In 1996, they adopted four foster children and their fellowship, Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, felt so inspired that 22 families from the congregation adopted 77 children: every child needing a home in the county. These youngsters were from difficult backgrounds with abuse and neglect but God worked in the situation. The story has been told in the movie, “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot.”
The summit also saw the release of three new worship songs: “Faithful to Me,” “Home in the Family” and “What’s a Father’s Like”, as reported by Christian Daily International.
Inspired to reflect God’s heart for orphans and the vulnerable, the songs were written by people who themselves had personal journeys of adoption and fostering within their own families or ministry involvement.
Meanwhile two new books were released during the event for parents and caregivers, to help empower them to support resilience in children. “Overcoming: What Scripture and Science Say About Resilience,” by doctors Nicole Wilke and Mandy Howard, and "Caleb Koala’s Comeback Ride: A Journey to Overcoming," a bilingual picture book written by Wilke and illustrated by Aixa de Lopez.
