Jeff Vanderstelt is a pastor at Soma Communities, an A29 church in Tacoma, WA. He is leader of leaders and a coach and trainer for church planters. His background includes music, business management, working with youth, training youth workers in North America and Europe and starting new churches. Jeff moved to Tacoma from Chicago with his wife Jayne to begin planting Soma. Jeff leads a Missional Community and the Downtown Expression, and he serves all of Soma in the areas of vision and teaching. Jeff is also on the Board of Acts 29, a church planting network. Jeff and Jayne have been married over 15 years and have 3 kids: Haylee, Caleb and Maggie. He loves watching movies that make you reconsider your worldview.

Jeff’s Thoughts

Anytime you put your hope, your sense of significance, your sense of purpose, is in anything other than God and what He has done, you are choosing the world over God.

What if we start looking at our neighbors as the lost children of God?

What if you start loving other kids like you love your own kids?

We want the world to know what our Father is like. He is the father to the fatherless.

Most of our lack of love for other people is our lack of understanding of God’s love for us. Do you truly understand the depth of God’s love? You can rest, you don’t have to hide, you don’t have to perform. His love is unfailing.

We are called to be advocates for the voiceless, like Jesus was an advocate for us. Stand in the gap. Exercise advocacy. But don’t do it out of a need for advocates. Do it because some advocated for you.

Don’t let need motivate you. Let the Gospel motivate you. We are not called to be replacement saviors for the world. They aren’t going to get any help if they don’t get Jesus.

You are never going to be ready. You don’t have what it takes. He never calls you to do what you can do. He calls you to do what He can do. So that afterwards you can say,”I don’t know how we did it. But I know God was in it. May He have all the glory.”

You will never properly care for the least of these unless you realize you were the least of these.

Don’t hold onto your life. Don’t be motivated by guilt or shame. Don’t ever think that you don’t have everything you need. Love in the same manner in which you have been loved.

Let love be our motivator. And Love be our method.

Dan oversees Together for Adoption and provides thought-leadership on the theology of adoption as a team member of ABBA Fund. Before co-founding and directing Together for Adoption, Dan was a college professor of Bible and Theology. He has also served as a pastor of family ministries. As one who has been adopted by God and has adopted two children, Dan founded Together for Adoption to equip churches and educate Christians theologically about orphan care and horizontal adoption. Dan regularly writes and speaks about the Gospel and its implications for solutions to the global orphan crisis. He is the editor and primary author of Reclaiming Adoption: Missional Living Through the Rediscovery of Abba Father, wrote the foreword to Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption by Dr. Joel Beeke and is a regular contributor to The Gospel Coalition Blog.

What does God really want from you?

Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Psalm 82:3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Isaiah 1:17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.
James 1:26-27 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. [27] Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Isn’t there something much more fundamental about what He wants from us?

Matthew 22:37 And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

The question should actually be, who is God? God is the fountain of life.

John 7:37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

We can’t live the Christian life well, if we think of God as primarily wanting from us.

To serve the orphan well, we must think of God primarily as a giver.

Psalm 36:1-12 Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes. [2] For he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. [3] The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit; he has ceased to act wisely and do good. [4] He plots trouble while on his bed; he sets himself in a way that is not good; he does not reject evil. [5] Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. [6] Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O LORD.[7] How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.[8] They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.[9] For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.[10] Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright of heart! [11] Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away. [12] There the evildoers lie fallen; they are thrust down, unable to rise.

Why this Psalm at an orphan care on adoption? 

1. There is a strong connection in this Psalm to what Scripture calls sonship.
2. Drinking from the fountain of the Father’s lavish delight in us actually empowers us to live on the razor sharp edge of the world’s profound brokenness.
3. Orphans need Christians who feast on the abundance of God’s house and whom God causes to drink from the river of his delights (Psalm 36:8).
4. Christians who experience God the Giver are much better equipped to love the child who comes from or lives in the hard place.

What orphans need is Christians, who by the grace of God, drink the spirit that is “the Niagara” of Jesus. 

William Graham Tullian Tchividjian is a Florida native, the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, a visiting professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, and a grandson of Billy and Ruth Graham. A graduate of Columbia International University (philosophy) and Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Tullian is the author of Do I Know God? Finding Certainty in Lifeʼs Most Important Relationship (Multnomah), Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different (Multnomah) and Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels (Crossway). When he is not reading, studying, preaching, or writing, he enjoys being with people and relaxing with his wife Kim and their three kids Gabe, Nate, and Genna. Tullian loves the beach, loves to exercise, and when he has time, he loves to surf.

Thoughts on Romans 7 and 8

For most Christians, our faith is defined by what we do, what we don’t do, the causes we believe in, the problems we solve, etc. The Sermon on the Mount smashes external form of righteousness. Righteousness is not a matter of what we do, but rather why we do what we do.

One of the most common motivations of not committing bad behavior is the consequences.It is important to note that sometimes when people refrain from unethical behavior it is not because of purity of heart. And the goodness of a deed can be destroyed by the motivation that inspires it. The last temptation is to do the right deed, for the wrong reason.

God is not concerned with any kind of obedience. God is concerned with a certain kind of obedience. That is why it is so important to understand the distinction between law…and gospel.

The law of God is good. It is a perfect reflection of God’s perfection character. It is a mirror and it shows us who we are, and what we need. It shows us what God requires, and our incapability of meeting those requirements.

The determining factor is not our obedience, but instead it is Christ’s obedience for us.

Preoccupation with my obedience makes me morbidly self-centered, a neurotic narcissist. Sanctification really is forgetting about ourselves, depending on our justification.

Let the Together for Adoption Conference session notes begin. First up was Darrin Patrick.

Darrin Patrick serves as lead pastor of The Journey in Saint Louis, Missouri, which he founded in 2002. Darrin also serves on the board of directors of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network as Vice President and is a regular contributor at the Resurgence. His passion is to help the church understand and live the gospel in the world. Today, The Journey runs eight services across four campuses and continues to aggressively plant new campuses and churches in the Saint Louis region and beyond. He has written two books, Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission and A Church for the City with Matt Carter. Darrin is married to his high school sweetheart, Amie, and they have four beautiful children: Glory, Grace, Drew, and Delaney. Darrin enjoys vacations with his family, basketball, good food, good books, good movies, and weightlifting.

“I didn’t want to build a good church, I wanted to build a great city.”

But here were the alarming stats in the city where he lives and works, Saint Louis: 15,000 single moms, 30% of people living in poverty, 3,000 kids in foster care, and 54% of kids not graduating from high school.

His Thoughts

Preaching and gathering (proclamation) was not enough. We needed to do something.

We are called to love God and love people. If you don’t understand that is a tension. You aren’t doing either.

There is a natural tension there. Jesus felt it too. Yet, He was never so distracted by the needs of people that He failed to reach their greatest need through ministry and teaching.

Social justice will distract people from the gospel. It is imperative that we nail down the definition of the gospel. And understand that we don’t do works to receive grace but because we have received grace.

If you don’t know your neighbors, don’t go and do something to change the world. Go, get to know them, and go meet some of those needs.

Social injustice is taking advantage of people who have little or no power. Social justice is meeting the tangible needs of those who have little or no power and fighting systematic oppression that drives the injustice.

What do we do?

The church is called, first and foremost, to proclaim the gospel.

You must not use social justice to avoid the offense of the cross.

Churches should plant other churches.

The “institutional” church must equip individuals who will become the “organic” church.

Want to learn more about missional living and our call as Christians to care for orphans in their distress?

Join me and a host of others from October 21-22 in Phoenix for Together for Adoption (T4A) Conference 2011. Over 1,200 people will gather together at Redemption Church (Gilbert Campus) to explore the theme Missional Living, the Gospel and Orphan Care. One of the primary objectives for this year’s conference is to create a forum to consider the good news of the Gospel, explore its implications for how we think about and implement orphan care strategies, and discuss how we can move toward greater collaboration as the people of God for the sake of orphans worldwide.

General session speakers include: Darrin Patrick, Tullian Tchividjian, Tim Chester, Bryan Loritts, Juan Sanchez, and Jeff Vanderstelt.

Worship Leaders: Shaun Groves, Aaron Ivey, and Jimmy McNeal

General Session Hosts: Shaun Groves and Johnny Carr (National Director of Church Partnerships at Bethany Christian Services)

Register for Together for Adoption 2011 Conference in Phoenix for just $75 Monday, July 25th, through Saturday, July 30th. This limited-time discount is over $30 less than the current early bird special.

See you in Phoenix?