Should churches support Christian singles who want to adopt?
The Body of Christ should rally around single Christians who want to adopt because with the support of the wider church family, that child will grow up in a “very healthy family context," an author and theologian said.
“Some single people in our churches will be in a position where they can adopt, and they're going to need help with that,” Sam Alberry, apologist and writer for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, said in a recent video posted by The Gospel Coalition. “The church really should be wanting to support and help people as they seek to do that.”
Because there are “always going to be more children needing adoption than there will be two parent families so you can take them,” it’s a “wonderful thing” if a single Christian is able to adopt, Alberry said, but it will take the backing and support of a church family “to do it really well.”
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He pointed out that Pslam 68 states that “God sets the lonely in families” — and “that's not primarily just talking about a biological nuclear family,” but the “people of God” as a whole.
“A single person may be thinking, ‘Well, I'm just a mum or I'm just a dad and I can't do the role of both parents,’” he said. “But actually, with the support of the wider church family, that child should be growing up in a very, very healthy family context.”
It’s a “great thing” for Christian singles to adopt, the Why Bother with Church author said, but the church must rally alongside them.
“There'll be areas where the single person is limited and the church can help,” he explained. “There will be people in the church who will be thinking, ‘Well, it wouldn't be practical for me to adopt, but I could really help someone else who does.’ I hope it will be something the whole church family rallies around and gets behind.”
Alberry clarified that single parents aren’t in a “unique category” when it comes to needing the support of the church: “Kids who grow up in families where they've been born into the family, they need the support of the church family, too,” he said. “All parents need a church family.”
Theologian John Piper previously weighed in on the issue of whether Christian singles should adopt, explaining that it’s “better to have one parent than no parents,” but stressed that “motives matter.”
“I think children can be used to gratify impulses that are probably selfish,” he cautioned, adding that “there are just a lot of factors” when it comes to adoption.
“But the principle here — what makes me open to it — is that there are many desperate children in the world,” he added. “And there are possibilities for singles to make a life better for them than they would have otherwise.”
Piper went on to argue that the church should come alongside single parents so that caregiving would become “a corporate effort,” not just an “isolated person effort.”
“So say you have a single guy or a single mom, and they want to be there for the child as much as they can be,” he said. “How can the church help? Well, maybe a family who can't adopt a child could keep the child eight hours a day. Neither is ideal, but it's better than what the child had.”
