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What does it mean for Nightlight to be a “Christian” agency?  How do we express our faith?  We share God’s truth and love in the following ways:

•  Monday prayer time on Teams and Bible Study
  
• Monday morning prayer time in offices 
• Speaking to Our Clients Through Scripture printed booklets for all staff to use with clients 
• Our Statement of Faith on our website 
• “What’s Christian About Adoption?” brochure printed and distributed and on website 
• Email to families asks them to send prayer requests 
• Praying with families during home visits as appropriate 
• Tangible acts – showing up with a meal if someone had surgery, etc 
• Begin or end Teams meetings with prayer 
• Hanging Christian graphic art or bible verses in the office 
• Bible verse placards identifying doors/offices  
• 1 Week mission trip benefit for staff every 2 years 
• Market Place Chaplains minister monthly to our staff
• Staff Attend Christian Alliance for Orphans summit 
• Participate in Orphan Sunday at churches 
• Encourage staff to donate money to Orphan Galaxy 
• Send Christian books at gifts to staff for wedding anniversary 
• Practicing the spiritual disciplines as a staff together (fasting, solitude, service) 
• Offering forgiveness 
• Being “in the world but not of It” 
• Scripture sent with international referral 
• Sending “we prayed for you” cards 
• Presenting stories of how God worked in our client’s lives
  
• Bible verses on website pages 
• Bible verses on invoice, receipt, letterhead, agreements 
• Bible verses on email signature line 
• Our logo and middle name 

What makes an adoption or foster agency Christian?  This question can be answered in a variety of ways:

1. Motive.  Nightlight was founded in 1959 when a group of churches who belonged to the National Association of Evangelicals noticed that there was a need for more families to adopt babies from unplanned pregnancy.  This was a pro-woman, pro-life, mandate consistent with James 1:27 which says “true religions is this: to look after the orphan and widow in their distress.”

Our motivation for beginning the Snowflakes® embryo adoption program in 1997 was to advocate for the personhood of embryos, and defend that life begins at conception.  We want to reduce the number of embryos in frozen storage, and increase the number who are given a chance of life.  We accept any embryo, we do not allow selective termination, nor do we allow genetic testing because we know every embryo deserves life.

Our motivation for being involved in foster care is that we want to bring better results to the current system.  People become foster parents for a variety of motives.  The reality is that some foster parents are looking for passive income, so they want the greatest number of children, who are the easiest to care for, so they can have the highest monthly stipend possible.  Other people become foster parents because they have a specific calling from God to “do hard things” and make a difference in the life of a child.  We know that the foster care system can be improved and that the Church can be the solution to the difficulty of recruiting spectacular families.

In today’s environment, international adoption is not financially sustainable.  The only organizations doing international adoption have a separate funding source, such as contributions from financial donors.  These donors are typically motivated by the Bible’s call in Isaiah 1:17 to, “Take up the cause of the fatherless.”

2. Method.  Most agencies are ethical.  We do not imply that other agencies are less ethical.  But as a Christian agency, we feel specifically accountable to a level of ethics that exceeds that of the state, federal or Hague regulations.  We are committed to honesty and integrity.  We do not operate with an “ends justifies the means” mentality.  We do not coerce birth parents to consent to adoption. We only pursue adoption cases that have a high likelihood of success, for the sake of everyone involved.

Our staff are welcome, encouraged, and free to share their faith with clients and with each other. We pray regularly as a team, and with our clients.  We join other Christian agencies at conferences such as the Christian Alliance for Orphans, where we connect with our mission.  We study Scripture together.

3. Metrics.  We measure our success by the number of embryos given life, abortions prevented, children placed in families where they will hear the Gospel, children who find permanent families, and children who escape  danger.  Our board of directors are volunteers with no financial stake in the agency.  They hold the agency accountable to ensure we do not drift from that mission.  The agency is non-profit, invests all of its funds back into programs, and the staff embrace modest salaries because they appreciate our mission.

Kentucky Team

Nightlight requires families to sign a social media policy where they agree not to post “information concerning the child or your particular adoption case in chat rooms, discussion boards, websites, and online journals/diaries” with the exception that “a family may create a by-invitation-only page for the purpose of updating family and friends about the adoption.”

The reason Nightlight has this policy regarding Facebook groups and social media is not because we want to prevent families from talking to each other and getting information.  Instead, we implemented this policy after a decade of observations, which include:

• These groups evolve into an “us versus them” environment, pitting families against adoption agencies.   We want to remind families that we are on your side.  We are your advocate.  We are on the same team.  We exist for you, and cannot exist without you.
• Families begin to compare and contrast their timelines.  But every case is unique.  It has been said that “comparison is the thief of joy” and we find that these comparisons becomes an unhealthy environment for everyone involved.
• The expectation we have of our staff is that they spend quality time with you on the phone or on Teams/Zoom, rather than just email.  That’s because we want our staff and our families to see each other as PEOPLE; not impersonal voices on the computer.  We want our staff to be direct with families.  Similarly, it is healthy for families to be direct with our staff and to build trusting relationships.

Nightlight Christian Adoptions continues to grow and improve. Each quarter, we prepare a quarterly Performance Quality Improvement report. If you would like to see our improvement, please click the link below to our PQI Quarterly report.

PQI Quarterly Report Q4 2022

The Board of Directors of Nightlight Christian Adoptions established the “Bright Lights Award” which is given in recognition of a commitment to adoption which inspires others to adopt, advocates for adoption, or makes a great sacrifice in adoption. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

The board would like to recognize John and Tammi Spruill.

John and Tammi founded the “Save the Embryos” adoption grant for Snowflakes families in financial need.  they have also donated generously toward embryo adoption awareness efforts. Thank you for your generosity and vision!

The Board of Directors of Nightlight Christian Adoptions established the “Bright Lights Award” which is given in recognition of a commitment to adoption which inspires others to adopt, advocates for adoption, or makes a great sacrifice in adoption. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

The first quarter of 2023 recipient of the Bright Lights award is Rebekah Booth.

Rebekah felt called to cover the fees for a Christian couple in financial need adopting from Eastern Europe. Even though she did not know the family, she gave generously to them.  We are deeply grateful for your generosity.

The Board of Directors of Nightlight Christian Adoptions established the “Bright Lights Award” which is given in recognition of a commitment to adoption which inspires others to adopt, advocates for adoption, or makes a great sacrifice in adoption. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

The third quarter of 2022 recipients of the Bright Lights award are Levi and Katie Moore.

Levi and Katie have given generously to the Nightlight adoption grant fund, which helps “people who might not otherwise be able to adopt, adopt children who might not otherwise be adopted.”

The Board of Directors of Nightlight Christian Adoptions established the “Bright Lights Award” which is given in recognition of a commitment to adoption which inspires others to adopt, advocates for adoption, or makes a great sacrifice in adoption. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

The first quarter of 2023 recipient of the Bright Lights award is Ann Herring.

Ann Herring made the largest single donation in Nightlight’s history.  We are deeply grateful for your generosity.

This article was originally published on “On the Word” at https://ancamartin.com/

He was abandoned at the gate of the orphanage. It couldn’t have been in plain daylight. The dusk in the air was most likely the rough projection of the dark and light battles on her inside. Battles of love and shame, fear and guilt hurried her hands like the wind hurries the moon away. They had to do it quickly, silently, and carefully. To abandon your helpless, small, newborn kin is illegal and punishable with prison and loss of public reputation.

She was a mother whose soft arms and cajoling eyes struggled to tell her heart to let him go. But let him go she must! He wasn’t what they hoped for in a son. He wasn’t fitting their paradigm and life trajectories. And so, he must go. Away from her kin. Away from her sight and presence. Deep into a place where street eyes don’t go and neighborhood bodies rarely walk. A place that boards orphans and no one knows their real name. A place where silent cries make no real commotion and small breaths warm no one’s cheeks anymore.

I think I know his mother. Or at least some of her. I know she was scared. Scared of her own soul reminding her with every birthday of the small, little boy with missing fingers and an extra toe. Ashamed of her mind’s million reasons why he was not good enough, strong enough, perfect enough, deserving enough of life with her. Broken at the future that will always have his shadow but never his voice. Pained at the ruthless circumstances that ruled her out, killed her hope, darkened her predictions, poisoned her love for him. Weak in the face of pressuring mobs and heartless laws.

And yet, she was courageous enough to slip her baby by death’s knives and sail him down her own river of cemented state orphanage. It wasn’t a Mosaic casket she laid her boy in, but a 2.5 square meters Asian box, built by a civilized society at the gates of a stern, cold world. She was determined to pass him well from her warm, tired bosom to the government’s stiff premises. Compassionate to let her feelings tie him tight in a blanket, with a red note, and the smell of a home on his skin. And hopeful. She must have silently hoped that humanity will not completely abandon him and that a family will gather him into arms of love and compassion. Hopeful that her inner cries would comfort his. Hopeful that his breath would warm someone else’s cheeks.

Motherhood doesn’t stop when the baby leaves our arms or wombs. Once a mother, always a mother. We can hide our eyes or stiffen our hearts: but the baby’s ties tangle us forever. That’s perhaps how I know that, though she abandoned him then, she won’t stop thinking of him today. She took him away from her breath, but his smell still warms her check—reminiscent breezes of her baby’s lips. She separated him from her family but he is still connected to her memories.

Today, this boy is in our family. Adoption is the other way of birthing a child—the undoing of abandonment, the pulling in of the outcast, the family-ing of the parentless, the gathering of the rejected, the loving of the love-less, the connecting with the disconnected. Adoption restores what abandonment rejected. It enriches what rejection depleted. It loves what pain broke down.

My motherhood sees her motherhood. I look at my boy and I see a fleeting shadow of her in him. She remains close to him if only in her dreams. My boy is dressed in layered motherhood and he doesn’t even know it.

I know my motherhood is richer and fuller because she chose to mother him first. I benefit from her hard choice to let her son live. I gained what she lost. I love what she rejected. I mother what she abandoned. I live with the one she parted with. I get to hold his little frame and hear his beautiful giggles. His lips kiss my cheeks and his words whisper sweet loves to me. I hold his hands with missing fingers and see God’s wonderful creation. I am grateful to his first mother who chose life for him in the dusk of an Asian street, at the gate of a cold orphanage, in the struggles of her conflicted, broken heart.

Written by Anca Martin, adoptive mother