The Orphan Report - For Ministry Leaders: The Orphan Report - For Ministry Leaders

By Joe Knittig

Over the last ten years, the Lord has moved many to serve children in the world’s Orphan Window. From adoptive families, to people going on mission trips, to parachurch ministries facilitating orphan care, to local churches caring
for kids, the Orphan Awakening has reached a tipping point. We’ve now entered the second decade of this Orphan Awakening, and stand on the brink of a massive second wave storming into the Orphan Window. For you who have entered the Orphan Window and for you who are coming: this is my reconnaissance Report to you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781483529790

Book preview

started.

SECTION 1

Great Pressure

Kids aren’t causes.

CHAPTER 1

End Poverty

Jesus said the poor will always be among us. But we don’t believe Him. With noble intentions, our world has charted its own approach to poverty. Our world’s operating systems designed to end poverty have the net effect of commoditizing kids, making them causes, with the world’s most vulnerable children cut out of care. We’ve locked them into an acute pressure zone, as a bunch of losses to be cut in a quest for a perceived greater global good.

Our approach to the poor marks the starting point of The Orphan Report.

Let’s begin with a golf analogy. Ask a golfer about driving the golf ball. He’ll tell you he can stand over the ball such that he looks like he’s aiming right down the middle of the fairway. He can swing really hard and hit the ball impressively far. But whether the ball goes straight into the fairway, where he thought he was pointed, or out of bounds depends on whether the face of his driver is square with the ball at the point of impact. If the club face is just slightly – ever so slightly – turned one way or the other at impact, the ball will go either left or right. And the more twisted the impact, the more crooked the consequences.

God’s way is the square-at-impact approach to the poor. The Lord commanded His people to serve the poor. Ours is to give ourselves over to others, particularly the poor, the infirm, the oppressed. Not involuntarily because of a New World Order government mandate designed to force a global middle class. But as a voluntary outpouring of Christ’s love within us, with the gospel of Jesus Christ – in word and deed – as the non-negotiable fountainhead. It’s an inside out love process, not an outcome. And it’s a process built on the paradoxical premise that in the rich-poor exchange, the poor have great power to offer in the spiritual realm.

The world’s approach is slightly but critically twisted. Our world’s dominant global goal is not to serve the poor in Christ (a heart centered process), with outcomes belonging to the Lord. Rather, the goal is to end poverty (a head centered outcome), with success defined and controlled by us.

Do you see the twist? The former is trust and process based, understanding that the Lord will do whatever He wants from impact, even if we do not instantaneously see or understand what He’s doing. The latter is control and outcomes based, making our own linear expectations – a desire to immediately end suffering and impose our own notions of cosmic fairness – god of the strike. In one, we subjugate ourselves to God. In the other, we try and subjugate God to us.

We often break down our outcome objective into smaller chunks. We want to end poverty in a given continent. In a given country. In a given city. In a given village. In a given family. In a given person. We keep score, again according to our own notions of poverty’s resolution.

End poverty has become the dominant goal among many global humanitarian and Christian organizations, alike. This motivational mantra aligns secular and Christian organizations in their approach to world change. We act as if we can undo the corruption of our souls, of our world, by exercising intellectual dominion over corruption’s consequences. This mainstream alignment feels good, alluring, rational. To get in this mainstream, Christian folk need only drop Jesus and that Bible stuff from their equation. The elite secular humanitarian world need only tolerate the ignorant Christian rubes (who are willing to drop Jesus) to pursue a perceived greater global good. And, voila, we’re aligned in common ground.

The heart in this end poverty movement isn’t Christ. It’s the United Nations (UN), along with the network of global governments and organizations – secular and faith based – who coalesce with the UN. The secular New World Order, led by the UN, has set eight laudable goals aimed to solve poverty. They’re called the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). They are the embodiment of the secular end poverty movement.

The first goal in the MDGs is as follows: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. The first target towards this goal is to halve the number of people, relative to total population, who suffer from extreme poverty and hunger. I’ll refer to this as the 50% Target and use it as a touchstone to discuss the currents cutting against kids all the way at the end of the line.

The starting question for us is not whether we or others think that the world’s poverty elimination goals are noble. Or inspiring. Or so audacious and universal that they must be of God. The question is simply this: are we (don’t worry about everyone else) square at impact? The answer with the modern end poverty approach is, no.

Am I saying that those who adopt the end poverty approach are malicious? That the MDGs are evil? That it’s wrong to hate poverty and take radical action in our lives to step into that scourge? No. Of course not. I am making three factual observations as a necessary start to The Orphan Report, unpopular though they may be.

First, our Lord gave us a love based, serve the poor, process marching order. He did not give us the end poverty outcome marching order. We adopted that all on our own.

Second, the difference between our Lord’s serve the poor marching order, and our self-imposed global end poverty marching order is a huge one. They drive very different expectations, operating systems, and decisions.

Third, the UN-centered end poverty approach has become the powerful mainstream approach for secular and Christian organizations alike (including much of the Church) and is, in fact, more than a twist at impact. It’s a complete paradigm shift with a global government centered operating system.

God’s approach for us and our world’s approach for ourselves may look like they’re both aligned in the same direction. They’re not. If we’ll open our eyes to look all the way to the end of the line of humankind, we’ll see the twisted consequences. We’ll see that, in execution, our seemingly noble quest to end poverty locks the most vulnerable children on earth, kids fiercely close to God’s heart, into a brutal pressure zone, as collateral damage of our secular, one-world war against poverty.

We have unintentionally rewritten James 1:27 to state that pure and faultless religion is not to look after widows and orphans in their distress, but rather to lock them into their distress. And we’ve joined the world in the process of doing so. In this first section of the Report, we’ll look at the macro-forces that have the net effect of locking our most vulnerable children out of care.

CHAPTER 2

The 40 Year Stretch

The world’s mainline end poverty approach generates enormous numbers pressure. We’re living right now in a unique and critical juncture of human history. The 40 year stretch of time from the years 2010 to 2050 exposes unfathomable tragedy; a lethal production and distribution crisis among the poor that requires supernatural intervention. At the same time, we live in an intellectually arrogant world that trumpets money, science, and government as gods. Poverty and suffering have become an intellectual riddle for people to solve this side of heaven. With the right combination of money, government, and intellect, we can end all the pain. Or so the theory goes.

Let’s stop a minute and ask... How’s this working?

Let’s begin with 6.8 billion. When I started thinking about this book in 2010 that was the global population.¹ (It ratcheted up to 7 billion by the time of publication.) On the one side of the 6.8 billion, roughly 1 billion live in extreme economic prosperity. That’s us here in the U.S. even on our worst days. On the other side, roughly 2 billion live in extreme economic poverty.

An estimated 1 billion children live among the poor.² Among that 1 billion, scores of millions are de facto parentless, Orphans. They’re the most endangered species on the planet.

There’s enough food production capacity in the world today to feed every man, woman and child 2,700 calories per day.³ However, even as we’re throwing around more global aid than ever, engaging more secular brainpower to eliminate poverty than ever, and entrenched deeper than ever in the UN’s Millennium Development Goals to eliminate poverty, guess what? Many experts say that world hunger is going in the wrong direction. According to a global food summit hosted by the United Nations, world hunger is trending up.⁴

The richest nations can produce. But there exists no secular grassroots distribution network to the most vulnerable among the poor. Until recently, helping the poor produce for themselves had little cache among global policy-makers who favor global government controlled centralized systems of aid and development.

Guess who gets hit the hardest by this crisis? The poorest of the poor. More specifically, adults who don’t own land and women head of households.⁵ Beneath them – the ones getting absolutely crushed beneath the weight of the world – lie the millions of children in extreme poverty. At the very bottom of that heap, in the dregs, languish the many millions of children with no adult champion in life: true Orphans.

Even as the UN declares that the world’s health and wealth efforts are working, such that incomes among the poor are increasing, hunger among the most vulnerable continues in its deplorable state.⁶ In other words, the notion that the world can spend billions and billions to help people as a whole get more money, and improve their health and wealth, does NOT translate to those people caring for the most hurting kids. The UN just cannot seem to understand why not, because sin and spiritual depravity have no place in their end poverty formulae.

What is poverty’s net impact on kids? Around 21,000 children under the age of five die per day from preventable causes. That’s more than 7.5 million per year. Roughly 6 million children per year under the age of five die from hunger.⁷ That’s one every 5 seconds. We don’t have accurate data on how many more million five and older die per year, turn to the streets, sell their bodies, or scrape by in slavery.

The most despicable post-term abortion pandemic among our children rages on not someday, but today.

And when it rains, it pours. In the 40 years from 2010 to 2050, demographers conservatively expect world population to soar to 9.1 billion.⁸ Very little of that growth will occur in economically rich countries.⁹ In Europe, the United States, and other developed countries, population will pretty well flat line. The growth explosion will continue in the poorest countries of the world. Developing countries’ population is expected to increase by more than 2 billion.¹⁰

In order to feed the 9.1 billion, global food production will have to increase by 70% from today.¹¹ The world’s food production experts argue that maybe, maybe this can be done, with certain drastic investment and social change contingencies. Here is a quote from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN about its optimism looking at 2050:

It is obvious that the positive vision presented here contrasts strongly with the reality of recent trends. The number of chronically undernourished and malnourished people in the world has been rising, not falling.¹²

Let’s say drastic production increase does occur. What about grassroots distribution? Heck, distribution is today’s obvious failure among 6.8 billion people. The world’s secular experts have no plan for how a theoretical 70% food production increase will result in food actually getting into the tummies of hundreds of millions more starving children.

But wait, there’s more! Who are these demographers? Who’s offering up this 9.1 billion number? Once again, the UN. Most of us have no clue just how deeply influential and powerful the UN has become, and what a foothold the UN has on global policy affecting not millions, but billions, of our neighbors – especially children born and unborn.

For example, that 9.1 billion number is not a given. It’s a UN target number based upon aggressive population control variables. According to the UN Population Fund, the average fertility rate among the poorest 50 countries in the world is 4.63 children per woman.¹³ If that fertility rate continues as is over the next 40 years, the world’s population will reach roughly 11 billion in 2050.¹⁴ There’s no secular, intellectual plan to handle 11 billion with so many among the poor. So then what? According to the UN and other global humanitarian heavies, we force a smaller population.

The UN’s gingerly discussed footnote in forecasting 9.1 billion as the 2050 population target is its assumption that global secular influencers, with the UN at the helm, will nearly halve (46% reduction) the fertility rate among the poorest nations from 4.63 down to 2.5 children per woman through population control policy.¹⁵ And guess who’ll be the biggest donors for this drive? Me, you, and the rest of the U.S. taxpayers.

To put this into perspective, consider China. When we think about Machiavellian means of population control, China is the prince. Over a period of 30 years, China went from a fertility rate of 2.6 children per woman down to 1.56 children per woman in 2010, a 40% reduction.¹⁶ How? In 1979, China started its One-Child Policy. China has controlled population through punitive, government mandated child limitations on families, mandated contraception, forced abortions, and infanticide of little ones who dared gasp for air outside of the womb. This was all done under the banners of family planning and population control.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for empowered women and healthy families. But I am not for a New World Order leveraging money and power (courtesy of our tax dollars) to jam targeted, numeric population control down the throats of the poor in order to hit end poverty goals to save the world. And folks, that is exactly what we’re looking at over the next 40 years should today’s power trends continue unchecked.

Let’s summarize:

• We have a failed global distribution system to care for the poor, and centralized, paternalistic, global aid systems that don’t incent the poor to produce and distribute for themselves.

• At 6.8 billion people today and with ample world food production capacity, we’re not feeding or caring for the most vulnerable among the poor. Children in the poorest countries pay the steepest price. More than 7.5 million little ones per year fail to reach their fifth birthdays. We’ve no solid data on how many more million who are five and older die easily preventable deaths.

• By the year 2050, we could be at 9.1 billion with no functioning grassroots distribution network. 15 million plus children under five may die per year in such conditions. And this assumes that UN New World Order population control policies among the poor prove more effective than China’s methods.

• Without radical population control measures, and assuming today’s status quo, we could see 11 billion people in 2050 and scores of millions more dead children as a direct result of poverty.

• The Black Death (bubonic plague) killed 50-75 million people over a roughly 50 year span in the late 14th century. We’re cruising towards a Black Death among the littlest children every 2 or 3 years.

All of this in a world that has largely decided that we have it all figured out; that we don’t need a Savior; and that world poverty is a chess game that top down intellect, tax dollars, and a forced global middle class canbring to check mate. Absent divine intervention, this is our world in the crucial 40 year stretch of time we’ve now entered.

So What for Orphans?

Let’s go back to the 50% Target. The UN takes in billions of dollars each year as the orchestrator of the global end poverty movement. Target number one of those billions raised is to halve, relative to total population, the number of hungry people in extreme poverty. Children are a particular focus.

Given the above information, pretend you’re a lead dog UN decision maker. You have no money on your own. You’re getting billions of aid dollars on the premise that you – along with all partnering organizations – will hit certain numeric global poverty elimination targets, like the 50% Target. That’s been a key justification for your rise as the central global power broker. You can see that (a) with the global economic crisis, the global aid you depend upon is down but the 50% Target remains, (b) you will not hit that 50% Target, and (c) there’s a tsunami of new lives coming among the poor that will overwhelm the 50% Target beyond 2015. Further assume that Jesus, and all that He means and says, has no place in your equation.

What will you do?

Let’s put it this way, which is a gross oversimplification to make a point. You have ten hungry children before you. You don’t have any money on your own. You tell a friend that if he’ll give you $10, you’ll make sure at least five get fed. You plan to ask him for a lot more money for more kids. Assume that, for some special and significant reasons, one of the ten presents a unique and expensive challenge. It’ll cost $5 to make sure the food gets in that One’s belly, and will be a monumental struggle in the process. The other nine will cost $1 each, with a pretty smooth transactional feeding process. You know the truth of the One and the nine. Your funding friend doesn’t. You plan to use $5 of the $10 for your own expenses to facilitate the feeding process. And remember, your mission is to hit your numbers in the march to end poverty.

What will you do?

Go after the One with all you got left after you use up the $5 on yourself? No.

If you’re out to hit a 50% Target, you’re going to make the rational choice. Pursue the targeted outcome. Pursue the biggest numbers at the lowest costs, with the most reliable, transactional processes to hit the numbers. And that is exactly what’s happening in our world today.

Though exciting and motivational, chasing numbers is a most dangerous game. It means two things in the end poverty movement. One, there is a stronger global population control current than ever. The unborn will continue to pay the ultimate price as the global humanitarian world drives towards its numeric poverty elimination goals. Going to 11 billion is a deal breaker in the number game. Two, as we’ll see in the coming chapters, chasing numbers means an increasingly strong, rational current to cut out of care the most expensive and difficult kids.

CHAPTER 3

The Network and The Juggernaut

The global Church has outsourced the Lord’s social justice mantle to governments and giant aid organizations. We have given to Caesar that which belongs to us. Today’s resultant secular social justice system doesn’t work. It’s centralized, bureaucratic, expensive, inefficient, and completely tied to end poverty number targets and power consolidation, wholly devoid of Christ. This further increases the end poverty number pressure that cuts the most hurting children out of care.

The Network

The Church is God’s plan A for social justice; His plan A to love (verb) the poor and marginalized. The local church is God’s designed nexus through which His global community connects, and from which His love for the poor and hurting should most powerfully flow. These core tenets inform my perspective relayed to you in The Orphan Report.

For clarity, I’m calling the universal family of Bible believing followers of Jesus Christ the collective Church. We don’t go to the Church. We are the Church. Within the Church, we have local churches. The local church is sometimes called the institutional church. A local church is, among other things, a defined nexus: a specific local body of believers, with leadership, an organizational structure, and a place to gather and worship, all with the gospel of Jesus Christ at the heart. The local church is where most of us find family and support in the faith. Not all, most. Many local churches combine in groupings along denominational lines. Others are non-denominational. In this book, I’ll sometimes refer to a local church as a hub within the Church.

With that clarification, let’s turn back to the plight of our world.

To deal with our global distribution crisis, a mastermind would have to pull off the impossible to set up a transformational grassroots network among the people of the world: entrenched country by country, village by village, person by person. He’d have to set up hubs among the poor, the rich, and all in between. He’d have to establish intra and inter-connectivity among these decentralized, autonomous little community hubs. He’d have to provide enough human, intellectual and economic resources within the network to provide for all. He’d have to establish transcultural tenets guiding and connecting all. Core values. Like grace. Love. Compassion. Patience. Humility. Selflessness. Sacrifice. Service. Generosity. He’d have to provide a supernatural, transformative influence for ordinarily self-centered people to put the master, his tenets, and others who hurt ahead of themselves, and to support one another in such a life.

Governments have not established such a supernatural network. The UN has not. Other secular, intellectual supermen and giant aid organizations trying to solve poverty have not.

Only God can. And He has.

Since the stoning of Stephen, the Lord has orchestrated the planting of gospel-centered local churches, hubs, all over the world to expand the Church network. Those churches have indigenously spread like wildfire. Today in Ugandan villages ravaged by HIV/AIDS, established Ugandan hubs dot the landscape. The same in Haiti. In India. In the Philippines. In China. In the United States. In the richest and poorest nations. In the biggest