Noel Piper on Adoption

As I have said before, Kelly and I have a developing heart for adoption. We don’t know exactly when (although it will certainly be several years before we even start the process) or from where (we have a heart for Asia), but we feel like it’s a burden God has given us.

Somehow I stumbled on Noel Piper’s blog (she is pastor John Piper’s wife) and she has been documenting their adoption story in honor of Orphan Sunday, which apparently was 11/8. You can read her story from start to finish starting here, but I wanted to show you a letter she wrote to John when they were considering adoption. She had a very strong heart for it, and he was in consideration phase. She was trusting the final decision to him. I found this really interesting, and got a real chuckle out of the last set of points (“Being radical and taking risks”)! I also love how she calls him "Johnny".

You can find the original blog here:

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Johnny writes papers when he wants to explain his view or make a point. So during the days we were deciding whether to adopt, I tried to speak to him in his own language. I wrote what I hoped would be a persuasive paper.

Johnny,

I want to assure you that, in no way, do I think our ministry will be crippled if we go on as we are. It is rich. But I do believe that by adopting a daugher, God will add richness and depth and understanding and credibility in many areas of our personal and public lives.

Random Thoughts

• In general, I expect that having 1 child at home will seem very easy after all our years of 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, etc.
• Having a young aunt here will be extra fun for the grandchildren that will start to visit, maybe before many years.
• Having a child again at this stage in our life will keep us from moving as quickly into older stages. It will shove us back a generation.

Pro-Life Ministry

• The very act of adopting is a renewal and revitalization of our efforts against abortion and for life -- in a very new and powerful way.
• Adopting would add tremendous credibility, and confirm our seriousness in the effort for life.
• A person who is as vocal and visible as you about life will be very visible as a supporter of mothers, as a protector of children who would otherwise be unwanted and perhaps in danger, as living out the implications and responsibilities that follow in the wake of stopping an abortion.
• You have a powerful voice. Even if your writing/speaking isn’t directly about Life and adoption, it will be there, because what’s happening in your life IS there in your writing. And you will be an influence to many for the good of children who need homes.

Racial Reconciliation

• Our efforts toward racial reconciliation would have tangible credibility.
• We would have personal experience with family-level racial diversity.
• We would open ourselves to personal experience of how an African-American person and a mixed-race family is treated differently from the way to which we are accustomed.

Biblical Masculinity and Femininity

• You will gain new understanding and clarity when your Biblical understanding is applied to the life of a daughter. I expect you to have strong confirmation of what you’ve understood and taught all along.
• It will be a good thing for your promotion of these Biblical truths to actually experience and learn how to raise a girl to be a godly woman in a society that expects something else.
• Maybe there are practicalities that you haven’t even thought of, that you would see when raising a daughter, and these things would expand your understanding and teaching.
• Your speaking and writing and persuasion in this area will have new credibility, when you have a daughter.

Evangelism and Missions

• To add another child to our family becomes the most personal kind of evangelism toward adding members to the Kingdom.
• And considering our attitude toward missions, it may also be mission recruitment for the sake of the Kingdom!

Your Writing and Speaking Ministry

• Your public ministry will be deeper and richer because we know that everything God puts into our lives comes through into your writing and speaking as a clearer, more pointed explanation of God and his ways.
• We know there are angles of God’s face and aspects of his personality to be discovered in new situations he puts us into. We will experience more of God as we live with a daughter. And that deeper experience of God will make your public ministry so much richer.
• For instance, if we adopted a child, and raised her, we would understand God’s adoption in a much fuller way -- what it means to adopt a person who is not part of your family and make that person fully a partaker and inheritor of your own life and family.

Being Radical and Taking Risks

• I think it would not be fair to quote yourself to you to try to make a point. But I must say that very often over the years you have made statements about taking risks and trusting God and doing unexpected and radical things -- and I often hear those statements in the light of the radical thing I want to do, and therefore want you to do with me.
• To adopt -- at our age and when it would certainly not be expected of us and when it is not financially easy and when it might make other ministries more difficult -- would be more than a token. It would say that you are serious about radical faith.