Sponsorship Qualms

I’m having a battle with sponsorship. And I share all of this not desiring to start a war…  

The battle has been ongoing for awhile. I’ve been a sponsor. I’ve seen the beauty in having a name and face posted on your refrigerator that signifies where your monthly check is going to. It makes it personal. You see where your X amount of dollars each month is going to help feed, educate, clothe, and provide medical care a child who really needs it. You sow each month and you get to see the fruit being grown. None of that is my issue. I totally relate and agree with sponsors that sponsorship is affirming and has many beneficial points to it. We have reaped greatly from sponsorship as an organization. Sponsors have shared with me how they see and respond to God as they give, and the children share about how they see God in each stranger who they begin to consider as family that sponsors them. 

My battle just epitomized as I sit here working on Doors’ July newsletter. We’re changing things up a bit in our style and monthly communication. I’ve been valiantly attempting to write a short one paragraph blurb for many days now, about a child in our home who doesn’t have any of his sponsorships currently filled. I rewrote it too many times to count, because each time I wrote it, I sounded like I was trying to sell this child. 

I finally sat back and I prayed, “God, I want Your words to be my words. I don’t think you want me to try and sell this child.” 

My next thought quickly followed my prayer, ‘Selling children is human trafficking.’ I do not want to exploit (derive benefit from) any child. 

Children make difficult products. If I were to write a blurb saying how this child is the most passionate and fearless child I’ve ever met, and that everything that he puts his hand to, he excels greatly….that would be accurate. However, every parent in the world knows that in between those sentences there should also be: “This child doesn’t sit still for more then four minutes, occasionally back-talks the people who care for him, always refuses to the dishes, and is more stubborn than a mule.” 

I’m thankful that sponsorship isn’t merely a call to buy a good and perfect product. It can not be a part of your paycheck that we merely need to sustain what we are doing and so we put cute faces on pamphlets to try and get your money.  

Sponsorship is a call to come and build with us. 

The truth is that all of the children in our home and in our school have issues. But let’s face it…who doesn’t? Our heart behind sponsorship is that we don’t have to advertise to any person how perfect are children are, or how desperately in need our children are.  Our hope is that beyond a face, you will see a multi-faceted God who takes more care and ownership over that child than we ever could. A God who is sowing seeds in and all around that child, because His greatest desire is to love him or her. We serve a God of redemption, and I am blessed to look upon His redemption in my own life and in the many others around me, every day. 

We pray that our sponsors see that we are building alongside the greatest Maker. We pray that our sponsors’ hearts don’t break over a child who used to be hungry, homeless, or needy - but rejoice alongside of ours, and alongside the Almighty’s about His love for that child. We pray that a song of praise can’t help but burst out of all of us as we look upon the work of our Maker, and we eagerly long to join Him in the redemptive process.