OCA is here to serve the Church throughout Kentucky and southern Indiana. Whether you are a pastor, church leader, member, or someone interested in engaging folks within your community, we are here to serve you and help your church engage in reaching the vulnerable children and families in your congregation and the surrounding community.
Not everyone is called to adopt or foster, but everyone is called to do something. Our hope is not to create a new program for the pastor to oversee or a new ministry for someone to build, rather we want to come alongside your passion to begin mobilizing a community of care to where it is one of the core identities of who you are as a church.
Mobilizing a Community of Care
What if several families in your congregation wanted to become foster parents, would you know exactly where to send them? What if you could host foster care training in your church the same week these families asked you about the opportunities?
What if, after these families became foster parents, you had families who weren’t called to foster or adopt step up and say we want to support these families as respite care families so we can support? What if you could have respite care training in your church for these other families to create the support foster and adoptive families need?
Now that you have foster and adoptive families in your church do your child care volunteers know how to care for kids who have traumatic experiences? What if you could begin training your childcare workers on how to care for kids from hard places so the parents could enjoy the service to worship freely without worrying about who is taking care of their kids because people know how to serve their children?
OCA does all of these trainings at no cost to you. All you have to do is say YES! In accepting this opportunity, OCA will journey alongside you as you open up the message of hope to kids losing hope and show the radical love of Jesus to those welcoming kids into their families.
Services OCA provides:
- Guest speakers for Orphan Sunday or for any other orphan care, foster or adoption events in your church
- Develop a strategic orphan care plan to fit your story.
- Foster Care training for members of your congregation who want to engage in foster care in the state of Kentucky
- Trauma informed training for your children’s ministry leaders and youth workers
- Respite care training or training for families to engage in our Safe Harbor ministry
- Adoption Option classes for those in your congregation wanting to engage in adoption, but don’t know where to begin
- Connect support groups for those in your church engaged in foster care and adoption and need some additional support
If you would like for our Ministry Development Director to contact you with more information about any of these opportunities, please fill out the form below and we will be happy to help in any way we can!