The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Ministry families and adopting and foster care - with Sarah and Mat Yeo and Matthew Wilcoxen
How do you balance the instability and chaos of external ministry with adding a foster child or adopted child to a ministry family?
What are the implications of taking children in crisis into the ministry home?
What motivates ministry families to become foster parents or to adopt?
How do older children and the church respond?
Sarah and Mat Yeo serve at Hurstville Grove Anglican Church in Sydney
Matt Wilcoxen pastors St John’s Darlinghurst in inner Sydney.
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It is the pastor's heart and Dominic Steele and today, a pastor's heart for kids in crisis. We're talking to pastoral families, ministry families, about adoption, foster care and respite. Matt and Sarah Yeo are with us and Matthew Wilcoxon as well. We will hear from two senior ministry families as they talk about their hearts and their hearts for kids in trouble and the impact and implications for their family, their ministries and their churches. I'm particularly interested in the pastor's dilemma how you balance the instability and chaos of external ministry and then you change the home dynamic so dramatically by adding extra people, extra kids and kids in crisis. Matthew Wilcoxon leads the ministry team at St John's Darlinghurst in inner Sydney. Matt Yeo, alongside his wife Sarah and Matt is senior pastor at Hurstville Grove Anglican Church in Sydney South. Matthew, if we could start with you and your heart and your wife's heart on that Maundy Thursday back in 2018.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean there's a little bit of a backstory that my wife and I had longed to have children for a long time, so we were very open to children and the Lord had closed that door and so we felt led to prepare for foster care and so on. That night we finally got a call and we heard that a little boy was coming and he was 18 months old and he showed up at about almost midnight on Maundy Thursday and yeah, there was a lot going on in my heart at the time. There was a genuine openness to this unknown person, but a lot of trepidation and fear as well, because there were just so many factors.
Speaker 2:We don't know this child and we don't know how long he'll be with us. We don't know what kind of complications there will be. So it was a moment with a lot of mixed emotions.
Speaker 1:Changing your first nappy.
Speaker 2:Changing my first nappy and yes, yes, that was, I think my wife did the first one, but I did one shortly thereafter.
Speaker 1:And I'm just trying to think. I mean, in America you don't have a Good Friday service the next morning and you weren't preaching, or were you? I'm just thinking for me, the night before Good Friday I'm in a mess, a stressful mess anyway, before you had a new child come in.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to remember what my duties were. We had actually at our church. It was quite liturgical, so we had a Maundy Thursdays foot washing service, which was apropos, and then we had two services on Good Friday. So it was a big ministry day, oh yeah, and then we had a four hour Easter vigil that was on Saturday evening that we did with two other churches. So yeah, it was the busiest weekend of the year. No, doubt.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's go to you. Well, let's start with you, sarah, and your pastor's heart and your first foster child moment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I guess, yeah, we had done the training and I think we only waited a couple of weeks before the first call for the first child that came into our care. But we do short-term care, so I guess the seeds were planted many years ago, like I would say. Even when I was a young woman, I read a chapter in a book I think it was Disciplines of a Godly Woman or something and there was a chapter on adoption and it talked about foster care and adoption and if we're Christians and we're pro-life and we're to follow Jesus' example, it just talked about caring for orphans and that sort of thing. So I think the seed was planted back then. Yeah, but Matt, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, end of 2017, just after Christmas Day and we got that call and we have five biological children, so our youngest was about 10 at that age, but it had been a while since we'd had babies and nappies.
Speaker 2:And nappies.
Speaker 4:This was about a one-month-old came into our lives and that was the situation for well until now, and it was an absolute joy. A little bit of a shock to the system, but we are so thankful that we got that call and continued with that path.
Speaker 1:I mean, when you say now, it was two weeks ago that you had your last respite care.
Speaker 4:It was, it was, yeah. So still currently doing a little bit of respite with one of our previous children, which is a joy to have a baby and then also have them as a six-year-old.
Speaker 1:Now I mean, you've both got quite different dynamics in that you didn't have other kids there, and now you've got one, and then, actually pretty soon after that, there were three.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. I mean, when you first get a child, at least in the system we were in, you get some information but it's often not always accurate because things are developing quickly. And so we were told when now our son came to us that he didn't have siblings. Within a few weeks we found out he did have siblings. Within a few weeks we found out he did have siblings. And after he had been with us for about three months, we were told that those siblings, two sisters ages seven and eight, weren't being treated all that well in the foster home. They were in and needed a new foster home, and so we had a very quick uh situation where we had to decide whether we could take them and wanted to take them as well. And so, you know, within a week of meeting those two girls they were moving in Uh and uh. So this was just a few months after our uh now son came to us.
Speaker 1:Um, let's go back to you, Sarah. And five kids at home and suddenly there's another new baby in the house and parents' attention is focused away from your biological children and, by necessity, onto this other child.
Speaker 3:What's going on with the other kids and the change in family dynamic and that kind of thing yeah, well, I, I think our children weren't super young when we did it, um, so I think our youngest was she nine or ten, ten um, and our eldest was 18 um. So we had chatted with them and they were fully on board with the idea as well. So they loved it, can I say. They loved having a baby around and were helpful. But yeah, I guess I felt that you know tearing a bit, that I was now fully caring, you know, 24-7 for a little baby. But you know, we did choose to care for babies because we thought that that could work with our family and the age they were at and with ministry and everything. So even though, yes, you've got to get up at night and it's tiring and lots of people would find babies hard, we just thought that that would work for us and.
Speaker 3:I think it did.
Speaker 1:So you've done mostly babies rather than five-year-olds.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we were kind of approved as nought to two. But you can be quite specific and say what you would like. So we had kind of said we would like to care for babies, or at least, when they come to us, that they're between nought and six months. But for the most part, apart from that very first little one who was four weeks old, the rest were brand new, like from hospital. Right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And how long?
Speaker 3:did you have them for have them so short-term care is where we're caring for them while they're working out what their longer-term future is. So most of them were six to eight months. The shortest was five months and then one was 18 months, so that case was just a little bit more complicated, or up and down as to whether they were going to reunite with birth mum or not.
Speaker 1:What's the wrench like when you give?
Speaker 3:a child. That's one of the hardest things, for sure. Like, yeah, our heart broke every time. At the same time, all of us, I would say, went into positive situations for the most part, but you'd been there. You'd been there parents Like you, love them like your own. So it is heart-wrenching. There's no denying that. Like people will say, oh, I couldn't do that because I couldn't say goodbye. It certainly wasn't because we thought, oh, we can do that, we're tough. I'm certainly not tough, yeah, so we were a mess every time, but it was definitely worthwhile.
Speaker 1:Matthew, it started for you as foster care, but became adoption.
Speaker 2:That's right. So when you go into the foster care situation, in most places the primary goal that you are committed to the agency's committed to is reunification. So you live with ambiguity for a long time. Even if you're open to adoption, you really need to be committed to reunification and as a Christian, you want to see that parent get to a point where they are in a safe and healthy place to reunite with that child, but then at the same time, you're caring for that child, particularly if they're very young. You're caring for a child that's increasingly looking to you as mommy and daddy and you love them, and so it's living with this ambiguity about what's going to happen, what ought to happen and I think that's one of the hardest parts is just managing your own heart in that, as you really do want to actually give them away, but you love them.
Speaker 1:I'm imagining many late night conversations between you and your wife about those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you get into the fog of war and just getting through life. But yeah, I mean you're constantly at particular key points where decisions are being made and they're outside of your hands, they're in the hands of social workers and lawyers and judges, and you just realize you're just praying, you know it's trusting the Lord's guidance and providence.
Speaker 1:Now, what have been the particular complexities and I'm going to ask each of you this that have come from taking on a foster child or, in your case, adopting because you're in ministry, and the chaos externally to the house that ministry brings, and then life has suddenly got infinitely more complex at home. Maybe we start with you, sarah.
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, so we would carry on doing what we did with the baby. That's fair to say, but that's tiring. But there are certain things that I couldn't do. I guess, like ministries, that I might have otherwise been involved in because you know the age of our kids meant I could go out at night, you know, and be involved, for instance, like we did the Life Series, and at the moment because we were on a break from having any short termers that.
Speaker 3:I've been involved with that with Matt, whereas previously I'd have to be home with the baby because he was out. You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I'm just imagining lots of time in crash.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. Or dealing with babies during the service, yeah, but they, you know, they were embraced at church and that was lovely, but it just meant you're carrying on. We were still being as hospitable as we could and, you know, looking after our five and just doing ministry, as usual. But you know, I guess it would make you weary. But on the positive, I kept doing, like, say, morning Bible study with women who were home, because I was, you know, still at home with the little one, even though my kids were much older. Yeah, Speak.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, that was really well explained. I think it's a joy for the church to see some of their ministry staff foster caring. We had incredible feedback. But at the same time, you know, from our point of view, it adds complexities to what's already a fairly complex job. I think for me, often, when I came home from ministry, you know, there's a little bit of an off switch. I just want to flop on the couch, yeah, and be an introvert. When you've got you've. There's a little bit of an off switch. I just want to flop on the couch, yeah, yeah, and be an introvert when you've got. You've described me well. When you've got a bub in the house and your wife's been caring for that bub for a long time, that's your job they want to give you some responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is?
Speaker 4:a bit like when we had our own children.
Speaker 1:It was very similar. We've got three kids. I admire anyone with more than three and anyone with more than three and then more, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:And look, our children were brilliant at being part of the bringing up of the foster kids. In fact, I'm sure that was an enriching experience for the foster kids. But the bulk of the work comes down to foster mum and foster dad, and so, yeah, that off switch wasn't really there and so that was a challenge. That said, it was a beautiful, beautiful thing, loved it all the time, but it's tiring. There's definitely a sacrifice there.
Speaker 1:Matthew.
Speaker 2:Depending on your church and your context, there are real opportunities that this opens up, and so we were in a place with a lot of single people, a lot of young married couples without children, and this created real opportunities for us to bring other people into the joy and challenges of foster care, and so Sundays were really busy for us.
Speaker 2:But there were a couple of young women that came every Sunday and took our girls and did things with them, and there was a woman who came I still marvel she was a chef and she came every Monday and cooked all the meals for the week, and so people did these things with great joy and it was also really enriching for them.
Speaker 2:And so we found that, yes, there are costs, but it was a way to get the people in the church using their gifts for something they felt really passionate about. And you know, I think churches that have a lot of single people, single people want to be part of families and they often need to be and families need them. But with a closed just culturally, in a lot of Western cultures nuclear families, quite closed and private and we're not good at opening that up. But when you bring these kids from outside, there's just a different way, that it's more open already and it's easy to invite people into that. So we found it to be a great ministry win, even though it definitely costs in terms of other types of things and energy.
Speaker 1:Tell us about that journey from uh foster kid to adoption and how it changed the dynamic when, uh, we're now totally responsible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, um, but for us it was a very complex journey, uh, involving legal processes and a long kind of failed attempts to see reunification happen.
Speaker 1:So they'd go back for certain weekends or something like that.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean the way it was working was supervised visits, Parents had a case plan that they needed to achieve, there were legal check-ins. I mean every system is different depending on where you are.
Speaker 2:There were legal check-ins I mean, every system's different depending on where you are but it was very clear to us that adoption was probably what should happen before the system caught up to that, and it was a strenuous process. So by the time we got to adoption, it was just this huge relief. We knew that these kids, we knew that these kids were were meant to be with us, and if there were any justice, that that's what would happen. So, but the systems systems are complicated and you worry about some of the decisions that get made sometimes, and so for us it was just a really prayerful process, like, please, lord, let the right things happen.
Speaker 2:We want these kids to be safe. We believe they're meant to be here.
Speaker 1:So it's yeah. I mean the fostering and the adoption both took place in Washington.
Speaker 2:Yep, Washington DC and you're now in central Sydney.
Speaker 1:Was it a complex thing? Were the complications leaving the United States?
Speaker 2:There's not, because the way adoption works in the United States is that they are issued a new birth certificate that shows you as their parents, like as if, as if that day you were the birth parents, Um. So this, this is something that happens differently in different municipalities, but adoption in the United States, once it happens, you have all the rights and responsibilities of a, of a birth parent, Um and um. So there was a couple of extra checks with the Australian government to make sure that this adoption was all done correctly. So that was an immigration issue, but not too difficult. What's?
Speaker 4:been the hardest thing, matt, can I first of all say that's the new adoption paper. It's a brilliant picture, isn't it, of, I think, one of the greatest words in the New Testament adoption and our adoption as children and it's one of the reasons we do it.
Speaker 4:It's an amazing thing. We've been adopted as God's children, new birth certificate and we have the opportunity to be in that space for children One of the hardest things. It's physically demanding for us, without a doubt, and, as Sarah said, the farewells are incredibly hard. The first one we farewelled, I think I cried for a week. I got better at that, but the grief was still there. However, when I look back was still there. However, when I look back at our previous children, there's not one moment of regret. I'm so deeply thankful. In the end, it's not about us, it's about the children. As a church at the moment, we're reading through Isaiah Page after page. God is telling his people to care for the vulnerable, and Christians can fit right into this space with out-of-home care, and so when we see the effect on the children that we had and the change in their life, it was remarkable. So, yeah, tough times, but I think, one of the best things we've ever done, sarah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, apart from the grief, I guess the other side of things is. For me, I was the one sort of communicating with the agency and facilitating visits. So when kids are in short-term care they still can see birth parents up to three times a week, depending. Like there are times where parents don't show up or they cancel and things like that happen. But some of our babies were going on those three times a week visits. Sometimes I'd have to drive them, sometimes they didn't like the car and would scream the whole way, and so sometimes visits were unsettling or so that was just another challenge in there. So you know it's whilst you're caring for them like your own child. There's also that.
Speaker 3:I guess, I would call it my work side of things, where I'm talking to the agency facilitating those things and things that just had to be done because they're in the system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Matthew, hardest things.
Speaker 2:I think, as I said earlier, managing your emotions and the uncertainty is one of the hardest things. For us, navigating the system was one of the hardest things, so caring for children that are your own is already you know labor intensive.
Speaker 1:It's complex enough.
Speaker 2:So then when you're balancing maybe medical appointments, or they need special tutoring because they're not up to where they ought to be, all these visits, so those kinds of things are a significant load. And then I just think you know adapting to having new people in your space that are also adapting to that.
Speaker 1:And you know kids come with and there's going to be all sorts of complexities that I mean particularly an older kid brings into that situation. That's right.
Speaker 2:And every kid is different. I mean, particularly an older kid brings into that situation. That's right. And every kid is different. I mean people may hear horror stories. I'm always cautious to tell people, look, it will be really hard, but it might not be as hard as these worst things you've heard. A lot of these kids are really resilient and they respond really well to the stability. So there's a lot of different things that you're kind of juggling there, both internally, spiritually and emotionally, and then logistically and relationally.
Speaker 1:Just dig into that internal, spiritual and emotional for me.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think parents that are out there that have their own children, particularly when they get to teenagers. You know what a crucible navigating those things are, and it's like that with adapting to people that are very different than you and and having to not take certain things personally. You're, you're sitting there, going. I'm sacrificing so much for you and these kids are like I, they, they have mixed emotions about this particularly if they're older.
Speaker 2:They're like who are you? Why I don't want, I don't want this and um. So it's easy to take those things personally or to to blame yourself for maybe some of the the difficulties that you're facing. Um, you know, and and I I think that can be challenging.
Speaker 1:Now you've spoken, Matthew, about complexities with the system, and I want to talk about the system and support agencies and then also the system and support agencies with you, Sarah and Matt. But what were some of the things that the support agencies did well and that you're thankful for?
Speaker 2:We worked alongside a support agency called DC 127, so coming from James 127, caring for widows and orphans and their troubles, it's a cool name yeah and so that agency helped you walk through the process to get licensed and they had some of their own additional training that they provided, and then they would actually help you, either at the church, your local church level, even kind of on a wider network to bring other people in to help you for certain things, and so that was really really helpful.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, I think you need support around you, and I think Christians this is why Christians can do this better than anyone else, because you can have these parachurch and church support networks that people in the world often don't have.
Speaker 1:Anglicare.
Speaker 2:New.
Speaker 1:South Wales was helpful for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we were with Anglicare and, yeah, we've had great experience with them, so we did our training through them. And then, you know, each child has a case manager and they're always there to say what do you need and how can I help you. And yeah, we found that to be a great thing. Yeah, do you want to say anything?
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, look, they've been tremendous and you're not on your own at all. The children are under the authority of the agency, and then you have a caseworker walking with you side by side. They have a big job. They need to be not just caring and managing for all the children under their authority, they're recruiting as well. We need more and more foster carers, and I think there's something like just under 50,000 children in Australia in out-of-home care.
Speaker 4:Yeah, 15,000 in New South Wales yeah and there's in Australia 9,000 homes that are foster care homes. This is a space Christians can step into, and for us, stepping into it was actually seeing someone else doing it and us thinking we can do that and we've got every reason that we've been showing the love of God that we can do that, and so they've got a big job doing that. And I guess one of my prayers from today is maybe some families' lives might change in the future and they might consider foster caring. The agencies are vital and Anglicare for Us is terrific.
Speaker 1:It's done a good job. Yeah, just on that. I've just come across this book. In fact, what is it? The Forgetful Prince by Matt Redmond, who's an Anglicare caseworker. You've read it? Tell us? I mean because it deals with foster care issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. It's a fantastic book about a child learning their true identity and remembering their identity, and so I think that relates to foster care, in the sense that you are showing these children they're valuable and that they're specifically valuable to God, and so it's a great little book. Matt and his wife did the illustrations, so it's a good book.
Speaker 1:And I mean they've aimed it at three to seven-year-olds and kids who are, I guess, in a foster care situation. I mean for any kid, but particularly apt for a kid in a foster care situation saying, oh, it's not just me in this situation. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing with us. Matthew Wilcoxon has been our guest. He's Senior Pastor at St John's, darlinghurst, alongside Matt Yeo and Sarah Yeo. Matt is well. He leads the ministry team at Hurstville Grove Anglican Church in Sydney South. My name's Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
