While a variety of resources are available on the ministry's website, this tri-fold mission is specifically carried out through "If You Were Mine" adoption workshops, strategic partnerships, and local church orphans ministries.

"We fundamentally believe ... that ministry flows through the local church," Pennington said.

"Almost all churches in America now have a men's ministry and a women's ministry. Most have a prison and a singles ministry," Pennington explained. "I even [know] one church that has a 'Cooking with Jesus' ministry, which is great .... But how many churches have an orphan or adoption ministry?"

Local Church Initiative
Such spurred Pennington and his staff to establish a church-based adoption initiative in which they are aiming to launch 1,000 orphan-care and/or adoption ministries in local churches across America over the next four years.

Pennington said there are more than 500,000 children in U. S. foster care and somewhere between 50 and 70 million orphans worldwide. Of those millions, Pennington estimated that more than 25,000 orphans will be adopted internationally by Americans in 2005, with no more than 10,000 to 12,000 going to live in bible-believing homes. By 2010, Pennington explained, the worldwide orphan population is expected to rise to 110 million.

"We [as the Church] have the opportunity to introduce them [orphans] ... to the Father of the fatherless," Pennington explained. "We really believe that orphan/adoption ministry in the church is a tremendous opportunity to be obedient to God and [to] bring revival to the church and homes to the fatherless."

Pennington echoed a Southern Baptist pastor when he said that five days of orphan ministry can be a better lesson in authentic Christianity than five years of preaching.  "So one of the things that I would argue is in a consumer-driven, relativistic, humanistic-growing America, Christians need orphans almost as much as orphans need them ....," Pennington explained.

Over the last year and a half, nearly 20 churches recognized such needs and established orphan-care and adoption ministries in their churches.  "And the wonderful thing is that ... God has led them to do very different things," Pennington said.

From Romania …
For example, Scott Dewey, cross-cultural training director for Mile High Ministries, organized an orphan-care missions team in Anchor of Hope Church in Denver, Colorado.

He and his family attend this approximately 200-member inner-city church which is usually thought to be on the receiving end when it comes to missions, but such is not the case due to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in Dewey's life.

His life was changed after walking into a Romanian orphanage where 20 children were tied down to chain-link cribs that resembled cages in a small attic-like room deafened by silence.  "That was one of the most sobering experiences I've ever had," Dewey admitted. "Afterwards, I had nightmares for months."