While Grammy-award winning musician Chris Tomlin may be best known for his renditions of powerful worship songs like “How Great Is Our God” and “Good Good Father,” the Christian artist is passionate about doing more for the kingdom than singing God’s praises to the masses.
This past year, Chris Tomlin has been traveling from stage to stage championing a cause that is close to his heart—the 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system, as well as the millions in the American child welfare system.
It was a calling placed on his heart nearly a decade ago when God gave Tomlin a dream that shook him to his core.
During a performance at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado this week, the musician shared the details of that life-altering dream for the first time.
Though Tomlin said he pleaded with God many times to give him dreams of divine revelation in the past, he admits it’s the first and only one he’s had, making it all the more powerful.
The artist explained that in the dream he was running late to a concert. As he approached the stadium he was to perform at, he could see an anxious and frustrated crowd in the distance, impatiently awaiting his arrival. That’s when Tomlin reached a stoplight that acted as a proverbial fork in the road. On the left, he saw the stadium teeming with restless fans—and on the right, he saw an abandoned naked baby.
Knowing he had an important decision to make, the 47-year-old paused before feeling the overwhelming pull to pick up the baby. As he wrapped the infant in his arms and placed it his car, he awoke abruptly.
But it’s the revelation that God dropped in Tomlin’s heart immediately afterward that has propelled his mission forward over the course of the next ten years:
“It’s time to pick up the baby and take it to every concert.”Â
Today, Tomlin is doing just that, spreading the word about his newly founded organization Angel Armies, a non-profit whose mission is “to give a voice to the foster care and orphan crisis in the United States through equipping the source of the solution, the Church, with the tools and support needed to solve this issue once and for all.”
Each year, over four million children travel some part of the broken path that is the American child welfare system.
Angel Armies is passionate about equipping the church to help preserve families by first “caring for the caretaker.” This may include buying a new crib or possibly making a bill payment for someone in need.
Something as simple as that can mean the difference between a child staying in a loving home or making a sojourn through the child welfare system.
The organization also provides churches with the resources and education needed to help with the other three stages of the path: intervention in the case of abusive home life, connection when a child is placed in a foster home, and finally, permanence, when a child finds their forever home.
“No government agency or well-meaning organization can take the place of a true family,” Angel Armies states on its website.
According to Tomlin, “Not all of us are called to bring in kids or become foster parents or adopt, but all of us are called to care and we can all do something.”
We couldn’t agree more. Read below to see how you can be a part of the solution for children in foster care today.
Put Your Faith in Action
Would you like to join Chris Tomlin in ending the foster care and orphan crisis? Put your faith in action by making your tax-deductible donation today. Together, we can build an Angel Army passionate about solving issues plaguing our vulnerable youth in America and around the world.