Review of Fields of the Fatherless

Tom Davis’ Fields of the Fatherless
Reviewed By Jason T. Lenentine

In the past I have called attention to the books Fields of the Fatherless and Red Letters, both written by Tom Davis. This post is unlike the prior postings. I was given an opportunity to obtain a free copy of the second edition of Fields of the Fatherless on the condition that I write an online review. The following is my review, respectfully submitted.

By some accounts there are 143 million orphans in the world. What is the church going to do about 143 million orphans? How does God expect His church to respond? How can Christians help and engage this problem? These questions and their answers are at the heart of the book Fields of the Fatherless by Tom Davis.

From Steven Curtis Chapman’s foreword Davis is described as “an adoptive father and one who has visited many orphans around the world Tom Davis is a living epistle, showing to us God’s call to the church to care for orphans in their distress” (page 18). Tom Davis is well-known in the adoption/orphan care community primarily due to his writings, his work with Children’s HopeChest, and the Five for 50 campaign. He also maintains an active blog about his orphan care efforts he calls “Notes from the Field.”

Originally self-published in 2002, a second edition of Fields of the Fatherless was published in May 2008. Content was added to the new edition to include chapters on adoption, testimonials of people “working the fields”, and new study questions for use with group discussions and personal studies.

I first became aware of Fields of the Fatherless in 2005 when my wife Wendy and I were in the middle of our first adoption and were researching adoption resources. We bought the book and it inspired us to consider a deeper personal commitment to orphan care beyond our own adoption experiences. By personally experiencing and witnessing events like those described in the book during our own adoption trips to Russia, the truth and clarity of the book’s message was magnified to us. We always recommend it to people who are pursuing adoption or are aspiring to deeper commitments to orphan care.

The structure of the book is Davis walking the reader through various scriptures that speak to God’s heart for the orphan. It is a teaching that is unfortunately seldom taught in the church. As a modern Christian these verses can be easily ignored, but they are distributed all throughout the Old and New Testaments. Particularly convicting are the ones from Deuteronomy 24 that command the Israelites to set aside a portion of their harvests for the alien, widow, and fatherless to glean from. It is this principle that Davis challenges the church to recapture.

Other topics addressed in the book include people’s fears in reaching out to others, our status in this world as spiritual orphans, God’s use of adoption, planting seeds of hope, and justice for the fatherless are just a small sample.

Interspersed with the scripture quotations and explanations are real life stories of people who have lived a life as an orphan and how someone else’s love allowed them to experience God’s love. Stories of those engaging orphans through adoption or service are also related.

These stories help bridge the gap between the two types of responses people have towards adoption. On page 77 Davis describes the first response as the “adoption group response”. The very subject of adoption to the “adoption group” elicits strong demonstrations of “joy, wonder, excitement, and thankfulness” while the “non-adoption group” acts “puzzled, uncertain, nonchalant, or disdained”. The stories of real people faithfully serving orphans direct people from puzzled looks to excitement.

The subject of responses to adoption made me laugh harder than any other part of a very serious book. There is very little middle ground when it comes to adoption. I have personally demonstrated both responses, spending most of my life in the non-adoption group. The last several years have changed that attitude and I have now moved to an advanced form of militant adoption advocacy where I am concerned about others being involved in adoption, orphan care, and what the church will do about 143 million orphans.

The number “143 million orphans” appears several times in the book and is a commonly used number within the orphan care community (page 38). It is based on data published by the UN Statistics Division. At the time of the first publication of Fields of the Fatherless the number was 70 million. Most of the new additions to the fields of the fatherless in the coming years will be children whose parents died of HIV/AIDS. Many of these children will be infected themselves with no hope for their futures unless the church intervenes.

Davis uses the “143 million orphans” statistic and church membership numbers to admonish the church to do something to help with the problem. The number of professing Christians in the United States is 159 million (page 81). Worldwide, there are 2.1 billion professing Christians. Davis does the math for us. If just 7% of the world’s professing Christians adopted, the hopes and dreams of 143 million orphans would be completely fulfilled. Talk about an apologetic!

But Fields of the Fatherless is more than a strong call for the church to act; it provides the reader with some practical ways to serve. These are covered in Chapters 5 and 8 and in the study guide.

The new content on God’s definition of adoption was a good addition to the book. The original did not lack for testimonies but there is now an entire chapter devoted to stories of people who have “worked the fields.” These stories are not just adoption stories, but stories of those who visit orphans solely to express God’s love. The newly added study questions will benefit those looking to use the book for a group discussion.

The original content of the book still resonates with me several years after my first reading. The message is just as convicting after my sixth read as it was during the first. What has changed during that time is the Spirit of adoption is much more alive in me than it was before I adopted my children. I have totally moved beyond being an adoptive father into a being a full-blown advocate who strives to live out the message of this book and can testify to the truthfulness and power of it.

With all this said, I totally recommend purchasing and reading this book. It will change your perspectives! It is my prayer that the book would be a blessing to all who read it. May you approach it without fear as you serve the fatherless!

I want to thank Tom Davis for writing the book and for his associates who allowed me to obtain a copy of the second edition for review.

To purchase a copy of Fields of the Fatherless, please click on this link to amazon.com.