Weekly Sermon: Saddle Up to Celebrate Kids - 06-22-25

The Holy Gospel according to Luke. Glory to you, O Lord.

Then Jesus and his disciples arrived at the country of the Gerasenes,

which is opposite of Galilee.

As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him.

For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.

When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice.

What have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most high God?

I beg you, do not torment me.

For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man.

For many times it had seized him.

He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break

the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.

Jesus then asked him, what is your name?

And he said, Legion, for many demons had entered him.

They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

Now there on the hillside, a large herd of swine was feeding,

and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these.

So he gave them permission then the

demons came out of the man and entered the swine and

the herd rushed down a steep bank into the

lake and was drowned when the swine herd saw what had happened they ran off

and told it in the city and in the country then people came out to see what

had happened and when they came to Jesus they found the man from whom the demons

had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus,

clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.

Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.

Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus

to lead them, for they were seized with great fear.

So he got into the boat and returned.

The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him.

But Jesus sent him away saying, return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.

So he went away proclaiming throughout this city how much Jesus had done for him.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ. You may be seated.

So we're going to do something a little different today, as it's a pleasure

to welcome Kelly Kaufman today.

Kelly is a passionate advocate for children and families, and she's here to

share the incredible work of UpBring.

Just as our VBS children had been experiencing God's goodness and finding a

safe place to grow and learn this past week, UpBring's mission is to ensure

that all children have that opportunity.

They are dedicated to breaking the cycle of child abuse and empowering children,

families, and communities across Texas, providing the care needed for every

child to experience their full potential.

Please welcome Kelly Kaufman with me.

Thank you so much for that kind introduction. Yee-haw, St. Luke's! How is everyone today?

Yee-haw! It's kind of hard to follow that energy, but I'm going to try to do my best.

I do have a little bit of a PowerPoint, and last night I was thinking,

goodness, you know, I hate sitting through PowerPoint presentations.

They're kind of boring. So I might try to ad-lib here and there,

but bear with me as I kind of go into some details about us.

So, as we just heard, over 30 of your children enjoyed a fantastic day of Vacation

Bible School yesterday.

And the St. Luke's community came together and wrapped their arms around the

children to have them learn about God and express their faith.

At UpBring, our goal is to bring the same kind of loving, supportive experience

you offer to them to all the youth we serve across Texas.

As mentioned, we're dedicating to empowering children, families,

and communities, and that's the upbringing difference, which you're going to hear me talk about.

Again, thank you for this opportunity to share a little bit about our nonprofit mission.

Next slide, please.

Oh, go back one. I was in pain. Great.

Okay. So this is our mission statement, and it's pretty clear,

to break the cycle of child abuse by empowering children, families, and communities.

For over 140 years, we've been that nurturing supportive force for good throughout

Texas, dedicated to advancing child well-being.

You may know us as another name so I am going to ask you all does anyone know our name.

Exactly thank you so much we are Lutheran social services we go by Upbring and

I'm going to go a little into why we did that name shift about 10 years ago

we rebranded to Upbring for two main reasons.

First, to welcome all people because we're committed to serving all children, not just Lutherans.

And to refocus our mission on child well-being.

So we used to offer a lot more different types of social service programs,

but we really honed in on child services.

Our name comes from Proverbs chapter 22, verse 6.

Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old,

he will not depart from it.

This verse is a cornerstone for us in raising children, in helping families

raise children, in providing them with a strong foundation.

While some might interpret it as a promise, we view it as a powerful commitment

and the guiding force behind all that we do.

As we are a faith-based nonprofit, we are deeply aligned with the spirit of that Proverbs verse.

And we work to have a broad array of programs that nurture this family raising.

Okay, let's go to the next slide. Here's the map.

So this is our footprint throughout the state. As you can see on this map,

upbringing is truly spread out throughout the state.

We have over 80 locations from El Paso to Tyler, from Houston all the way to Amarillo.

And this presence allows us to make a significant impact throughout Texas.

Last year alone, our nearly 1,500 employees served over 14,000 children and families.

Here in the DFW Metroplex, our primary programs are our Foster in Texas program,

which I'm going to talk about, and our Head Start, Early Head Start Learning Setters.

How many of you knew that we had a Foster in Texas office right here in Richardson?

We do, right off of Campbell Road. And I'm going to talk a little bit about

more what we're doing right here in our own community.

We also have a very exciting new initiative, and this is going to shift really our focus at UpBring.

So a lot of our services you might call our intervention.

We're helping take a child who's already been a victim of abuse or trauma and giving them services.

Or we're providing education to families who are maybe low income or need a

lot of support services. so we're giving children that basic foundation to help them thrive.

What we're doing now is we are launching a new program in South Dallas to start

called Child Wellbeing Zones.

So Child Wellbeing Zones is unique, is that we've identified zip codes throughout

the state of Texas where interventions are high, where child abuse runs high.

And we are working with families before those interventions start.

We are providing them with those wraparound services and support.

We're engaging other non-profits, churches, the entire community and there's

going to be a lot more that you're going to hear about this in the future.

We are launching this first, like I mentioned, in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas

and this is going to spread throughout the state.

Okay, so here's a slide with a little summary of our programs.

You heard me mention our Foster in Texas program.

And really what sets UpBring apart here is that we help to place a lot of children

with high primary medical needs that are often hard to place in foster homes.

But here, our goal is to connect children with loving families and then not

just place them, but support those families with guidance and helping them even

if they want to adopt a child in the future.

We also run residential treatment children's programs.

One in particular I would like to highlight is New Life. It's down in the hill country.

It's specifically for girls age 11 through 17, who have experienced the most

severe forms of abuse and trauma.

It's a unique facility. It's the only type of facility of its kind in the state,

and girls are placed from all over the state at that location.

There we give a structured residential experience that not only focuses on their

healing, but also their spiritual growth.

Be Real is another program, and it's an extension of foster care.

So at 18, you age out of foster care, and kids are on their own.

Can you imagine in today's society being on your own, having to navigate all those challenges?

So what we do is that we work with our supervised independent living program

to empower those young adults to transition out of foster care.

We provide them with housing, education planning, mentorship,

and life skills to help prepare them for independent adulthood.

And then we also offer a variety of educational programs.

And one thing we do is Head Start and Early Head Start programs.

Again, this is where we're getting in with the child early and we're building

that safe foundation and family support.

But what I'd like to focus on more today is the difference, the UpBring difference.

There's a lot of agencies that focus on childhood care and placement,

but we are different. And let's skip to the next slide.

So our work is rooted in our core values.

And when I was brought on to UpBring, I just started about five months ago.

So I learned, first off, we are warriors, we are servants, we are family.

And all that we do is rooted in faith. And this faith foundation guides our unique approach,

which shifts simply from child welfare to a deeper focus on child well-being.

So I want to illustrate something for you.

Because, as I mentioned earlier on, the children that you support in your vacation

Bible school, they have loving families. They have a loving congregation.

Children that upbringing take on, they often come to us with their belongings

in a garbage bag like this.

That's the reality. Their lives are in a garbage bag. Okay?

So, we could simply place them in a home, but what does that do?

We want to shift our focus to child well-being, which actually is looking at

measuring successful outcomes.

And that takes supporting the entire family with resources and the community around them.

I wanted to show you another example here. And I'll talk a little bit later

about how maybe you can get involved to support our mission.

So, GEICO, your neighbors here in Richardson, they decided to do a little volunteer

project for us recently.

And one of the things they did is they partnered to do a variety of things.

They assembled bikes and skateboards.

Some of the children we serve, they don't have that, right? They've never had

a bike. They don't even know how to ride a bike.

They also built birthday boxes, which they personalized with messages.

And interesting fact, when I met the folks from Geico at our office,

as they were dropping off all this stuff, the social worker said to me,

you know, Kelly, what we really need, we need cakes.

We need cakes. Some of these children have never even had a birthday cake on their birthday.

And another thing they did is they put together these duffel bags instead of the garbage bags.

So when a child comes to us through any variety of sources throughout the state,

because they provided us with hundreds of these,

they will actually get a warm stuffed animal, a blanket, and other essentials to do something.

And they all personalized it with some special artwork and notes.

And I bring this to you as an example of our goal is to involve our church partners,

our corporate partners, churches, and the community to really wrap our arms

around these children because it's hard enough and they need all the support they can get.

Next slide. So you are truly the difference.

There are a lot of ways that people can partner with us.

First of all, you can serve. We're always recruiting potential foster families.

In fact, I met a gentleman this morning that foster and adopted through UpBring many years ago.

We're always doing that. But if any of the programs that I spoke about today

resonate with you and you want to get involved, please talk to me after service.

Of course, monetary donations always help support our mission.

But we also have a lot of ongoing projects that might need your support and

in-kind supply drives that you might want to get involved in.

And then, of course, volunteering. So volunteering for upbringing isn't the

easiest. We are a child service agency. You do have to go through background

checks and stuff like that.

But we do have other opportunities where you can directly support with group

efforts or volunteer days, which I'll talk about in the next slide.

So here are some upcoming or current projects we have in place.

We're doing a back-to-school supplies drive.

And I can talk to anyone who might be interested in supporting that.

We're also collecting teacher support kits for our teachers for our Head Start programs.

And we also have a care kit project.

We run a health care clinic in West Texas in Lubbock, which is a unique program

for the community where health outcomes are pretty bad in that area.

And so we also run a health bank in conjunction with our services.

So we have a service project where you can build care kits.

I also wanted to share that we're actually going to be hosting a Lunch and Learn

right at our Richardson Foster in Texas program on August 14th,

where people can learn more about the program,

hear from our social workers,

hear about becoming a foster parent, also hearing from one of our foster parents

who recently adopted a child with high primary medical needs,

and then adopted, and now has become a full circle donor.

And then at the end of the year, we do our Hope in Motion holiday season,

where we aim to provide Christmas for all 14,000 of the children we serve.

It's a hefty over adventure, so we'd love your support with that as well.

And then in the spring, we do an awareness walk.

This past spring, we were set to do it down in Oak Cliff, and it got rained

out, but we had a corporate partner, and we all walked the Galleria together.

So more on that if you're interested in getting your steps in and walking with

us to build awareness about upbringing and preventing child abuse.

So that about sums it up, And I really thank you for this opportunity to speak

with you all today and give you a little bit of a snippet about what we do.

And if you have any questions, I'll be available after services. Thank you so much.

Go in peace. Trust in Christ is with you. Let the spirit lift you beyond fear,

beyond comfort, beyond the familiar.

Catch the wind of God's grace. Let it carry you to new places,

new people, new possibilities.

Set the world ablaze with hope as you love, serve, and welcome all.

Thanks be to God and we will. If you're inspired by this week's.