The foster care crisis rarely announces itself from a stage or a strategy meeting. More often, it enters quietly—into living rooms, onto couches, and into the ordinary rhythms of family life. Episode three of Running Toward tells the story of what happens when that crisis moves from being something a pastor talks about to something a father lives.
In this episode of the Running Toward podcast, Jennifer Smith sits down with Mike Kraft to explore how awareness without proximity leaves the Church unprepared, and how lived experience exposes gaps that sermons alone cannot address. This is not a conversation about polished solutions. It is a story about response—what happened when crisis reached both the couch and the pulpit, and why that moment changed everything.
A Pastor Who Cared—but From a Distance
Mike Kraft did not enter foster care unaware of vulnerable children. He grew up as a pastor’s kid in Illinois, in a church where hospitality was practiced quietly and faithfully. His parents opened their home often. Needs were met without fanfare. Faith was lived, not branded.
And yet, even with that foundation, foster care remained peripheral. Over decades in church life—first as a child, then as a pastor himself—Mike could count only a handful of foster families he had encountered. Foster care was not framed as part of the Church’s shared mission. It existed on the margins, practiced by a few families rather than carried by the community.
When Mike and his wife, Ariel, adopted internationally, their understanding of vulnerability still pointed outward. Like many churches, their imagination for orphan care was focused overseas. What they did not yet see clearly was the crisis unfolding in their own city—children being moved out of San Antonio simply because there were not enough local families willing or prepared to say yes.
As a pastor, Mike believed the Church should care. But practically speaking, he did not know what that care looked like, or how it connected to the mission of the local church.
When Responsibility Became Impossible to Outsource
That distance collapsed when foster care entered Mike and Ariel’s home.
The shift did not come through a policy briefing or a ministry initiative. It came through a child sleeping in their house—through the realization that parenting a child from hard places required far more than compassion or good intentions.
Mike describes the first placement with startling clarity. After completing the licensing process, a child arrived while Mike was out of town on a hurricane relief trip. When he returned home, exhausted, he stood quietly in the doorway of a bedroom, looking at a child he knew nothing about. He did not know the child’s story, trauma, language, or family background. He only knew that, for now, this child was his responsibility.
No seminary class had prepared him for that moment.
As a pastor, Mike had preached trust in God’s provision. As a foster dad, he found himself clinging to that truth in a way that felt raw and unfiltered. The lack of control was immediate and unavoidable. And it revealed something important: knowledge about foster care and lived experience of it are not the same thing.
The Gap Between the Pulpit and the Couch
As foster care became personal, Mike began to see a gap he could no longer ignore. From the pulpit, churches spoke about compassion, justice, and caring for the vulnerable. On the couch at home, he encountered the daily reality of trauma, uncertainty, and grief that children and families impacted by the foster care system carry with them.
That gap was not rooted in apathy. Mike is careful to say that pastors and churches care deeply. The problem was not indifference, but unpreparedness. Without proximity, the crisis stayed abstract. And without clear pathways, responsibility was quietly deferred to systems that were never designed to heal families.
Mike recalls conversations with church leaders who urged him not to foster, suggesting that his focus should remain on pastoring. The implication was subtle but powerful: caring for children in foster care was someone else’s work.
But as Mike and Ariel learned firsthand, someone else was not stepping in.
A Family Shaped by Interruption
What followed were decisions made under pressure—moments when there was no time to plan or perfect the response. One such moment came when Mike and Ariel were asked to take in two brothers: a newborn withdrawing from drugs and his 16-month-old sibling. They had seconds to decide. The alternative was a shelter.
They said yes.
Years later, those boys became their sons through adoption. And more recently, the family opened their home again to a six-year-old girl who was at risk of being sent far from everything she knew due to a lack of local placements.
Each decision reinforced the same truth: foster care dismantles the illusion of control. It exposes how much of life we attempt to manage and protect. And it invites a different posture—one rooted in surrender rather than certainty.
Mike names this plainly. As a pastor, he was accustomed to leading, planning, and anticipating outcomes. As a foster parent, he learned to live with unresolved questions and daily dependence on God. The work was humbling. At times, it surfaced anger, grief, and frustration. But it also reshaped his discipleship in ways no amount of training ever had.
Why the Church Still Matters Here
Throughout the episode, Mike returns to a conviction that has only deepened over time: the foster care crisis is not something the government can fix alone. Systems can manage cases, but they cannot provide belonging. Programs can offer services, but they cannot replace consistent relationships.
This is where the Church matters.
Not because it is perfect or always prepared, but because it is uniquely positioned to offer presence, persistence, and shared responsibility. Mike emphasizes that not everyone is called to foster. But everyone who follows Jesus is called to care.
In his own church community, that care has taken many forms—families fostering and adopting, others offering support, meals, prayer, and consistency. Over time, this posture became part of the culture rather than a specialized ministry. Children were no longer statistics. They were known.
This aligns deeply with the mission of the South Texas Alliance for Orphans, which exists to serve and equip the Church to fulfill its biblical call to care for children and families impacted by the foster care system. The Alliance does not replace the Church—it strengthens it, helping congregations find their place in the river of relationships surrounding foster care.
When Stories Replace Statistics
One of the most sobering moments in the conversation comes when Mike shares about a young woman who aged out of foster care after being promised—repeatedly—that she would be adopted. There was no family for her in San Antonio. She was sent away because there was no place for her to stay.
For Mike, this was not a statistic. It was a person he had walked with, listened to, and shared a meal with. And that proximity changed how he spoke, how he pastored, and how he invited others to engage.
He offers a simple but challenging encouragement: do not let these realities remain abstract. Let them become personal. Get close enough to hear the stories. Because when proximity increases, responsibility clarifies.
An Invitation, Not a Formula
Episode three does not end with a prescription. It ends with an invitation.
Mike is clear: foster care is not tidy. Outcomes are not guaranteed. Obedience does not mean things will resolve neatly. But faithfulness is not measured by control—it is measured by willingness to step into hard places and stay present.
This is the heart of Running Toward. Not to shame or pressure, but to ask better questions. Where might crisis be trying to get your attention? What would it look like to let it reach closer—to your home, your church, your everyday life?
Because meaningful change does not happen from a distance. It happens when people stop changing the channel and choose to stay.
