Facing the Canon with Krish Kandiah

[Music] Krish welcome so much to facing the cannon thank you slow experience well absolutely thrilled well Krish what's that short for a short the krishna could connect my father yeah where he was born in malaysia but his father is sri lankan and it's Srilanka in Hindu Tamil family I hid and where did you grow up I grew up in exotic Brighton did you my ancestors are slightly confusing so my dad's Malaysian but Sri Lankan my mum was born in India but her dad was Irish so you know when the Olympics on it gets really confusing about yeah cheerful my wife's half English and half Welsh yeah our kids are from all sorts of different places van ah so growing up what kind of faith was your family kind of mixed so I mean my parents were amazing people and they gave me real freedom of religion they say we're not going to induct you into Hinduism and force you to be a Hindu we're also not going to force you to be Catholic Christian on my mum and so I was allowed to choose for myself and when I was 8 years old the coolest bit of outreach that was culturally relevant happened and I felt the kind of earth-moving and I was this massive dad dad dad coming up and down up and down our Hill it was a Salvation Army Band when you're 8 years old that is the coolest thing you've ever seen yeah and so I just asked my mom if I could go wherever they were going and so she very dutifully took me along to the Salvation Army and I was in the sunday school there I looked around one morning I I was definitely the brownness bori in that room and the only one that wasn't related to someone in the Salvation Army but I had such lovely Sunday School teachers I was the one always asking the questions and how about this and what about that and one morning obviously you didn't have a god understanding I had a mixture of understandings you know someone my dad was a kind of nominal Hindu so he you know he ate beef from war leather jackets but went to the temple every now and again and my mum was kind of a bit open in her understanding of face and so the Salvation Army is the first time little bits of the Christian message began to make sense to me but then when did it crystallize more for you to become personal and then I went up to secondary school and I went to a really tough all-boys comprehensive school I mean it's the kind of place where when the teacher was outside of the room out our chemistry lab was our forum room and so the kids would suck the gas out of the gas taps and tried to light it on their breath and it was a dangerous place to be right what what one morning there was a sled Nicky Leonard and he has his cheeks full of gas and don't try this at home no but I challenged him to put a lighted match in his ear to see what would happen is that yeah dangerous place and then one day I was about 15 years old and a lad stood up the teacher had nipped outside for a quick smoke leaving a 15 year old boy in charge of the classroom and this glad said boys you've got to know something something amazing happened to me last night last night I became a friend of God it's the best thing that's ever happened to me and I thought that is the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone do you know I've been secretly going to church but haven't told a soul about to be with someone going live with their faith as it were and I went straight up to him I said what are you doing in a we Christians we don't talk about this thing it's all very private and he said to me which if you knew the God that I met last night you wouldn't be able to be quiet about it well I really challenged me and through him I came into a kind of living personal friendship with Jesus Wow I mean that that is quite significant for a 15 year old it was and we became mates you know we divided the class into two he took all the kids whose surnames were a2l and I took em to Zed and we were systematically going to help them understand more about the Christian faith and we weren't very good at it but we would try I think you had a go we had a go yeah and then obviously that kind of set you up and you then went off to university yeah I was struggling to know what to study at university I wanted to do re or philosophy or Russian or something that I thought would be useful because I have this plan that I was going to be a cross to a missionary yeah and I was going to go undercover into the Soviet Union and by day maybe I'd be a scientist or something and by night I could be an evangelist yes the plan and so I kind of chose a chemistry degree I thought that would be a good way in and I was really happy but I was also a little bit disappointed that halfway during my a-levels the Berlin Wall came down and so my chemistry degree wasn't really that necessary to be able to do what I wanted to do yet but I was really seeing yeah it was good for you know freedom of conscience and liberty and it's that way you met your wife yeah we met we met each other the first week of the university but it took us two years to get round to dating yes but then when did you get married we got married as soon as possible as soon as she left uni we got married like the day after a graduation I think it was and then the two of you went off to Albania yeah we worked for a little while with the University students and university students are an amazing time in their lives with often open to new ideas willing to think through the big issues of life and full of brilliant questions I find really exciting I also have a lot of time on their hands which they don't necessarily realize and so we worked for universe with the University students in the UK and then we took a team and work with the newly opened up country of Albania and it was such a which have been the only atheistic European yeah I was he at one is one of the most atheistic countries in the world religion of all sorts was banned you couldn't name your son John because that was a religious name and sometimes you weren't even allowed to have facial hair because I was seem to be you know a religious symbol so it was incredibly secular place and then it all opened up and everybody kind of came in and kind of started to I suppose explain the gospel and the good news and there was an incredible receptivity was a real privilege to be part of that time in the country but you then went back and studied more I did so what what prompted you to go back to further study well Albania was an incredible experience but it was a little bit frustrating and that we managed to export into a country that had no all more church structures every kind of division you could imagine there were 11 Baptist churches in the capital city and it wasn't even a big city you know there was the First Baptist and then there was the free Baptist who broke away from the First Baptist and then there was the free and the spirit Baptist who broke away from the free Baptist and then there was the word and spirit Baptist who thought the spirit people didn't do the Bible work yeah I was kind of really sad that we had taken such an opportunity to bring unity to the gospel in the church and we just exported every kind of division you can imagine here and so I thought that there's got to be a better way doing this so I really wanted to study theology and particularly our it relates to mission to say well you know we could do a better job because sometimes out of those good intentions and good motives sometimes we're not often as thoughtful as we ought to be in how we do things so where did you go in study so I studied part-time in Birmingham yeah the school of mission there and when I finished my Master's I did a PhD at King's College in London and what did you do your doctorate in so I in my Master's I came across this incredible missionary called Leslie Newbegin yes and he was incredible in why I met Sergey I mean in fact he nigh with speakers and no way fom France or armadillos can you know yeah but can you imagine me having to speak in front of him he was an incredibly gracious guy and the thing I loved about him was that you know he retired from being the Bishop of Madras and then his wife and him decided to travel back from India by bus just they could kind of reentry gently and when they came back they realized that there was as much of a need for mission and evangelism here in the Western world and he kind of started a whole movement that some people call the missional church movement and it was all about what does the gospel need to say to Western culture not just other countries and overseas and you know some of his best work was written in his 70s and I think that's just really encouraging for people like me to think that we've got a lifetime ahead of us of studying God's Word and making it known so was your doctoral focused on his his teaching yeah I was really interested in how he understood a theology of evangelism yeah and mannerisms become I suppose a difficult thing for the church to think about it's become politically incorrect as it were and he really grounded his understanding of what the gospel was and how we share it in a really big theological framework and I really like that yeah now you've done various things since then but the two things that you do now one is at the London School of Theology and you're the president of London School of Theology and which is a really exciting title I think we just made it up for me yeah and I was hoping it would include an aeroplane but apparently yeah I'm not that kind of program but no it's a privilege I get to go around and tell people the power and the joy of studying theology so most of my teaching for the college is done outside of the college at the churches and conferences yeah through writing and speaking and I get the privilege of spending some time with the students through chapel services and yeah and I kind of like tell us a bit about London School of Theology work well Italy we are the largest into denominational Theological College in Europe yes and if you think about some of the people that graduated from us I've actually shaped a lot of the 20th century's evangelical structures I think it's a last five directors of evangelical lines have all been graduates from yeah LST people like Terry virgos whose family the new frontiers make you know graduate from LST you know the current head of the vineyard Network graduate from London School of Theology so we really have helped train up some of the key leaders in this nation and not just in the church we've sent them into all sorts of spheres of life whether that's politics or broadcasting or teaching and normally whenever I'm around preaching somewhere I'll bump into someone that has been blessed by the ministry of LST do you know how many people have actually graduated over here and I should know that it's thousands it probably is yeah now and it's also quality not just quantity yeah yeah all of that so that's one of the things that you do and the other thing that you do is that you're a director of a charity called home for good yes and what does that do so homes are good has a really simple job it wants to find a home for every child in the UK that needs one and sadly there are thousands of children in the care system that need adequate and loving foster families and long-term adoptive families so we found about charity two years ago and we're just so excited by the response that we're seeing across the UK Church because you kind of introduced us to some facts and statistics so that we we can get our head round how many people are we talking about what just what's the situation so every 20 minutes in the UK a child gets taken into care and that child probably comes into care at school so imagine a child it's happened to one of our foster children they were taken out of their class into the head teachers office and told look you're not going to be able to go home at the end of today why not well we can't get into the details of that but you can't go home today okay well can I at least say goodbye to my mum and dads no I'm sorry it's not possible for you to say goodbye to mom and dad how about my sister can I take advice my sister no how about the family dog no I'm really sorry you can't well where am I going to go well you're going to go with this lady she's got a social worker well where's she going to take me which is going to take you to a foster family who are they well I don't know their names but they're a nice family they're going to look after you and so this lab turns up in our house and he's got his lunchbox in his swimming kit and that's all he has and so there needs to be more families able to offer a child like that is that the trauma of that removal and leaving more families to wrap around them and currently in the UK where 8600 family shaunt on top of that most of the time the children would get removed from their families and taken into the care system most of them never go home again and so with this little lad that I was telling you about it was really sad that the closest he got to going home was to go and look up his house on Google Maps and zoom in on it and we kind of didn't have the heart to tell him that actually his family had moved since and so he was zooming in on a house that in these children don't get to go home and if they stay in the care system statistics of what happens to them when they leave K when they age out at garret 18 are pretty terrible and I think it's around 25% of the prison population in the UK a young men that have aged out of care it's a huge percentage of the homeless population are young men aged out of care in some areas it's 30 percent in other areas it's 70 percent of sex workers a young women that have aged out of care and I just had no one around them to love them and care for them so we want to help find these children adoptive homes people that will love them forever not just until they're 18 but until their dying day you know I my mum died when I was 40 years old but I miss her still yeah and so you know you don't just need a parent until you're a teenager an 18 year old you need it for life and that's what adoption gives and currently in the UK there's around 4,000 children waiting for adoption now you put those stats together and that's a lot of families that we need and the government's really struggling to think well where can we find those families but I did some maths and I worked out of churches like the one we're in today in the UK there's about 15,000 yes so you know what I don't need every Christian to adopt a hundred children I just need each church in the UK to find the new foster family or a new adoptive family for the church to wrap around them and we've met the entire need so it's really doable that would change the lives of children it would change the lives of the church it will begin to offer God the kind of worship that he wants and can you imagine what that says to the nation about our God that our God is a protector of widows and orphans and his people are going to walk in its footsteps so we think this is a tremendous opportunity to show grace and kindness but actually to be a living parable of the gospel you said every 20 minutes a child is removed from their family and are you able to comment on the reasons most of these children are removed why yes sadly it's around 70 percent of the children are removed because of neglect or abuse and you know so that is incredibly traumatic that these children haven't been looked after in the way they should have been and you know sometimes it's families that have got all sorts of challenges around addiction issues or mental health issues and and you know we don't to be judgmental about why these children are being removed our job is just to make sure they get the loving home all they need so many of these children are actually quite traumatized yet all the children are coming to care are traumatized even if they've come because of you know perfectly innocent reasons the just the removal into a new family a strange family that you don't know that's incredibly traumatic you said how just say the statistic again how many children are currently in need of fostering so every child in the UK has a foster family okay so nobody's being put in the wrong place at the moment but the problem is that often they're not appropriate so for example this little boy that we talked about if you had a sister and often there are enough carers to be able to look after both of them they just don't have the capacity so these children separated or to help the child have a bit of continuity in their lives and we try to keep them in the same school but if there were no foster carers near I've heard of children are being commuting an hour each way to go to their school on their own with a taxi driver so and there are inadequate coverage as it were for foster families but many are how many children are we talking about altogether in the UK there are 62,000 children in care right and many of those are looking for more permanent home exactly right so there is many of them are in temporary homes looking waiting for someone to take the mid in order to foster them long-term or to adopt them exactly both so and we think both are brilliant and fostering long-term is the right solution for some children so they can stay in touch with their brothers and sisters aren't use and uncles and grandparents but for a lot of children adoption is the best solution because they're going to have a family and how many people give up their babies when they're born very few people relinquish their children on their own choice most children that come into care are removed because the parent is not able to care for them but there are are the age range of children is it from Nord art though it is and the challenging piece though isn't when it comes to adoption most of doctors really want a baby yes I must totally understandable babies are amazing you know love babies bits but the challenge is that older children so three four five six seven year olds because they're not babies there often seem to be not wanted and so they wait and they wait and particularly if they've got a brother or sister you know can you imagine that you know the younger one gets abducted the older one gets left behind that's got to be tough and particularly if they come from black or minority ethnic backgrounds and especially if they've got any kind of physical or emotional disabilities they often get left behind and so I'll call to the church is to say that it's essential to our understanding of the Christian faith but God didn't just forgive us he didn't just rescue us he didn't just release us from slavery God adopted us and decided he's going to be our dad forever and when God adopted us he didn't adopt us because and he needed him that wasn't lonely we believe in God the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit a perfect community a perfect family God didn't adopt us because he needed it God adopted us because we needed it and so we're asking people to show the same compassion that God showed to us so instead of seeking if these children measure up to some kind of list you know I want a little one or one a girl or what a one was no physical defects or you know I want a young one imagine God had had that kind of list review and me that before he was willing to adopt us into his family we needed to be physically perfect or young or no emotional baggage now God saw it in our need and he said I'll take you as you are and I'll love you whatever and we're asking the church to show that kind of adopting love to the children they're waiting okay push help us time to stand those this is complex very sensitive you know you might have a couple they've got two children okay by taking in another child as a foster child will it affect the relationship with the other children how will the other children react to another child coming in explain those complexities those are really good questions and like I said this isn't for everybody we don't actually need every Christian to adopt or foster and so you know we all got to look at our own circumstances way of our own family situation and work out what's best it does affect your whole family fostering and adopting but I would like to say that it can affect it in a really positive way so we we had my wife and I three children at birth children and they were aged three two and one you know we had three and three years we were under 30 it was all very inviting and I guess I was I was thinking that's that's good three and three years it means that at that sad day when my children leave home it's possible they're all going to leave home together yes and there may be a silver lining to that our empty nest could become a love nest again so yes just me and the wife long romantic walks along beaches we live in Oxford which is about as far away as you can get from a bit yeah anyway we had a great plan and then my wife says to me well why don't we become foster parents and I said that's a great idea for other people that's so going to spoil all my plans you know no more jokes on beaches will be back to nappies and stabilizers and parents theaters meetings and how are your children when your wife suggested that shipping with four five and six okay four five and six so you okay so this curve ball is thrown it yeah and I'm going no I was pretty resistant and two things happen one was some friends of ours in their 60s became foster parents for the first time and that really challenged me because I thought well you know if they could do that every 60s we've got some energy not there because their children had grown up and left yeah and then they decided they'll be foster parents that's right all these hills they had from raising their own kids they thought this is another chance and they did a great job and then just as I open the Bible verse after verse began to really challenge me so one of them was James 1:27 you probably know it well you know true religion that God our Father accepts as pure and blameless is to care for widows and orphans or maybe stress and I'm going you've got me good you know I can't resist that you could couldn't I made that any clearer I can't explain it away I can't say all it was different in the Old Testament you know it's it's all there yeah so I mean and I guess I was worried would this affect my children negative this yes you know and and a lot of people gave us some advice you know you you don't want these problems ill Droon coming into your house and messing up your kids and I began to think that that doesn't sound like a very Christian way of approaching family life you know we have an expression in any endeavor we say an Englishman an Englishman's home is his castle yeah and I get that you know you can be nice to people out there in the world you can you know go out and volunteer as long as you come back in your homes all safe and I thought well that a Christian approach to your home is very different a Christians home is supposed to be a hospital it's where the word hospitality comes you hasn't in for helping the broken the needy into your home for okay that that's a good point and then the other thing that began to happen is as we began to look after these children have had all sorts of tough things happen to them I've watched some wonderful things come out in the carats of my older kids I'll tell you a couple of stories one was this huge lad turned up at our door once and he had a pink pull along suitcase and if social worker was kind of saying Oh goodbyes and off she went and then there he was kind of taking up the whole doorframe so we kind of welcomed him in and we sit him down and he's got a massive gash on the side of his face and it turned out that his own mother had attacked I thought she'd used a knife it should actually used her fingernails on his face and his armors all bandaged up because she'd poured boiling water on him too and it comes straight from the hospital to our house so he's all shell-shocked how old about thirteen thirteen okay and you know I try to make small talk I'm quite good at that but I'm getting nothing yeah and you know football nothing and then my two older boys they introduced a therapeutic intervention that I wasn't aware of it was called an xbox 360 and they said that come on yeah I have a game the aim of FIFA now my son I did something wrong in his raising as a child he's an Arsenal supporter yes and Jamie and you're a Liverpool - I am yeah that's right I'm an Arsenal supporter we love it right right this lad that was coming to stay with us he was an Arsenal supporter and my boy says I care tell you what you be asked and me and my brother will be Man United yeah and somehow Austin won that game Neil yes and I'm coming in the kitchen this thing you know I'm hearing things like great shot mate well done how did you get past my keeper I'm hearing these words and courage and coming from my teenage boys but I've never been prouder yeah they're just doing the right stuff and you know it he he he settled in he began to relax his shoulders unhung and we went out for a walk that night because he hadn't got a toothbrush with him and so we went down to Sainsbury's and I was like the father hen and he got all these chicks behind me the three boys of following me down the aisles and we're going up and down up and I couldn't quite toothbrushes anyway and this boy says you don't come here very often do you crash and I think that's brilliant he's cracking a joke yeah yeah you know three hours ago he wouldn't even look at me in the eye but now because of my way my boys have looked after him yeah he's relaxing so you know you as a parent I want to do the best I can for my kids you know we've moved to an area with it's a good school they were into sport one of them wants to learn musical instrument will rap around them those things but as a Christian parent I have a responsibility to not only help them flourish in education and physical health but actually to grow like Jesus so how can I help my kids become gracious and gentle and compassionate just like Jesus how long did he stay with you he stayed about nine months night and then he got into a long-term foster family are you still in touch yeah it was really sweet we got a phone call from his school at the end of term and they've done a kind of highlights of the year piece and he had written down I mean it had been a terrible year because of all that had happened to him but it said one of the highlights of his year was coming to stay with the candy so forth yes we made an impact is it is it painful after nine months saying goodbye it is and one little girl we looked after from birth until she was three and a half and some people say to me quitte I could never do what you do Chris I'd love these kids too much to give them up and I try to remain composed because it sounds like you're saying well you'd love them more than I would and I kind of try not to respond by saying wait wait wait you're going to love this child so much but because you're worried about getting hurt you're not going to get involved in their lives at all yeah that isn't love about self-protection it is an occupational hazard of a foster parent that your heart gets broken on a regular basis but that's our job isn't it we take the pains these children get the help and love that they need so that that particular child boy or girl boy boy arrived as a baby oh sorry that was a girl get out as a baby as a baby but and you knew that one day a family may come including three and a half years it took three now did you not want to adopt we did we did but it wasn't it was impossible so yeah we don't often get the choice whether we get to a doctor or not that's someone else's choice so it was really hard and that particular one was really difficult because after three and a half years we must have given them 2000 photos on a photo disc of this child she had been on every family holiday she'd been at every birthday party every Christmas and the family wanted to have nothing to do with us at the end and so I remember we posted her a birthday present and about a week later it came back to us in the post and said we meant no contact so that was that was doubly heartbreaking but the social services wouldn't even consider you to adopt sometimes it's more complicated because there's a family member that might come forward and so family monies have priority and you know our choices are really difficult because we love all the kids that come through and but not everybody's cut out to be a foster parent and so if we adopted them then suddenly our house becomes full and we can't foster in again so you do what you can so currently in your household yes who do you have so we have one wife one wife three birth children yes and I've got water your birth chill down seventeen sixteen and fifty okay and an adoptive daughter and two long-term foster - okay how did you your adopted daughter did she first come as a foster she did at what age she came straight from the hospital and I would like date one dude straight straight to us okay mum was in a difficult place and so wasn't able to look after her and so we we took her in everyone fell in love with her our neighbours fell in love with her they knitted her a quilt so that she would ever quilt that no one else in the world would have our church fell in love with her and they'd bring us meals every day at five o'clock but I think it was day six of her life they brought us around coronation chicken which sounds really nice but have you ever seen what comes out of a six day old baby looks a lot like coronation yes and I feel justice does this meal rope oh yeah make sure it's already the courier's is bad but but you didn't know whether the what's-her-name I can't really talk okay so that the you that she would be taken away we knew that she might be and actually she was and things got better with mum again and so she went to be with mum and then things didn't go so well with moment so she came back to us back and then went back again and the last time social services said this child has had so much trauma the best thing that could happen to raise if you adopted her so we did and she loves it she's one of yours now yeah yeah right but you've also got two foster children we do yeah how old are they I can't really say not because I can't know I don't know okay - children - - and but you don't know how long you're going to keep them no we are going to look after them forever long child yeah okay so you're not somebody to the point I'm trying to draw from you near krish's you're not somebody who's theoretical about this you and your wife are practitioners we are yeah you actually live this we do our best and you know we're one of hundreds if not thousands of Christian families are doing the same I've got a little bit of profile because of what I do in the core of my life but there is you know an unknown unseen army of people that are doing this day in da-jung okay I had a conversation the other day with a Christian couple can't have children want to adopt and it sounded as though so short services were discriminating against them they were asking them questions like do you have friends who are not Christians and it and I've had conversations with several Christian Cohn rules who say that the process is so difficult yes so why is it so difficult and our our social service is slightly discriminating Christians okay let me take that into hearts so firstly why is the process difficult yes I want you to imagine that you've got children that are school age they're saying and you know that for whatever reason you're not going to look after them let's say you've got a terminal disease you know God forbid but let's let's imagine it so you know you're going to die and so you're wondering who's going to be able to look after your children and some strangers come forward and they're going to be the ones that look after your children how many questions would you ask them before willing to hand those children over ten questions a hundred questions a thousand questions I want to think about every possible permutation of what could happen in this family's life before they were willing or I was willing to let my children be looked after by them and state has that responsibility for these children yes and because as I said 70% of them have experienced neglect or abuse we can't risk that they just be placed anywhere we've got to make sure they're going to be a safe secure family unit that's going to carry on looking after them so everybody gets a rigorous set of assessments I really respect social workers I think they have one of the most difficult jobs in the world because when something bad happens and we ask we say well why didn't they ask more questions why don't they dig a bit deeper why don't they do their homework but when we're on the receiving end of being assessed you know what we say why are they being so nosey while asking so many questions so they've got to get kicked both sides so I think it is a really tough profession and I think more Christians should step up to do it actually it's a really wonderful way you can express the compassion of God is to be looking after the most vulnerable people in society so the system the process is rigorous for a reason but on that Krish if I may add yes it is rigorous and there are many many questions and they're talking about vulnerable children and there's a history of making wrong decisions you're putting vulnerable children in vulnerable situations I know so they they still don't get it right it's so hard it's so difficult you know it's sometimes people look great on the surface and you know your neighbors don't know what's going on so it's so hard but on the second point about our Krishna your basic thing they're doing their best they're doing their best they're doing their back yeah and they get criticized heavily in the press and you know that I'm sure there are some places where they're not doing as good as they should be and there all sorts of problems but in general I've never met a social worker that wasn't trying hard but but do you think Christians are being discriminated and in general I would say no you know we would be with Christians when we went through the process we went with our local authority they were affirmed that fair and and I would say just as a general population there'll be some people out there who love Christians think we're great that they're not Christians themselves but they can value the church and what church does to society that's probably I don't know seventy percent in the population and there might be twenty percent of the population who are going bit suspect those Christians that don't really understand and they're all a bit weird I've got more questions and I would have about a normal person that's about twenty percent and then maybe there's ten percent you actually think no those Christians are really strange I don't think they should be looking at the children and I think probably with a Social Work population you get that same split now there are laws in the UK to protect Christians and actually anybody it's called a quality legislation and that's one of the things at home for good can help with actually that we're in touch with close working relationships with local authorities for fostering and voluntary adoption agencies reduction so we can help people to kind of navigate that but the system needs to be rigorous again just again remind us we're talking currently how many children need fostering stroke adoption so we need eight thousand six hundred more families to start fostering and we need four thousand children to get adopted okay so and you're saying one way we can do this is through the fact that there are 15,000 plus churches and if one family in one of these churches did this the entire backlog could be cleared we could meet the current need right now we could do that and that that's huge and actually when one family in the church begins to foster and adopt the rest of the church have an amazingly powerful role to play I we have an expression in our church it takes a whole church to raise a child and I particularly true when it comes to fostering yeah so we've been delighted that there are lots of fostering aunties and uncles in our church how logically connected to us but they've done wonderful things so one that will add that we had had ADHD off the scale and so sitting for any amount of time in church was going to be difficult so with our permission this guy would sit next to us and he'd say to my little lad you say what's it going to be this week a bus a train a car and ins of engineers who really enjoy this kind of technical diagrams who managed to milk out to it lost the entire service but he had my little boy wrapped in attention and it's those little pieces of she'll church wrapping around suddenly we feel better supportive I heard of a family who had lots of foster kids coming through their house and another and the house group they were part of decided they were going to wrap around this family by on Monday night someone from the house group was going to come pick up all the ironing take it away bring it back the next day ironed and they thought as brilliant isn't that's keeping this family going by offering a very practical but actually very sacrificial survey yeah and and when social workers hear about this I can't believe it who are you people why do you love each other like that you're not even related and then well actually we are related let me explain ay-ay-ay ayay so it's an incredible witness as well as a lovely support now so anyone listening to our conversation Krish they're kind of maybe they've already thought about it or they've been provoked to think about it again and they want to explore how do you explore becoming a foster parent well the easiest way would be to phone us if you're in the UK you can phone us at home for good but that's what we've got a dedicated hotline you've got wholly adjust them ready to go or ready to go and actually I know this show doesn't just go out in the UK in America for example there are hundred thousand children waiting in the care system to be adopted I don't mean they have to go around the world to a doctor you can have adopt in your own slave owned countries you know what it's completely free doesn't cost you a penny if you adopt from foster care so there's some huge potential there same in Australia massive need for more foster carers in the system ok Krish let's move to the refugee crisis currently can you give us some axé figures tell us what what is the situation regarding refugees and so this war in Syria is now been going on for about five years yes and hundreds of thousand civilians have been killed some because of the the internal fighting between President Assad and now groups like Isis and we've got the kind of Allies bombing as well absolute devastation and so it's around four million people that have been displaced out of Syria into the surrounding countries of places like Lebanon Iraq Jordan and yet Turkey are supposed to do the other one and of those four million around two million are children now most of those children are with family members but actually sadly many many ARMs and so there are a number of very vulnerable children safe the children reckons and in Europe so people trying to get from those refugee camps on a visit that visited those camps they're not camps they kind of like shanty towns often really underprepared and under regulated many children have not been in school for three or four years just desperate conditions and so some people get to the point where they can't live like that anymore and so dream of a better life and often come to Europe to do that now Save the Children say that in transit there are thousands maybe tens of thousands of unaccompanied refugee children and and those that don't have family with them are very vulnerable Europol which is the European version of Interpol is very concerned that many of them have been abducted kidnapped or used in the trafficking industry yeah and so this is just awful isn't they've out to escape war they've risked their lives to come across Europe and then basically we've closed our doors to them and so they are left destitute and so we we wanted to help and there was a was a week in the UK's public imagination where things radically changed at the beginning of the week it was very clear that the UK was not releasing any refugee children and then there was a little boy a three-year-old boy Ireland Cody and he was found stuff on a beach in Bodrum Turkey it has a really awful picture of him facedown in the water and that that one picture seemed to trigger something in our nation and actually not just our nation all around the world that image changed the way that people saw this and so on the Friday of that week our Prime Minister David Cameron made an announcement that we in the UK we're going to receive 20,000 refugees and you know some are very critical that's not enough Germany was receiving 20,000 each weekend and we were talking about 20,000 over five years so there was a lot of criticism for that I felt 20 thousands a lot better than zero so that was encouraged yet that beginning point and one thing that the government said and particularly David Cameron he said that we were going to focus our attention on vulnerable children unaccompanied children and he used a really strong phrase he said this is going to be the modern-day equivalent of the Kindertransport yeah now you may remember that from your history lessons that at the beginning of the Second World War it became apparent that Jewish people were in incredible danger and so the UK government and one individual from Nicholas Winton organized a mass evacuation of Jewish children out of places like Czechoslovakia and another 10,000 children came to the UK that way it's incredible story of hospitality from the nation and our prime minister said we're going to do the same again ok so we thought ok well where are these children going to go because we don't to put them in children's homes that's not an appropriate place to care for a vulnerable child they need families if any families well they're gonna have to be foster families they can't just go anywhere they're vulnerable kids can't just place them somewhere unsafe and so we said well hold on we already need eight thousand six hundred foster families where are we going to get these new ones from so we did something crazy we launched a Facebook campaign I say a campaign I put up a web form and a picture and we said look guys it's great that you want to send chocolate to Calais and blankets but if you really want to sacrificially get involved why don't you start the process to become a foster parent we thought we'd get 150 people respond we've got 150 people responding an hour that other the night of 9 o'clock by Saturday morning 1200 people have signed up Sunday morning was two and a half thousand currently around 10 thousand people have said they want to help through home for good are becoming foster parents so that's wonderful we've been working with local authorities around the UK because they were already - one means or another 3,000 refugee kids in the UK not all of them from Syria some from Afghanistan and Eritrea but there are kids here that are in need of care and not all of this could be foster parents or refugee children some of this could just be general foster carers and look after babies and that would mean there's more space for other people to look after these refugee kids but we're just seeing this national outpouring of sympathy empathy and hospitality and and is the government aware of what you're doing yeah we've been delighted to work very closely with the Home Office we've been talking to a minister for Syrian refugees they're aware of what we're doing it's been brought up in Prime Minister's question times and in the houses of parliament so people know what we're doing and it's been for our tiny little charity we've been across the table for the Red Cross or Save the Children or UNHCR we're just playing our part advocating on behalf of these kids for a couple it'll have their first baby never prepared for it though yeah you know you you kind of learn as you go i I think by the time you get the hang of parenting your children have left home you know when when when my son Michael he got married two years ago and and in fact I I do not use this word this word is not in my vocabulary the word luck it really isn't I never use this word but there wasn't another alternative word for it yeah so on the day that he got married I kind of tapped him on the shoulder I said really proud of you Michael good luck with to you with your kids you know I've done that Oh mum and I've done out there who knows now okay it's hard enough with your own child taking a child from a war zone traumatised it's like we feel maybe we feel totally inadequate to know how we're going to do be the father be the mother and that were meant to be what would you say I guess I'd go back to that situation the Second World War I met a guy I was speaking at a men's breakfast panawe only men that have breakfast doesn't know fair to me but yeah he said to me look Chris I really believe in what you're doing because I remember when I was seven years old my parents took me to a train station in Czechoslovakia and they said goodbye to me I remember the last thing my mother did when she was on the station platform and I was in the train there those kind of slidy windows and she handed me her watch and she said don't forget us please remember us and it was only supposed to be for a short time that he was going to stay with the family in England but that was the last time he saw his parents because they were killed in the gas chambers and you know the UK an incredibly difficult time there's a war going on there's rationing as there's air raid and yet we still said we can do this and I didn't have anything like the training or assessment that we get now as just appearance but they said this is the right thing to do and so I guess I'm just saying to to the church to the nation with willing to do it again this is this is another situation that's what our prime minister said he was right there needs to be another kidney transport and you know I find often with God though it's when I step out of my comfort zone when I'm you know beyond my own resources suddenly I'm relying on go to that whole nother level and so again it's not for everybody but I think more of us maybe have already done ought to think about whether God is calling us to take this step you ferm written about it in this book home for good and is that really the story so far yeah so a lot of that is our story and my wife and I we write together all the good bits due to her but we've actually woven in lots of other people's stories and a friend of mine is a lecturer in theology at some Andrews University and I asked him to do it a theological edit of it he's very gracious and he did and he said I've been asked to theological 'edit a lot of books but this is the first one that had me crying into the computer as I was typing it before yeah that's that's the grace of God because there is so many stories of incredible men and women have opened their lives up to the most vulnerable children so it's a very powerful book not just because of what we've written but for the stories we've been able to include I like your subtitle here Krish making a difference for children in need and really that that's what it's about and how did you come up with the title home for good well partly says Gary Barlow add a little bit to do with it I'm secretly hoping one day Gary will sing me a version of back for good yeah.but news home for good is the title but seriously always saying is that we want to use the place that we called home in the best way possible whether that's through fostering or adoption we want to use our homes as hospitals so if people want to know more they can obviously read the book yeah gain a bit more insight they can contact your website which is home for good dogs at UK and there are there are hundreds of really useful resources on there all sorts of videos as blog posts there's stories and there's actually some profiles of children that have been waiting a long time to be adopted and some of them are heartbreaking so there's a bit of a health warning be careful if you visit the site you may end up adopting a child it and then in the midst of you and your wife showing so much compassion and empathy and doing what you can what you're doing it personally and you're trying to get many other people to do it you also keep thinking and this is your most recent book with a very unusual title called paradox ology how did you come up with that oh that was my wife we were on a long-distance car journey together and we were just trying to find a way to help people wrestle with the most difficult parts of the Bible the bits that don't seem to make sense and our idea was actually sometimes God is most clearly present in the most difficult parts we're trying to get rid of what I call fridge magnet Christianity yes you know the kind of Bible verses that everyone feels cozy about I think we need to look at the tough part to me I suppose the real powerful God who is a consuming fire so the fridge magnets are nice though are they are nice and when you've got a little picture and you're speaking a bit down and it's garbage it is more than the free notice though I was out at night where we're trying to go through the Bible in one year yeah and we're going to some of those Old Testament stories I actually said to my wife this morning and I read the Bible many many times I said Achille is doing my head in some of those stories aren't they no I can't we just read Psalm 103 or valiantly for father is tender and sympathetic perfect I know he's a good of a musical yeah so in the process of doing this do you feel you as you've engaged with some of these and paradox issues do you feel you've arrived at more clarity yeah in one sense the book was a bit of theological therapy there was stuff I couldn't really get my head around and I find writing about that as a great way for me to be able to learn and so I thought maybe other people would find that helpful too what's the most difficult passage use comic role I really struggle with the first paradox which was the Abraham paradox why would a God who owns everything asked us to give up so much why does he ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac that I find that so hard to get my aground so that was a very difficult one I think also the job paradox is tough isn't it yeah why is God so actively passive in that story what was he doing seems really unfair so I don't promise nice neat answers but I do promise that your brain will be stretched in new ways and hopefully your heart will have a greater sense of and honor and passion for God as a result what would you say Krish to you know a couple they've been happily married they've both got very good jobs they love each other what a family can't conceive and a 15 year old girl goes to a party and gets pregnant why would why would God let a 15 year old get pregnant it's so not let a couple who love God are great and just want a child and they can't conceive what would you say to that couple it is so tough to understand what God is doing I sometimes think about it a bit like a imagine your when I was IMAX seminars a huge ones and massive screen and maybe you can see a caterpillar climbing up the screen and to the caterpillar it can't make any sense of what's going on in that screen at all it's just like lights and everything and it's only with perspective isn't that you're far enough away from the screen you can see what's going on and I wonder this side of eternity I can't make sense of all the bits that God is doing in the world doesn't doesn't make sense I can't compute it all but from the perspective of eternity I trust that there is a loving God who isn't messing around the list isn't playing around with us because otherwise he wouldn't have sent Jesus to die on a cross for our sins II he's committed he loves us but I think it's only with the perspective of eternity that I'll be able to understand how those bits fit together but otherwise you know I'm just that little caterpillar clothing at the screen trying to make sense of it yeah but in many ways Christians are in the Easter people being in a good Friday world year on a scooter but it feels like Easter Saturday you know we're living aren't we with with the tension of knowing that he is the Risen crucified resurrected Jesus but we're living in this Good Friday broken world and we're struggling with the two and but amidst everything that you've seen and obviously you have seen quite a bit of suffering you're much more aware of the needs of children and much more aware with what's happening with refugees what what keeps you motivated as a Christian to trust God that he's ultimately in control why doesn't you know because you you you referred earlier on that people are abducting these refugee children new why doesn't God just kill the abductors mm-hmm he would have done that old testament time would need but one can we do it now we do it a couple of times in many testament to didn't and I guess like as you say that Easter story is the right one to cling to I I can't make sense of it all but I know for certain that God is just otherwise the cross would have been unnecessary wouldn't it God wouldn't have sent his to pay for the sins of the world if God didn't care about justice you could have just brushed injustice under the carpet but I know from the cross that God is loving because again he wouldn't wouldn't have sent Jesus if he didn't care about someone that's in a relationship with him and so we often talk about clinging to the cross and I think I end up doing that when I face suffering or hear some of the terrible stories of the kids that we look after have come from I cling to because I don't understand what you're doing God but I know you love and I know you're just and I will hang on as you look to the future I I know if I said to you you know what your dreams and aspirations obviously to get all these children yes adopted and fostered anything else well I do think that that engagement would change things so if it happened if Christians began to foster an adult more than we're doing already you engage with poverty a whole nother level for some people justices is a badge you know or tea show or a conference for others it's you know it's a contribution once a month or for others it's a a place on a rotor isn't it I do my justice work Thursday evenings once a month but once you start welcoming vulnerable kids into your life you're having breakfast you're you're hearing this story suddenly their need to become your needs so I didn't used to care about the immigration issue I was born here I've got a British passport but when one of my foster kids doesn't have the right to remain in the country I'm down there outside the Nigerian embassy at six o'clock in the morning because I care is my boring and and that connectivity with the issues of poverty and justice I love to see the church take the next step and I think fostering an adoption could be part of that journey Krish you're seriously you and your wife truly are an inspiration and I pray that you you will see in the not-too-distant future these thousands of children both in our country and thousands of refugees find as your book title and your charity is called home for good Krish can dear thank you thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Facing the Canon

Views: 10,950

Rating: 4.6173911 out of 5

Keywords: facing the canon, j.john, interview, jjohn, j john, philo trust, philo, trust, christianity, Jesus, Lord, God, Holy Spirit, Krish Kandiah, Home for Good

Id: 0GaHPrbV2N4

Length: 59min 43sec (3583 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 18 2017