Our History

For decades Christian Homes & Family Services has been known as two agencies: Christian Homes of Abilene, a ministry originally conceived by the Highland Church of Christ in 1962 to provide foster care for young needy children; and Christian Services of East Texas, a ministry given life in 1985 by the Glenwood Church of Christ in Tyler also to provide foster care for children rescued from neglect and abuse.

In 1999, the two independent agencies, both recognized as 501(c) 3 organizations by the Internal Revenue Service, merged and in 2006, the agency began operating under the same assumed name, Christian Homes & Family Services.

Almost as soon as Christian Homes began operating, it discovered and began responding to a desperate need for maternity care for young women with unplanned pregnancies. For more than 40 years, Christian Homes has provided residential and community-based care for young women with unplanned pregnancies. Most often, the care culminates in the agency finding loving parents to adopt their precious babies.
           
When a young woman with an unplanned pregnancy reaches out to Christian Homes for maternity care, our goal is that through the ministry, her life, as well as the life of her child, will be transformed. We arrange for her housing, either in our comfortable apartments in Abilene or in her hometown, and we also provide her food, clothing, medical care, legal services, moral support, counseling, and if needed, foster care for her newborn.

Our Abilene foster parents stand in the gap for birth mothers and adoptive parents. Foster parents love and care for newborn babies who must leave the hospital before all the legal hurdles have been jumped and they are cleared for adoption by their new and forever family. Infant foster care is provided according to the same strict standards as is required by the State for all foster care provided for minor children.

For young children who have been removed by the State from the home they likely shared with biological parents or relatives but where they were abused or neglected, our goal is that a Christian Homes & Family Services foster family will be the last foster home they ever need. Our ministry is to identify, train, and prepare loving, Christian couples to welcome young foster children into their home and to ultimately make them a forever member of their family through adoption.

Christian Homes & Family Services is governed by a 23-member Board of Trustees who for more than two decades has operated independently of its founding church congregations. The agency is served by a 25-member team of dedicated employees; five of whom have worked for the agency more than 23 years, and one for almost 40. All trustees and employees are faithful and committed Christians. The agency is licensed by the State of Texas to provide maternity care and foster care, and in both Texas and Oklahoma to provide adoption services. 

Approximately 50% of the agency’s $2 million budget is funded by adoption fees. For the balance, the agency relies on the generosity of individuals, churches, sympathetic businesses, foundations, and sound investing of the dollars donated to the agency’s endowment fund.  

Since 1962 Christian Homes & Family Services has placed more than 1650 precious babies and children into loving adoptive homes, provided maternity care for more than 2200 women, and cared for 1325 foster children.