Adoption
Where Hope and Healing Meet
Birth Choice is Becoming a Licensed Adoption Agency!
In the coming weeks, Birth Choice will become a fully licensed child placement agency, prepared to place infants up to one year old in the State of Tennessee. While becoming an adoption agency was never a goal in the first 30 plus years of the ministry, we recently began sensing God’s leading to offer this life-affirming choice to the women and families we see here at Birth Choice as well as to anyone else in West Tennessee and parts of Middle Tennessee.
Birth Choice will be the only adoption agency with an office located in West Tennessee between Memphis and Nashville. Additionally, will be only the sixth pro-life pregnancy clinic in the nation that offers adoption services.
Our Mission
Our mission is to extend Christ-like love in a compassionate and responsive manner that values the family and empowers women and their partners to choose life and to offer hope and healing to each in the adoption triad.
The Triad
The “adoption triad” consists of the birth mother, the baby, and the adoptive family. Because we believe all people are made in the image of God, the focus of our ministry is equally on all three in this triad.
The Church
We believe that each person in the church has a part to play. Would you begin to pray about what your part might be? We also ask that you begin to pray for the expectant moms to have big faith to step out of their fear and consider this life-giving option.
Spiritual Adoption
We as a ministry are fighting two big lies. The first lie is that abortion is a much better option than adoption. Our high-risk clients are often in a state of fear that naturally causes them to look inward and overlook the life-giving options that are available.
Just as we fight the lie that abortion, not adoption, is the best choice, we are also fighting the lie that adoption is only a means to an end. We at Birth Choice feel that the adoption journey is a ministry, and we are here to share biblically that adoption is a calling. It is the church’s job to care for orphans and widows (James 1:27). While young, expectant mothers in unplanned and unwanted pregnancies are probably not widows, they’re almost always single moms who need help; our help and yours.
The answer to both issues is spiritual adoption. All believers have been adopted into God’s family through the completed work of Jesus Christ. This serves as the beautiful model for physical adoption (Galatians 4:5; Romans 8:15). This is also where we look for faith to step out of fear and into the deep waters of caring for that expectant mom, her preborn baby, and a prospective adoptive family.
The Church
We believe that each person in the church has a part to play. Would you begin to pray about what your part might be? We also ask that you begin to pray for the expectant moms to have big faith to step out of their fear and consider this life-giving option.
Prospective Adoptive Families
While there is never a shortage of families desiring to adopt infants, Birth Choice will use biblical guidelines when prayerfully considering those who want to adopt. We will only consider traditional families consisting of a married biological male and biological female. We will place no children in same sex or unmarried homes. Couples wishing to adopt a child will have to clear all background checks from various agencies, be active members of their local church community, and provide references from their church as well as family and community leaders.
As a nonprofit ministry, we will offer adoption services on a sliding scale. This will be based on the combined salary of an adoptive couple, with a minimum/maximum fee. Additionally, we plan to set up a fund for people to contribute to the adoption fees for our adoptive families. Adoption should be affordable for all families.
The History Behind the Adoption Agency
Before Birth Choice was even a dream, few people knew that our founder, Brent Lambert and his wife, Beverly, pursued adoption. As they worked with a Christian agency, they were told that they could expect a waiting period of three to five years. When they inquired as to why, they were told, “Because of the issue of abortion. We just don’t have that many babies to place for adoption”. At that point, neither Brent nor Beverly had ever considered what abortion truly was. They were in for several eye-opening experiences the Lord had planned for them to teach them about the horror of abortion and for the need of a ministry like Birth Choice.
For over 30 years, Birth Choice has followed God’s lead. Stepping out in faith, we became medical in 2001, opened our Gibson County office in 2003, and launched our first Mobile Clinic in 2020. In 2024, God led Birth Choice to investigate and pursue becoming a licensed adoption agency.
God's Providence
After much prayer and research, we realized we would need to hire a master’s level social worker to oversee this part of the ministry, as required by the State of Tennessee. In God’s providential timing, exactly when we reached this phase, our Founder and CEO, Brent Lambert, was contacted on social media by a woman he did not know. She stated she felt impressed to reach out to him and went on to say that she was an adoptee as well as an adoptive parent. The last piece of information she shared was that she had a master’s degree in social work. The most amazing thing of all was that she had no idea that Birth Choice was even considering becoming an adoption agency! After several meetings and conversations, we hired Lisa Reasons, MSW, to lead our adoption service program. Since then, Lisa has worked tirelessly, securing all of the State of Tennessee’s licensure requirements.
We will also have a birth mother advocate on staff to see to the interests of our expectant and birth mothers. This will be handled by one of our existing staff members, Roberta “Boo” Sellers. Boo is uniquely qualified because she is not only an adoptee and an adoptive parent, she is also a birth mother. It is very evident that our God has gone before Birth Choice in each and every step of this journey.
