Running Toward tells the stories of ordinary people who couldn’t look away once they saw the hidden crisis in foster care and family.
Each episode features honest, unfiltered stories from ordinary people who couldn’t look away once they saw the hidden crisis impacting children and families in their own communities. People living normal lives who took imperfect, often reluctant steps toward brokenness — and were changed by it.
This is not a podcast about quick fixes or heroic solutions.
It’s about the long, costly, deeply human work of preventing family fracture and supporting families.
Pastor Ed Newton of Community Bible Church and his wife Stephanie had three biological children when they felt called to adopt — a journey that took them from a closed door in Haiti to a two-year-old boy in Ethiopia named Lawson. What they didn’t fully understand yet was Reactive Attachment Disorder: the invisible wound of early trauma that made Lawson push away the people closest to him, especially Stephanie, while bonding instead with strangers. As the behavioral struggles escalated, Ed and Stephanie made the hardest call of their parenting lives — sending Lawson to a Christian residential ranch in Montana for eighteen months of healing, at a cost that wiped out their savings. This conversation doesn’t skip the hard parts: the statistic on divorce among families who walk this road, the Father’s Day sermon Ed preached with his son’s bedroom empty, and the moment everything changed — Lawson, now a senior in high school, telling his dad he was never once embarrassed to call him father. It’s an honest, unflinching look at trauma, adoption, and what it costs — and gives back — to say we picked you and mean it.
—
Thanks for watching!
Follow South Texas Alliance for Orphans:
📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southtxalliance4orphans/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthTexasAllianceForOrphans
🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OW7JlcWOlbs9Ms4BQcdeI?si=0416b37dd53540c8
🌐 Learn more about fostering & adoption: https://www.southtxalliance4orphans.org
If today's story moved you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've ever thought about fostering, even just once, let that thought be the start of something. 🤍
—
Running Toward Podcast is brought to you by the South Texas Alliance for Orphans — real stories from real families walking the road ahead of you.
Be sure to like, subscribe, and share this episode . We'll see you next week. 🤍
21 Oct 2026
More Than Just Mentors, We Became Their Parents | Randy
Pastor Randy Garcia has spent nearly 40 years leading in San Antonio — first as the founding pastor of 316 Church, now as executive pastor alongside his son, lead pastor Randall Shawn Garcia — but he’s honest that for most of that time, he had no real idea how deep the city’s foster crisis ran. That changed when his own son Matt and daughter-in-law Jessica fostered and adopted three siblings, and changed again at a 2024 gala when Randy and his wife Brenda met Juan (who goes by JJ), a 21-year-old who had legally adopted his own 13-year-old brother, Ray, just to keep him out of the foster system. Randy handed Juan his phone number that night; by the next afternoon, Juan and Ray were sitting in the back row at church, and before the hour was over, Juan had given his life to Christ. What started as mentorship became something more — Juan, his sister Julianne, and Ray now call Randy and Brenda family, and one young woman even asked permission to hug Randy because, she said, she’d never had a dad. It’s a conversation about the fatherless generation sitting in plain sight, and what it looks like to say yes to it even after you think your parenting years are behind you.
—
Thanks for watching!
Follow South Texas Alliance for Orphans:
📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southtxalliance4orphans/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthTexasAllianceForOrphans
🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OW7JlcWOlbs9Ms4BQcdeI?si=0416b37dd53540c8
🌐 Learn more about fostering & adoption: https://www.southtxalliance4orphans.org
If today's story moved you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've ever thought about fostering, even just once, let that thought be the start of something. 🤍
—
Running Toward Podcast is brought to you by the South Texas Alliance for Orphans — real stories from real families walking the road ahead of you.
Be sure to like, subscribe, and share this episode! We'll see you next week. 🤍
14 Oct 2026
Still Changing Diapers At 60 | John
Father John Sweeney of Christ the Servant Church joins guest host Mike Kraft for Pastor Appreciation Month to share a story that spans 38 years of marriage, seven children by birth and adoption, and one more — a foster baby — in his home right now, at 60 years old. John and his wife Kelly adopted three kids from South Korea and Liberia after Kelly had a vivid, tearful vision at a stoplight of a little girl sitting on a bed with a bow on her head. Years later, a form John handed out to his own congregation ended up face-down on his dresser, filled out in Kelly’s handwriting: a calling to foster infants. In the middle of it all, John and Kelly walked through every parent’s worst nightmare — losing their son Tyler to a congenital heart condition at age 10 — and found, in their grief, that “Jesus is enough” wasn’t just something to say, but something to live. It’s a raw, hard-won conversation about trauma-informed parenting, obedience long after you think you’re done, and why John still answers the door at 60 for one more child who needs a home.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
12 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
12 ratings
Host of Running Toward?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
