The Christian Church has been "welcoming the children" in everygeneration since Jesus' earthly life. The early church, and generations of Christians since, would find expressions of care, appropriate for their times, to help needy families and dependent children.This story is about how the Christian church, with the major focus upon Arizona Baptist Children's Services (ABCS), has responded to the mandate of Jesus to "welcome the children" whose families have been crippled or absent. To tell that story, the writer has chosen to go back in time to create a context of historical examples. What ABCS and other Christians are doing in the Year of Our Lord, 2010, is little different than the experience of how the church responded to the needs of children in the first, fifth or eighteenth centuries. Only the methods have changed.The methods have evolved from foster family care to specialized services for children and families. These state-of-the art modern methods of care are described in detail. This should be helpful and informative to social workers and others who work with troubled families and children in out-of-home care in a faith-based context.

This study traces the emergence of changing attitudes about the child, at once economically "useless" and emotionally "priceless", from the late 1800s to the 1930s. It describes how turn-of-the-century America discovered new, sentimental ways to determine a child's monetary worth.