Chapter 1 Painting by Number

chapter one Painting by Number

“Try to forget what objects you have before you—a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, ‘here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow’ and paint it just as it looks to you . . .”

—Claude Monet

Painting by Number 9

“Could you paint a picture of a horse for me?” If I asked you this and handed you a blank canvas, you would likely give me a funny look and explain to me that you are not an artist (except, of course, for those of you that are).However,ifIhandedyouapaint-by-numberofahorse and asked you to complete it, my guess is that you would bemorewilling.Oftenthedifferencebetween“Ican’t”and “I can” is the breaking down of something complex into manageable parts.

Leonardo Da Vinci used the paint-by-number concept as a teaching tool for his students. Dan Robbins introduced it to America as a consumer product at Macy’s in the early 1950s. In fact, in 1952, someone got third place in a San Francisco art contest with a paint-by-number (likely a little embarrassingforthejudges).2

There is no doubt that the introduction of the paintby-number was polarizing. For example, take this quote submitted to American Artist magazine:

“I don’t know what America is coming to, when thousands of people, many of them adults, are willing to be regimented into brushing paint on a jig-saw miscellany of dictated shapes and all by rote. Can’t you rescue some of these souls—or should I say ‘morons’?”

While some believed that the paint-by-number was the beginning of the end for our country, others disagreed. Here is another quote submitted to the same magazine:

“I know I’m not much of an artist and never will be. I’ve tried in vain repeatedly to draw or paint something recognizable. . .Why oh why didn’t you or someone else tell me before this how much fun it is to use these wonderful ‘paint by number’ sets?” 3

Love it or hate it, paint-by-number made painting accessible to everyone.

When it comes to addressing our national foster care crisis, we could learn a lot from the paint-by-number.

It is common for advocates in foster care (myself included)tocitenationalnumberswhenchallengingothers to respond to the needs of children in care. In fact, at the time of this writing, most people in the foster care community are familiar with numbers like “440,000” kids in U.S. foster care and “over 100,000” kids waiting to be adopted. These statistics certainly paint a picture of the enormity of the need.

However, getting time in front of a church or members of our community is a privilege. It may likely be the only ten minutes in an entire year that most of your audience is going to hear anything about foster care. To make matters worse, we use our ten minutes to talk mostly about the need for foster and adoptive parents—something that almost everyone listening does not feel ready to do. So when we take that traditional approach, we’ve made two grave errors:

1. The large numbers we use present people with a problem they know they can’t solve. 2. By presenting fostering and adoption as the two primary calls to action, we provide two solutions most people don’t feel they can provide.

Painting by Number 11

And then, when response is low, we feel frustrated that people don’t “get it” or don’t “care more.”

So, what if instead, we thought about foster care as an intensely local issue that every person potentially has some role in solving? When we advocate for kids in foster care, weneedtostopsharingthebiggestnumberswecanfind and start sharing the smallest ones. Your church leadership is far more willing to do something about the thirty-four kids that are waiting for adoption within twenty minutes of your church’s front door than it is about the kids waiting for When we adoption across the country. We advocate for kids will succeed in addressing the in foster care, we need foster care crisis in the United to stop sharing the States when small, mighty bands biggest numbers we can of churches and organizations find and start sharing succeed in solving the foster care the smallest ones. crisis in their own communities.

Likeeverybigproblem(andeverypaint-by-number), we must break it down into manageable parts and take one piece at a time. Fortunately, that work has already been done for us. Today, the United States is divided into 3,142 counties or county equivalents. If a group of churches in each of those counties were to band together with each other, local organizations, and government agencies, we could truly get to more than enough within just a few years.

So what about your county? What would it take to get everyone going in the same direction, so that one day, your

county would have more than enough for kids before, during, and beyond foster care? You don’t have to paint the whole picture. You just need to do your part.