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Welcome to The Foster Friendly Podcast. We’re bringing foster care closer to home by sharing stories from the front lines. We're talking with former foster youth, foster parents and others who are finding unique and powerful ways to dramatically improve the experiences and outcomes for kids in foster care.
The Foster Friendly podcast is brought to you by America’s Kids Belong, a nonprofit that helps kids in foster care find belonging in both family and community.
Brian Mavis (00:01.016)
Hello and welcome to the Foster Friendly podcast. I'm your host Brian Mavis. I've got my, course, I've got, Travis, I forgot to think of an adjective. I don't have an adjective for you. We also have our guest Jason Weber. Jason, I always introduce Travis or Courtney, who's sometimes with us, with some sort of adjective that many times they don't know the definition of. And so that's just my...
Travis (00:10.246)
I'm off the hook today.
Travis (00:27.268)
That's 100%.
Brian Mavis (00:29.134)
but sometimes, so I forgot to do that. man. Okay. And so everyone out there, we have also our guest, Jason Weber. And if you've been around in this space, you probably know that name. Jason, welcome.
Jason Weber (00:50.041)
Hey guys, thanks so much for having me.
Travis (00:52.292)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (00:53.366)
Jason, so I'm going to do a little just reading of an intro. So for those of the people who do know your name, they're like, but I don't know much about him and others who don't know you at all. Do a little bit of who Jason is in this space. And then I'm going to ask you an icebreaker question or two. And for those of you who do know Jason, this.
Icebreaker stuff is right up his alley. He's very creative guy and he he's made me do ridiculous things and icebreaker stuff. So it feels like a payback time I Know I know I know the shoes on the other foot this time buddy. Okay. All right so Jason Jason and his wife Trisha have been working with vulnerable children and families for 28 years. That's amazing. Did you start when you were 10?
Jason Weber (01:28.523)
I like asking. I like asking.
Travis (01:31.332)
not receiving.
Payback, payback.
Jason Weber (01:36.865)
I'm
Jason Weber (01:48.789)
Yes, yes, nine and a half.
Brian Mavis (01:49.038)
Yes, OK, all right. Good. Nine and half. All right. They were foster parents for 10 years and have five kids. Jason has written and helped produce several books and other tools, including the book Until There's More Than Enough, which I have that my copy here, second edition, and The Farmer Herman and the Flooding Barn, which I also have my copy here, and it's been drawn on. You can see the drawings, the scribblings.
Travis (01:50.127)
Yes.
Jason Weber (02:18.175)
Well loved! I love it!
Brian Mavis (02:18.926)
But my wife did that. No, grandkids. huh. And it received a 2018 ECPA Christian Book Award finalist. Jason is also wrote a regular column for the Fostering Families Today magazine. Jason, by the way, a little bit of trivia here. That magazine. So my wife and I moved to our town 20 years ago and
Jason Weber (02:23.977)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (02:47.638)
since we were foster parents, we got this magazine in the mail. We didn't order it, but it was something that the state would give to foster parents. And we're unaware of that magazine. And it was like, gosh, this is a good magazine. I wonder where it's published out of. You know, New York or California. And it said, the town I live in is where it's published out of. So we looked up the editor. He was our neighbor.
Travis (03:11.524)
Ha ha.
Jason Weber (03:15.637)
I'm
Brian Mavis (03:17.454)
So weird. Anyway.
Travis (03:20.474)
That's funny.
Jason Weber (03:22.793)
He spent a lot of unnecessary money having that sent to your house.
Brian Mavis (03:27.45)
Right? Yeah, it was just walking over. Yeah. And then unfortunately, yeah, he died from cancer a few years ago. And then also, you have your own podcast, which is the More Than Enough podcast, correct?
Travis (03:27.532)
Right!
Travis (03:31.364)
Ha ha.
Jason Weber (03:32.171)
You
Jason Weber (03:48.063)
That's right. That's right.
Brian Mavis (03:48.952)
That's right. OK, so Jason, when he's not working, loves creative stuff, going anywhere with his wife and doing what he can to embarrass his children in public places. That's a good fatherhood move. Jason serves as the national director of the more than enough for CAFO and we'll talk about people like what's CAFO and currently you live in Plano, Texas. So Jason icebreaker.
I've got a couple of them. If your kids wrote a book about you, since you've written a couple of books, one that's titled Farmer Herman and the Flooding Barn, but if they wrote a book about you, what would the title, what would they title it if your kids had the option?
Jason Weber (04:40.233)
Gosh.
Brian Mavis (04:41.422)
Do they have each kid have their own title?
Travis (04:42.074)
hahahaha
Jason Weber (04:45.461)
You know...
Well, so my youngest, yeah, they would probably. I've got five kids, ages 24 down to 16. Our 16 year old does do some writing and some poetry. And she also, I don't know where she came up with this, but she also started within the last couple of years, calling me Pee Paw. That is what she calls me. I don't know where she got that. So my own kid calls me
Travis (04:52.004)
the
Brian Mavis (05:01.902)
Bye bye.
Brian Mavis (05:13.134)
Your own kid calls you Pee-Paw.
Jason Weber (05:17.707)
Which makes me feel super young.
Travis (05:18.53)
I love that! The patriarch of the family.
Jason Weber (05:24.331)
So I think that the name of the book might be Pea Paw Dances at the Grocery Store or something like that. It would be a children's book and I think it would be something along those lines.
Brian Mavis (05:39.842)
Okay, I think that kid needs to do that, need to listen to this podcast and write that book. I'd buy it. All right, and then you also like to embarrass your kids publicly. can you think of when you did that and tell us about that? Does this one come to mind?
Jason Weber (06:02.815)
Gosh, mean, so here's the deal. Yes, I actively try to embarrass my kids publicly, but the trick and the truth about doing that is a couple of things. One is it doesn't take that much to embarrass teenagers, so you don't have to go.
Brian Mavis (06:07.785)
haha
Brian Mavis (06:16.076)
Well, that's true. Yeah, you just need to stand next to them, right?
Travis (06:16.644)
Yeah.
Travis (06:20.004)
Ha
Jason Weber (06:20.201)
Yeah.
Exactly. So there's nothing like huge and over the top that's super memorable. I can give you a story of when.
Brian Mavis (06:30.306)
Okay, so you don't pants you don't pants them or anything like that, right? So I got it. Okay, got it.
Travis (06:33.614)
There's a line, he draws the line, he draws the line!
Jason Weber (06:34.991)
No, no, is. It is more like dancing in the grocery store, for example. I will tell you how one of my kids and who will remain nameless when she was three embarrassed me if you want to hear that, because that is very memorable. So we were at the we were at Lowe's waiting to return something. So in the return line and behind us was a man. He was he was just he was bigger. He was a bigger guy.
Brian Mavis (06:49.55)
I do. I do want to hear that.
Jason Weber (07:04.555)
And she looked behind us, looked at his stomach, looked up at him, looked back at his stomach, looked back at him and said, is there a baby in there?
Travis (07:14.906)
oooo
Brian Mavis (07:15.118)
Aha, yes, yes, yeah. Aha. And you said?
Jason Weber (07:16.731)
and
Jason Weber (07:21.265)
And I said, am so sorry. he said, and to his credit, he looked at her and said, Nope, just a lot of sandwiches.
Brian Mavis (07:28.558)
I don't know whose child this is.
Brian Mavis (07:38.958)
That's good. That's good.
Travis (07:39.354)
That's a good... I feel like going that going to a dude would probably still been a better than going to a woman I'm gonna think but that's hilarious
Jason Weber (07:42.155)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (07:46.644)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jason Weber (07:48.927)
Yes, yes, 100%.
Brian Mavis (07:52.81)
Yeah, food baby. All right. Okay, Travis, I've got, done with my questions.
Jason Weber (07:56.457)
Yeah, so now I.
Hahaha
Travis (08:02.936)
Well, the first one was one of the most cerebral icebreakers I've ever heard, so I mean, on the spot for Jason to have to craft a book title by... That was quick! That was a good one. Okay.
Brian Mavis (08:11.178)
Yeah, yeah, that's good. A book title with the word peep-hop in it. All right.
Travis (08:16.698)
So that was fun and yeah, thanks for playing along so far in our conversation. So really excited to hear more about your own journey and your family's journey and story into fostering and the 10 years you guys did that as a family. yeah, take us into that.
Jason Weber (08:34.783)
Yeah, so, well, I'll start with my wife and I met in college at the University of Kansas, Rock Chalk, and we dated throughout college and we decided that we wanted to wait until we graduated to get married. So we waited six days. Six days after we graduated, we got married. And we started out, we graduated with social work degrees. I went into college to be a band teacher.
Travis (08:52.89)
Ha ha.
Jason Weber (09:02.987)
She went into college to do pre-med. Both of us came out as social work majors. Knowing that we wanted to live our lives on behalf of the vulnerable. We didn't know exactly what that looked like, but we moved into an inner city community, actually in Denver, for the first seven years of our marriage. And we lived in that community and we worked with children and families there and worked and served local churches there. And one of the things we realized
Brian Mavis (09:07.523)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (09:30.956)
fairly quickly is that over half the kids that we were working with on a weekly basis had been touched by foster care at some point in their lives. for us, so for some of them, they were back living at home with grandma. Some of them, they were in foster care or in a group home. Some of them, they went into foster care while we knew them. And so for a lot of people who have an encounter with foster care very often, it's primarily at least at first with a kid.
Brian Mavis (09:37.08)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (10:00.252)
Right? It's with the child. have this encounter with this kiddo and that changes everything. Well, that was partially true for us. It was also about us living alongside their families, living alongside struggling families. One of the families where the dad lost his kiddo into foster care lived just down the street from us. And dad, he helped me build the fence in my backyard. And so for us, foster care,
Brian Mavis (10:25.955)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (10:29.759)
has always been about families, always been about a commitment to trying to see their families restored whenever possible. But through that process, we began to realize that just as a practical matter, it would be good for us to become foster parents. So at about 25, 26 years old, we did the paperwork to become foster parents. You guys know there's a lot of paperwork involved with that. And one of the pieces of paper talks about the kinds of...
situations or backgrounds or things that you would or would not be willing to have in your home, right? Would you be willing to take a child who's experienced physical abuse? Yes, no, might consider. Would you be willing to take a child who has a hearing impairment? Yes, no, might consider. I don't know all the yes, no, and might consider boxes we checked, but I'm pretty sure about a couple of them. And one of them would have been, hey, no sibling groups, like just one at a time. Like we're 25 and 26 years old.
Brian Mavis (11:17.486)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (11:26.207)
We've never parented, we don't know what we're doing. Who would entrust us with more than one kid? And then the second thing would be no major medical needs. Like it didn't probably even cross our minds that we would say yes to medical needs because again, we didn't know what we were doing. And our belief at that time would have been that, I'm sure there are plenty of nurses and doctors and physical therapists and folks who have training that are foster parents that can take in.
Brian Mavis (11:31.212)
Right.
Jason Weber (11:53.064)
those kids. And so we will take in kids that don't have major medical needs. So of course, we get the first call from our social worker. And she said, you guys already know this is going. She said, Hey, we have these preemie twins. They've for those of you that are bad at math. That's, that's more than one. Yeah.
Brian Mavis (11:56.91)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (12:03.594)
Uh-huh.
Brian Mavis (12:07.918)
That's more than one.
Travis (12:08.874)
What the...
Jason Weber (12:14.827)
They've been in the hospital three months. They were 10 weeks premature. They dipped under two pounds. One of them had open heart surgery at 11 days old and almost died. They might have cerebral palsy, but we won't know that until they're two years old. What do you think? Well, I mean, I'm thinking you didn't read my paperwork. Let's start there.
Brian Mavis (12:19.086)
Brian Mavis (12:27.726)
Mmm.
Travis (12:31.973)
my god.
Travis (12:37.338)
That's... right.
Brian Mavis (12:38.07)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (12:42.569)
what they did in that situation, which is unusual for foster care. They don't usually do this, but she said, because their medical care is so great, why don't you come down and meet them? You don't have to say, you usually have to say yes. And then you, know, whatever comes comes, but they said, because the medical care is so great, why don't you come down to neonatal intensive care and meet them and figure out what's involved in their care. And then you can make a decision. And so my wife, being who my wife is, the most compassionate person I've ever met said, well,
Brian Mavis (12:56.194)
Yeah, right.
Jason Weber (13:11.657)
They said we didn't have to say yes, let's just go down and meet them. And so also, you know where this is going. So it's all over right then.
Travis (13:17.114)
That's all.
Brian Mavis (13:17.512)
Hahaha!
Mhmm.
Jason Weber (13:23.755)
And so we go down to University Hospital, downtown Denver, and we go up to the Needle and Needle Intensive Care Unit. And one thing to note too, is that I came from a town of 1200 people in the middle of Kansas. So I came from a very small town. There were certainly more people in that building that day than probably in my entire town. And there were a whole lot of babies in that unit. I could not believe how many tiny, tiny babies there were in that unit as we walked through. We got to the end of the unit,
Brian Mavis (13:41.998)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (13:44.408)
You
Jason Weber (13:53.472)
We opened up these sliding glass doors and there was a giant steel crib with these two little baby girls in there with tubes and cords running everywhere. And as a kid who grew up on a farm and grew up in rural Kansas, and I think this is true for any male growing up, is we're always asking ourselves the question, do I have what it takes? Like, do I have what it takes to jump over this creek without getting wet? Do I have what it takes to ride on my...
Brian Mavis (14:03.032)
Hmm.
Travis (14:15.748)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (14:19.086)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (14:20.682)
buddy's handlebars down this hill without cracking my head open. Like, do I have what it takes? Well, I'm looking over the edge of this crib at these two baby girls with these tubes and cords. And it's pretty apparent to me that I do not have what it takes. And as we prayed about it that day, and as we learned about what it would take to care for them, the thing that got impressed on me more than any other thing, the thing that, the biggest thing I came away with that day is, Jason, it doesn't matter.
Brian Mavis (14:23.886)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (14:33.998)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (14:49.76)
whether you think you have what it takes. If I've called you to do this, I will equip you to do it. And so with that, we said yes and we brought them home and it ended up being a three and a half year case that did end up in termination of parental rights. And those two preemie twins are now 24, about to turn 25. We fostered for 10 years total and we had some kids come and go, but most of the kids that came to us ended up staying and we ended up adopting five.
Brian Mavis (15:09.486)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (15:19.468)
out of foster care. In the middle of that first case, that three and a half year case of the twins, we began, we were interacting with all kinds of social workers and lawyers and doctors and physical therapists. And they were coming in and out of our house because they couldn't go a lot of places. So we had a lot of folks in our home. And the question that kept coming to our mind is what would it look like if the church were more engaged in this space? And secondly, what would it look like for us to spend
the best hours of our day, working toward that end. What would it look like for us to begin to use our lives to help the church figure out how to engage in this space? And so that eventually led us to transition from inner city ministry to doing the kind of advocacy for adoption and foster care we've been doing now for the last about 22 years.
Brian Mavis (16:10.86)
Wow. I mean, I'm familiar with your story, but I did know some of those details, and that's powerful. So when you started thinking about that and transitioning from inner city ministry to help now focus on that solution of what would it look like if the churches were more involved and equipped,
Travis (16:19.417)
No.
Brian Mavis (16:37.838)
What did you do? Like, what was, did you mean, immediately go to CAFO or?
Jason Weber (16:43.454)
No, no. In fact, we were part of a ministry of CREW. was Campus Crusade for Christ at the time, now called CREW. And that was the inner city ministry we were a part of. We were thinking about, like, if there was anybody inside of CREW, CREW has a lot of ministries working all over the world. Like, if there's anybody inside of CREW that was working toward or thinking about vulnerable children and adoption and these kinds of issues, who might it be? And so we reached out.
to family life. Family life is mostly known for doing marriage conferences and a radio show for many, many years called Family Life Today. And we reached out to them and we actually had this, and I had developed as a one page document of what it would look like to travel around the churches and begin educating people in the church on the steps to engaging and adopting kids, particularly at that time, that was our focus.
Brian Mavis (17:19.47)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (17:43.143)
we reached out and they said, yeah, that, is on the heart of leadership here, but it isn't going to happen for three years. call us back, in six months when we will have our three year plan and you can see, you know, how we're kind of laying that out and maybe that's something you can do three years. And it was for us actually, maybe a sort of a someday kind of thing. I mean, we were young and ministry and we didn't assume that we were prepared to even do this kind of thing. And I called six months. So one, I enrolled in Denver seminary. was like, okay, I got three years. Let's.
Brian Mavis (17:59.981)
Ahem.
Brian Mavis (18:03.48)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (18:12.086)
go get a degree while we're doing inner city ministry. Let's, you know, like we have these medically fragile twins at home and we're doing full-time ministry. Let's go ahead and add seminary on top of that. That's super smart. And so enrolled in seminary called six months later, called Family Life Back and they said, actually, you're not gonna believe this, but we've actually started that ministry. And I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, you said it was gonna be three years. And said, well, we found a guy.
Brian Mavis (18:20.098)
Yeah. Great idea.
Brian Mavis (18:37.038)
Right.
Jason Weber (18:39.606)
that was doing something similar and we basically adopted him and we've started a ministry called Hope for Orphans and would you like to come on and help us get it rolling? And so we did and that's how we ended up in that space. And we would travel around to churches around the country doing adoption education seminars in churches all over
Brian Mavis (19:01.408)
OK, so then people who do recognize your name, probably recognize it from your affiliation with CAFO. for those of you who don't know CAFO, it's spelled C-A-F-O. so Jason, tell our listeners, describe what CAFO is, and then also describe
your role in there with more than enough. So unpack, KFO, and more than enough for our listeners.
Jason Weber (19:38.253)
Yeah. So I mentioned that, um, I worked at family life. so the president of family life, Dennis Rainey, he actually asked my boss at the time. Um, he said, Hey, is there anywhere where, uh, Christian organizations and agencies are getting together to figure out how they can work together better? And the answer at the time was no, not really. I mean, they run into each other at other conferences, but there's no place where they're uniquely gathering together. said, well, let's, let's do it here at the family life building. And so.
28 leaders were invited and gathered from various different churches and organizations and agencies to come. That was back in 2004.
Brian Mavis (20:16.032)
And what year was that? What year was that? Okay, all right. So 21 years ago, okay.
Jason Weber (20:23.676)
And so those leaders gathered there at the team room at Family Life. And that first gathering called a summit was followed up by a second gathering also in Little Rock. And then by the time that they decided to gather for the third time in Colorado Springs that focused on the family, they had decided to incorporate as a 501C3 called the Christian Alliance for Orphans or CAFO.
as it's known today. so that got going on as its own organization and CAFO is, it continues to be the same vision today. Back then it was 28 people gathered in a room. We're about to gather for our 21st summit. We're already at over 2000 people coming, 300 member organizations working in adoption, foster care and care for vulnerable children around the world. And the vision is still the same. What can we do together?
Travis (21:13.561)
Wow.
Jason Weber (21:22.954)
that none of us could do on our own. And how could God use us if we were willing to set our logos and egos aside and do that? And that continues to be the vision. More Than Enough is the foster care initiative of CAFO. We've got several different initiatives focused in different places, but the U.S. Foster Care Initiative is called More Than Enough. And it really is about helping communities work together collaboratively, work together well, in order to
Brian Mavis (21:39.374)
you
Brian Mavis (21:45.792)
you
Jason Weber (21:53.133)
help those communities get to more than enough for children and families. We don't believe that the words more than enough are, we don't think it's just a clever name, we don't think it makes just a great bumper sticker. We actually believe that more than enough is possible in every community in the country. When we look at the numbers of kids in care, we look at the numbers of kids that need to be adopted, we look at the number of families that just need some support in order to reunify or get together, or we look at the numbers of families that just need to be wrapped around.
Brian Mavis (22:06.19)
you
Brian Mavis (22:12.43)
you
Brian Mavis (22:22.51)
you
Jason Weber (22:22.88)
We believe that more than enough resources are actually available to do that. It's just currently uncoordinated and undeveloped in that way. People are working in silos and if we can get communities working together, we really believe that that's possible. One of the ways that I feel that that's true is very often when we think about foster care, we often go and present the biggest numbers we can find because we want people to think, is it really big and important problem?
Travis (22:38.543)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (22:50.826)
I'm gonna tell you about the almost 400,000 kids in care, and I'm gonna tell you about the 100,000 kids that need to be adopted. And what we've found is actually what's gonna be better for motivating your community to get engaged in this space is not sharing the biggest numbers you can find, it's sharing the smallest numbers you can find. When people find out how many kids are in care in your county, when they find out how many kids are waiting for adoption in your county, the reaction is almost universally the same. We see it over and over again. People look at those numbers.
Travis (23:08.207)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (23:20.554)
No, if you're in LA County, you're an exception, right? That's a big place. But for most counties in the country, they look at those numbers and people say, hey, we ought to be able to handle this. We ought to be able with what we have available in our community, the churches we have, the people we have, the businesses we have, we ought to be able to handle this crisis as a community. And we ought to be able to get to more than enough.
Brian Mavis (23:24.686)
Right. Most counties are like...
Travis (23:29.4)
Haha
Brian Mavis (23:36.195)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (23:46.604)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That is so good.
Travis (23:53.018)
of makes me think too of like, you know, Brian and I talk about this in terms of kind of the tension between this idea of more than enough and the resources are there and in place more than enough. And then also making sure that they're not also too strung out. like, you know, that idea of also like who are the best, you know, kind of the best people for the job too, that are going to be the most supported. And so that's kind of seems like some tension between those things of like, I don't know.
Yeah, those different ideas of the numbers are there, but in terms of also like, can, if that church, for instance, that doesn't have enough support inside its walls is not going to last or give the foster parents the best care they can. it seems like that's kind of a, yeah. So yeah, no, go ahead.
Jason Weber (24:36.49)
Yeah. That's right. That's right. Well, and sorry, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, you know, the way we describe it is, let's say you guys are going to go down and you were going to buy your dream car and they didn't have it on the lot. So you're going to have special order it. And so you talk with the salesperson and you go into the office and you look at all the options and you pick exactly what you want, the color of seats you want, all of the features.
And the salesperson says, hey, we're gonna, it's gonna take a few months, but we're gonna deliver it and we'll actually deliver it to your house. So a few months later, you're at the grocery store, you're shopping, you drove there in your boring old car. And while you're shopping, you get a phone call from the salesperson and he says, hey, we've delivered your car, it's at your house. And so you hurry up, you check out, you get that last box of cereal and you jump in your boring old car and you drive to your house. as you come down your street and you pull up to your house,
you look in the driveway and you're a little surprised by what you see because there in the driveway is a stack of brand new tires, the body of a car, a steering wheel, some spark plugs, and a whole lot of parts that you have no idea what they do, but they look important. so is that a new car? Well, I mean, I guess technically, is it going to get you to work in the morning? No, it's not.
Travis (25:45.86)
Ahahaha, right. Ahahahaha.
Brian Mavis (25:48.686)
You
Jason Weber (26:04.388)
is what we have in foster care in our communities. There's tremendous, tremendous effective programs happening all over the country. Churches are doing unbelievable things, way more than maybe 20 years ago when we first got into this. And yet we continue to struggle with putting something together in our community that actually gets children and families where they need to go. Because
Brian Mavis (26:20.846)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (26:34.186)
We continue, we have a shiny new program, but it's not communicating well with the other parts of the ecosystem. And so we talk about the foster care system versus the foster care ecosystem. And very often when people say the foster care system, they almost always exclusively mean government. And when we talk about foster care ecosystem, and I know, I mean, this is the heart of what you guys do, right? Is it's not just government, but it is...
churches, is agencies, is service organizations, is businesses, is foundations and donors. This ecosystem exists and if we can effectively mobilize the ecosystem and help the ecosystem to work together and run together well, we have a much better chance of getting families where they need to go.
Brian Mavis (27:01.966)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (27:21.474)
Yeah, preach.
Travis (27:24.122)
Well said. Well, can you talk a little bit more about your book that came out in 2020 on called Until There's More Than Enough, working together to transform foster care where you live, more of the vision and you've already alluded to some of this, but yeah, I'd love to hear more about that book.
Brian Mavis (27:39.806)
And second edition came out. huh.
Jason Weber (27:40.256)
Yeah
Travis (27:41.132)
second edition came out.
Jason Weber (27:43.849)
Yeah, second edition came out just a few months ago. so, yeah, we wrote the first edition back in 2020, released it, you know, at the beginning of 2020. Wonderful time to release a book, right, at the beginning of the pandemic, right? And yeah, let's release a book about working together. But anyway.
Brian Mavis (27:56.332)
Yes, yeah, everybody, yes, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Brian Mavis (28:10.157)
Ahem.
Jason Weber (28:11.786)
And so the whole book is about the vision of what it means to come together to work towards more than enough in four specific areas. More than enough foster and kinship families for every child to have an ideal placement. More than enough adoptive families for every child waiting for one. More than enough help for biological families who are trying to stay together and get back together. And more than enough wraparound support for foster, kinship, adoptive, and biological families.
Brian Mavis (28:36.525)
Okay, repeat those. Okay, I want you to repeat those again, I want people to like, all right, listeners, listen, focus in, say it again. All right, stop, stop vacuuming, whatever you're doing right now, listen, okay, do it more than enough what?
Jason Weber (28:44.236)
Alright, more than enough.
Travis (28:46.042)
haha
Travis (28:49.73)
haha, haha.
Jason Weber (28:54.092)
More than enough foster and kinship families for every child to have an ideal placement. More than enough adoptive families for every child waiting for one. More than enough help for biological families trying to stay together and get back together. And more than enough wraparound support for foster, kinship, adoptive and biological families. And so we wrote the book around
Brian Mavis (29:01.037)
Okay.
Jason Weber (29:20.972)
concepts of working together and working collaboratively, building trust, all of the things that are really important to do that. But then in five years, we've learned a lot. We've worked with a lot of communities. We've learned a lot. We've added a lot of content in the last five years. We added an audiobook version this time. And so that's why the second edition. And I feel like with the second edition, we get into a little more of the nuts and bolts of what it takes. Because the truth is, you know, so here's the deal about collaboration.
Brian Mavis (29:37.591)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (29:49.901)
We say this all the time, collaboration is like deodorant. If you go to the store and you pick out a kind of deodorant and you use it, maybe within a few days it becomes very apparent to your spouse and to your good friends and to the person you sat next to on the airplane that, dude, this deodorant is not working for you. Like this is not.
Brian Mavis (30:12.356)
you got one of those natural ones without mercury in it or something. huh. Yeah. huh. Does not work.
Jason Weber (30:15.2)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The $14 stick of natural beauty. Yeah. yeah. So here's the deal. Please, for the love of all that is good, do not give up on deodorant. The problem is not the concept of deodorant. The problem is the kind you chose. And so collaboration is the same way. Many people have tried, they've gone to plenty of collaborative brunches. They've tried collaboration and tried working together.
Travis (30:15.797)
That was funny.
Travis (30:21.436)
of $14.
Hahaha
Brian Mavis (30:27.213)
You
Jason Weber (30:45.356)
and their perspective and maybe some of your listeners perspective might be, I mean, yeah, I mean, we got some great brunch, but not a lot came from that or it kind of fell apart or some things, really hard things came out of that. People have different experiences with collaboration. And what I would say to you, if that is you is, hey, for the love of all that is good, do not give up on collaboration. The problem isn't the concept of working together. The problem might be,
the kind of working together that you may have done. And there are things that we know, both, you I'm a person of faith, so I'm gonna speak from that perspective, but there are things that we know from the pages of scripture about how to work together well, how to resolve conflict, how to live in unity. There are things, if we follow those instructions, that gives us a better chance, right? And then there's a lot we also know from social science. We know from collective impact literature, for example,
some of the things that are absolutely necessary in order to help make collaboration work and help make collaboration last. And those are the kinds of things we get into in the book and really discuss how to do this so that it works and so that it lasts.
Travis (31:57.845)
All of that.
Brian Mavis (31:58.272)
Okay, so let's say there's somebody right now in Peoria, Illinois, and they're like, okay, I care about this issue. We've been trying to get more than enough. We've been trying to collaborate. We're just having trouble activating. We'll meet, we'll eat, but nothing really happens. What advice?
Jason Weber (32:05.356)
Alright.
Brian Mavis (32:27.223)
do you have? Maybe not just advice, what resources do you have? Like would you say, well, come, you know, visit this site. Like what, what would you tell this person?
Jason Weber (32:38.848)
Yeah, well, I absolutely. You know, I think there are a few things that, as you begin to, and this happens all the time, right? We, meet, we start talking about it then we're just not quite sure what to do next. And I'll be real honest with you when we started out and, and, and actually when we wrote the book, I was kind of under the mistaken impression that we would write a book, we would do a podcast, we would, you know, and, people would just like begin doing this. Like it would just happen because people would.
Travis (33:03.886)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (33:06.088)
And what we've realized over the years is the truth is people need a person. And that's not just true for foster care collaboration. That's true for exercise. That's true for just about anything we want to do that's worthwhile. We need somebody to walk alongside us. And so over the last couple of years, we've made a real concerted effort to create spaces and places and build our courses and build the resources we have in a way that
Travis (33:15.684)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (33:32.749)
Hmm
Jason Weber (33:32.983)
creates an environment where you walk with other people through it. We walk with you through these processes. So we have a more than enough fellowship program, for example, where a group of, it has to be at least four folks from different churches, organizations, and agencies coming together. And because we're coming from a faith perspective, in our case, we're asking for at least two of those to be churches, but it can be at least four, it can be more than that.
And we're going to walk with you through a nine month to one year process of learning the essentials of collaboration, going out and having the right conversations with the right people in your community and discovering what the real gaps are, what the real needs are, and then coming to some kind of consensus together about, okay, there's a lot of things we're doing individually and doing them well, but what is one or two things that are high leverage that we can do together that will make the biggest difference for children and families?
Travis (34:22.318)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (34:26.964)
in our community and how do we begin doing that together? And not only does our fellowship program provide some of those rails, we provide some funding, some matching funding, it's modest, but matching funding to help that process along. And so we're dozens of communities all over the country that we've been able to walk with over the last couple of years begin this process of actually setting up a foster care, a local foster care network that
begins to look at these things and begins to grow in these areas. And we would love for anybody who's interested in that, we would love to be able to walk alongside you to do that. You can find information about that at morethanenoughtogether.org. That's morethanenoughtogether.org.
Brian Mavis (35:09.069)
Great. All right. And you don't have to be from Peoria to do this. yeah. So any town in America, if you're interested in that, start there and you won't be walking alone. OK. So Jason, you did mention the foster care system and ecosystem. So curious, if you could change one thing about the foster care system, what would it be?
Travis (35:12.228)
No.
Jason Weber (35:13.588)
You don't have to be from Peoria.
Travis (35:15.386)
Hehehe
Jason Weber (35:39.451)
like the government part of that in particular?
Brian Mavis (35:42.221)
I'm going to let this is a question that's part like A and B. So first the government and then second we'll talk more about the ecosystem.
Jason Weber (35:50.975)
Okay.
Gosh. I spend so much of my time thinking and talking about how we can contribute and change as an ecosystem. I actually intentionally, well, and I intentionally don't talk a lot about what government needs to change or do, because here's the deal. I feel like we can't.
Brian Mavis (36:02.381)
Hmm
Brian Mavis (36:08.213)
Yeah. I threw you a curveball.
Travis (36:11.61)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (36:23.232)
from a faith perspective again, but we as the church can't stand around and just point out potholes and go, hey, there's a pothole, there's a pothole. At some point we have to go pick up, grab a bucket of asphalt and go start filling it ourselves. Like we can't expect the system as it is, government to be able to do the things they've been charged with doing. Restoring broken families, giving the relational kind of context that's needed to do that.
That's an impossible task for a government agency to do. And so it's gonna require a community. So I think, you know, I mean, if anything, like in terms of focusing on the government agency itself is if I could change anything, it would be that they would have the opportunity to work with people in their community and people of faith that are people of truly, truly goodwill who are willing to stick it out because
Brian Mavis (37:13.719)
Yes. That's my answer too. Yes.
Jason Weber (37:22.066)
The government has had plenty of experiences with people of faith who've come in and said, we want to do a program. And then they're gone, you know, six months later. So same with the whole deodorant thing, right? They've had bad experience in the past, but what I would want is that they would have the opportunity. And we see it all over the place where they are skeptical, but then they get the opportunity to work with some unbelievable people who in the community who desperately want to do what they can to help.
Brian Mavis (37:28.834)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (37:29.078)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (37:49.579)
and they stay with it and they stay with it through the hard stuff and they stay with it for years. And minds are changed on both sides and that's what I would most want for the system.
Brian Mavis (37:59.314)
That's my answer too. Okay. So then what would you want to change? Not just governmental. Like, so think more, maybe when we say system, think ecosystem. If you had a magic wand, what do you think you would wish could happen that would make a big difference?
Jason Weber (38:17.76)
Well, I'm very thankful for the things that the organizations do as a result of meeting in their boardrooms and working with their community and figuring out what needs to be done. I'm very thankful for the things that churches do as a result of having elders meetings and developing programs. I'm very thankful for all of that stuff. And I want that stuff to continue. But what I would hope, what I want is that communities would begin to say,
All of the programs we can muster up individually as organizations and as churches will not get us where we need to go. It will not get us to more than enough. The only way we're gonna be able to do that is if we look at foster care together and we begin to examine it together and we begin talking about, not only like, hey, let's get together and talk about what we can do and what we should do, but let's also get together so that we can figure out what to stop doing because there are a lot of people doing.
Travis (39:00.058)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (39:15.692)
a B minus job at something that somebody else is doing an A plus job at. And if they would only spend a few hours talking to each other, they could figure that out and they could stop doing the B minus job and they could focus on their A plus and somebody else could focus on their A plus. And we could actually begin to move some dirt in foster care. But that's only going to come when we realize that the answer to foster care in our communities is not your program. The answer is when you join
Travis (39:24.57)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (39:45.706)
with others, leveraging the gifts and talents you have in coordination with the gifts and talents of others. That's when we begin to make exponential change.
Brian Mavis (39:57.964)
Yeah, yeah, there is no one solution. It's that willingness to be humble and team up. Jason, I think I got this line from you. I use it a lot and my team knows, you know, I tell them if you're going to steal, make sure it's from a good neighborhood. So this is a good quote. I think I got it from you. People have heard me say it and I don't credit you.
Travis (40:16.907)
Hahaha
Jason Weber (40:18.259)
You
Travis (40:20.386)
Ha.
Jason Weber (40:27.02)
This is about to be awkward if it's not.
Brian Mavis (40:29.069)
Yeah, yeah, you're like, no, it wasn't me. was it. maybe I said it. Organizations don't collaborate. People do. And so unpack that just for a moment, because that, again, is, I think, what you're trying to get people to do when it comes to your magic wand.
Travis (40:29.955)
Jason Weber (40:38.678)
That's right. That's right.
Jason Weber (40:53.876)
Yeah, absolutely. we know organizations don't collaborate, people do. And we know that if we've ever tried to collaborate with anybody and you spent time, you built a relationship, you built some trust and they took another job or they moved out of state and you don't get to just leave where they left off like with that organization that they represent because you weren't collaborating with that organization per se, you were collaborating with that person.
Travis (41:21.786)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Weber (41:22.1)
you built a relationship with them because collaboration is built on relationship and relationship is built on trust over time. So we have a pyramid that is collaboration, relationship, trust, and time. And so when we realize, when we make that mental shift, it changes how we interact, and that's important. We talk about all the time that
In our context now, again, I'm talking from a faith context, but in our context, naturally when we think about collaboration, we're like, okay, we should get together and plan together. Well, yes, you should. You should get together and plan together. In a faith context, we would also say, not only should you plan together, you should pray together because we believe that this doesn't happen apart from God working in the lives of people. So we're gonna plan together and pray together. The third one,
that we talk about that we often miss that I think is so important is play together. Plan, pray, play. And what we mean by that is if you're going to truly collaborate with somebody, it really helps if you like them. And it really helps to get to like them if you get to spend some time with them. If you get to both go put on some ridiculous looking bowling shoes and spend an evening together. If you get to do
You know, and Brian, you and I have known each other for long time. been in these settings and you know that very often when we're together, we try hard to goof around, because it helps so much with the relationship. And at the end of the day, your collaboration is built on the quality of those relationships. When you think about every person in your community that's working on foster care, if you were to spread them out all over the grass in a big park,
Travis (43:07.812)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (43:14.608)
and you were going to ask them to be connected by something that represents the strength of their relationship. The truth is you would have a whole bunch of people that weren't connected by anything, right? They don't know each other yet. You would have some people who'd be connected by toilet paper, like they've met. Now, toilet paper isn't completely worthless. Like we know that from the pandemic, like it has value, but it's not a great connective material, right? It's easily broken.
Travis (43:39.45)
Okay
Jason Weber (43:44.257)
You'd have some people in your community who are connected by a ribbon, some by yarn, and some by rope. And the folks that are connected by rope have done some life together. They have seen some hard things together. They have gone bowling together. They have learned to trust each other. And the strength of the collaboration in your community is really dependent on how many of the folks in your community are connected by rope. And so what's cool about that is you can actually, right now, you could go make a list of the people you know.
Travis (43:55.514)
Hmm.
Travis (44:02.02)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (44:14.324)
in the foster care space in your community. And you could write those materials out next to them. Hey, I have a, I think I have a toilet paper relationship with this person. I don't tell them that, right? But, but, and then, then next to that say, here's the thing I'm going to do to try to move that relationship from toilet paper to ribbon. We're, I'm to ask them out to lunch next week. And we just continue to do those things, to move towards rope. And when we make rope, then that's when we start making collaborations that work.
Travis (44:22.938)
Ha
Travis (44:40.026)
Hmm.
Brian Mavis (44:44.589)
That's good. So yeah, our listeners so you don't have to say hey, let's have a meeting and figure out how to work together you might want to just say Invite people over for dinner or say let's go bowling or do an escape room or something like that Just to start building it like a normal relationship. All right, Travis land this plane
Travis (45:00.058)
Hmm.
Travis (45:03.522)
Yeah, I love that. I love the play part so much. They're the great line of, you know, laughter is the shortest distance between two people and the connection there. So let's zoom it all the way in as we land the plane to inside to the most really at the who's at the heart of this conversation is the kids and care themselves, kids in foster care. In all your experience and all your lenses, all your hats, how would you finish the sentence, Jason, of what kids in foster care really need is?
Jason Weber (45:10.869)
Hmm.
Jason Weber (45:35.137)
Yeah, I would say that what kids in foster care really need is unconditional love in the context of supportive community. Now, I'm gonna just already, I already sense that those who are listening to this right now just dismissed what I said because I started that with what kids in foster care really need is love, right? And many of you have for years been saying and saying in front of audiences,
that love is not enough. So I'm gonna ask you for one minute, give me 60 seconds to convince you otherwise. Now, again, I will admit that I am speaking from a faith perspective. I can't really speak from any other perspective because it is who I am. So I am speaking from that perspective. However,
Brian Mavis (46:05.697)
Love's not enough.
Jason Weber (46:30.526)
I think that when we say love is not enough, the problem is not with that statement. The problem is with our definition of love. Very often in our culture, love has come to mean cuddles and bedtime stories and warm feelings. It's something you can fall into and something you can fall out of. I don't believe, at least from my understanding of scripture and my understanding of who Jesus was and how he lived, that that is actually an accurate definition of love. I think that love is doing
what's best for another person, regardless of the cost to yourself. And I believe we saw that modeled in Jesus himself. He did whatever he needed to do for the good of humanity, regardless of the cost to himself. And I believe that's also what he is asking us to do when he is asking us to love one another. So I believe that part of loving kids in foster care is not just the cuddles and the bedtime stories.
and going to the soccer games, believe it is also about making sure that they have the help that they need, making sure that they have the therapies they need, making sure they have the medical care they need, making sure that we lovingly work with them in discipline areas, that we provide everything that love is by that definition of
doing what's best for another person regardless of the cost to oneself. And if we define love that way, then yeah, I think that's what kids in foster care need. And furthermore, I think that's what all of us need.
Brian Mavis (48:10.797)
That's good. Yep. If you have all the knowledge but not love, there's some Bible says something about that. So that's good. So Jason, thank you just sharing what you do, starting off just personally, what you've done and your leadership personally and what you've done professionally. And for our listeners, by the time this podcast come out, you will just have had your 21st CAFO summit.
Travis (48:12.005)
off.
Jason Weber (48:18.525)
haha
Travis (48:19.343)
Ha ha ha.
Travis (48:23.866)
you
Brian Mavis (48:40.513)
down in Houston, where's the one next year? And people can start planning maybe to attend that one. Do you know? you're not allowed to say. Okay, Okay, all right. Everyone can keep, yeah. So if you haven't been to a summit before, if it's been a while, start planning your summit experience for next late summer, early fall in 2026. And then if you are wanting.
Jason Weber (48:48.428)
It's above my pay grade, Yeah.
Travis (48:50.564)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha
Brian Mavis (49:08.279)
to do something in your community, in your county, and you're wanting to figure out how to take your next best step, consider going to the website morethanenoughtogether.org, right? And then from there, figure out what you think you could do to start activating your passion.
Jason Weber (49:23.638)
That's right, more than enough together to have one.
Brian Mavis (49:38.381)
So Jason, thank you for your leadership. I'm very grateful for you.
Jason Weber (49:44.266)
Yeah, I'm grateful for you guys as well. Thanks for all you do and thanks for allowing me to come hang out. It's been fun.
Brian Mavis (49:49.462)
All right. Peace, brother.
Travis (49:50.446)
Good times, thank you.