Churches are called not merely to fund pregnancy centers. Church involvement is vital to the mission these centers were founded to accomplish.
Those are the sentiments expressed by a pregnancy center director in Virginia in a recent Baptist Press article.
Ryan Halloway shared a compelling testimony about a woman who immigrated to the United States from Jamaica. The woman learned she was pregnant while her husband remained overseas. Afraid and alone, she considered abortion.
However, her situation changed when she connected with Care Net Peninsula pregnancy center, where she renewed her faith in Christ and chose life. The center also connected her with a local church and a godly mentor who walked alongside her. Church members provided practical support, including purchasing a car she could use to get to work and assisting with caring for her baby. Eventually, her entire family became active in the church and began serving faithfully.
“The best solution for a woman without a husband who chooses life and raises the baby is not a pregnancy center,” Holloway said. “In God’s design, the next best thing to a godly husband is a godly church.”
Collaboration between churches and pregnancy centers is an essential part of Care Net’s Pro Abundant Life mission, which is based on the words of Jesus in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
This Bible verse inspires Care Net’s work to not only save babies from abortion but also ensure that they and their parents experience abundant life.
“Life decisions need life support and that support must come from the body of Christ,” said Roland Warren, President and CEO of Care Net.
The local church is God’s instrument to provide care, discipleship, and hope for women and men facing pregnancy decisions. The church is a community that sustains life beyond the moment of crisis.
In his book, The Alternative to Abortion: Why We Must Be Pro Abundant Life, Roland Warren devotes several pages to this topic, including the chapter, “Why the Church Must Lead on the Abortion Issue.”
“The church is the place designed for ongoing discipleship; it is the seat of discipleship. We need the church to fill this role,” he writes. “Pregnancy centers are not designed or called to provide long-term discipleship… The pregnancy center can be an evangelical ‘pre-discipleship’ gateway to introduce men and women who have not heard the good news to the transformational power of the gospel. But then we’ve got to get them connected to our churches for ongoing support and discipleship.”
With its Making Life Disciples curriculum, Care Net provides a foundational training that equips churches to begin a holistic, gospel-centered approach to caring for the abortion-vulnerable. Rather than focusing solely on crisis intervention, Making Life Disciples trains believers to walk alongside women, men, and families over time, helping them follow Jesus and experience transformation in every area of life. It also equips churches to build lifesaving partnerships with their local pregnancy centers.
According to the recent Baptist Press article, good news is on the horizon when it comes to church and pregnancy center collaboration. The article cites a 2022 report by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission that notes how the history of the modern pregnancy resource center movement began in the late 1960s, as several states began to remove legal restrictions on abortion. Thomas Glessner, president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), said pregnancy centers tended to have strong church ties, but over time, some wanted to avoid being seen as “overtly religious” for fear of alienating abortion-minded women.
Glessner told Baptist Press that distancing from those roots proved misguided, noting that churches play a vital role in preserving the pregnancy center movement’s commitment to both protecting unborn lives and sharing the Gospel.
“Our roots are in the church,” Glessner said in the article. NIFLA tells centers, “Your religious roots give you added legal protection, and you don’t run away from it because the First Amendment protects you.”
Today, Glessner said, many pregnancy centers are returning to those church-centered foundations, opening the door for deeper collaboration and greater impact.
Let’s pray that this momentum will not be lost. Let’s seek God and ask for more churches to welcome those facing pregnancy decisions with open arms. Let’s pray for a Pro Abundant Life revolution.