In 2019, members of Church for the City approached the Pastor and church leadership team with a request to establish a prolife ministry. “We wanted to take a stand for life and put our commitment to the sanctity of life into action within our church and community.”
Our program was established with the goal of helping to equip believers with a Biblical foundation for protecting the life of the unborn, support healing and recovery for women who have experienced the pain of abortion, advocating for women and men facing an unplanned pregnancy, partnering with groups that provide pregnancy support and resources to those in need and training other area churches to establish pro-life programs.
Our members had already prepared some educational resources for our church program, but we were looking for complimentary resources that focused on teens and provided video training components for working with women and men. We found the Making Life Disciples program and found that it was a great fit for our church. A team of 9 members formed and began working through the curriculum.
Before we had even completed the training, God brought a young girl in need our way “” a young marine cadet at the base near our church. She was shy and quiet and already six months pregnant and without a plan or a family to support her. We connected her with New Life Pregnancy Center and continued to pray regularly for her and to share the Gospel with her “”reaching out periodically to check on her. Thankfully, she decided to keep her baby, and so on Christmas Eve, our church delivered a Moses basket, filled with diapers, receiving blankets, baby clothes, and other essentials. Her son was born in February and she sent us a photo and thanked us for helping her through a difficult time. She relocated a short time after.
Less than a month later, God put another opportunity to help a young woman in our path. This time, a leader from another church reached out to our community via a Facebook group. A member of our Women’s ministry saw the posting and alerted our ministry to a need involving a 14-year-old girl who was 8 months pregnant. Members of two other churches, who had direct contact with the young woman, arranged a baby shower and invited other churches and the community to be of support. Our ministry decided to participate, along with many other members of our community. There were 50 cars parked up and down the street with people carrying in baby gifts to the shower. It was amazing to see the body of Christ come together in that way! Again, our ministry donated a Moses basket filled with baby items.
Right on the heels of that event came yet another unique opportunity to support life. A member of our church had been asked to assume custody of her newborn grandchild. The parents were struggling with addiction issues and the baby had been born with drugs in her system. As a result, the baby was placed with her grandmother. To help support her needs, we provided a Moses basket of baby items and a bassinet.
We are now motivated more than ever to continue supporting men and women within our community and to share information about how we set up our ministry with other churches in our community. After the COVID-19 pandemic is resolved, our next steps are to host “A Night for Life” service that is open to our community to provide education, prayer, and support for women and men and for persons who have experienced the pain of abortion. We also want to partner with other area churches to encourage and train them to setup up programs within their church.