Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 728 | Want to End Abortion? Make Disciples | Guest: Roland Warren

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Today we're joined by Care Net president and CEO Roland Warren to discuss his pro-life ministry and how Christians should respond to and take action on the issue of abortion. We talk about how Christians should engage with their friends and family who are hostile to the pro-life perspective and discuss how we should view the life issue through the lens of discipleship. Then, we talk about how churches and pastors need to invest in this issue as ministry and why it's a huge problem when pastors think of the abortion issue as a political matter rather than ministry. Then, Roland shares his deeply personal story of what led him to advocate for men to step up in the face of unplanned pregnancies and why this is a game-changer for the issue. --- Timecodes: (01:34) Interview with Roland begins (01:55) What is Care Net (04:57) How do Christians engage with hostility to pro-life perspective? (12:25) Discipleship (16:02) Pro-life ministry in churches (33:32) Going from pro-choice to pro-life (38:19) Mercy (40:59) Roland's story --- Today's Sponsors: EdenPURE — get 3 Thunderstorm Air Purifiers for under $200 at EdenPureDeals.com, use promo code 'ALLIE'! Live Action — make your gift at liveaction.org/allie and your donation will be matched, dollar-for-dollar, and will expose the lies of the abortion industry and save the lives of pre-born children.  --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 685 | Stacey Abrams' Heartbeat Conspiracy Theory https://apple.co/3uXrk75 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE20' for 20% off the entire shop:https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. How can Christians end abortion and save lives? Not just politically, but much more importantly, spiritually. We are going to be talking to Roland Warren today in an incredible conversation. Truly, every minute is better than the last. You're going to listen to this interview and be so encouraged. You're going to be so fired up to go out and do something. And you're going to be reminded that God is working in mighty, incredible ways through. his church. Roland is the former president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, and he became the

president and CEO of Kairnat, which is a large network of pregnancy centers in the United States back in 2012. He has written books about fatherhood and about single motherhood, just an incredible advocate for life and bringer of the gospel, which you will hear today. This is a great pre-Christmas episode, or mind you of the hope that we have in Christ and why we are celebrating his advent today. It all happened because of a God-ordained, unplanned pregnancy. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. As always, go to Good Ranchers.com. Use promo code All right. That's Good Ranchers.com. Code All right. Without further ado, here is our friend, Roland Warren. Roland, thank you so much for joining us.

For those who may not know, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Oh, absolutely. It's a pleasure to be with you. My name is Roland Warren. I'm president and CEO of Karnet. Okay. And tell us a little bit about Karendat, a lot of people listening, know exactly what it is, but for those who are unfamiliar. Yep.

Well, Karen, it's ministry started actually in 1975 by C. Everett Coop, Francis Schaefer, and Harold O.J. Brown. And really was focused initially on sort of an avidance. approach to the life issue. So today we're a network of over 1,200 pregnancy centers across the country. And our goal really is to offer compassion, hope, help to women and men face with pregnancy decisions. So obviously, in a post-Roe environment, the work that we do is critically important and certainly much needed and obviously in the news quite a bit. So it's been kind of an interesting Mr. Toll ride since Roeb was overturned for sure. Yeah. And I had a privilege of speaking at the Karenet conference this summer.

That's where you and I got to meet for the first time. And one of the things I was told before the conference was just that the attendees really needed encouragement. Of course, we always need encouragement. But just with the vitriol after the Dobbs decision was released, these attendees needed to be kind of reinvigorated and reminded of the importance of what we do. Can you talk about what you found in talking to? pregnancy center staff and directors after the Dobbs decision. Is there fear? Is there discouragement? What does that

look like? Well, one of the things for sure. I mean, the Dobbs decision and certainly the leak before the decision really generate a fair amount of violence and vitro against pregnancy centers and pro-life people in general and religious people in a lot of ways. I think one of the things certainly that the decision around Roe really exposed is how committed our culture is to abortion as a perspective. But candidly, I think probably one of the more disappointing aspects is how many Christians actually, those who profess to be Christians consider themselves pro-choice. So we have a lot of folks on our staff, myself personally, who had very, folks who are very close to them who profess to be Christians were very upset about the role decision and really took it out on social media and personal gatherings,

things of that nature. And so that was one of the reasons why I really want to encourage you when you were coming to speak to our audience, that one of the things that they really need to hear is the need to press on and to be encouraged. I mean, you know, somebody's very close to you. Obviously, that kind of wound, one hurts the most. I always tell folks, look, you know, Judas kissed Jesus before he betrayed him. So that means something special when it's someone who's very close to you who rejects you in a way that obviously that Christ was rejected. And certainly folks who've been doing this work have been feeling a lot of rejection as a result of their stand around this. Yeah.

I think it's really easy for Christians to use either their friends or the world is kind of a gauge for how they're doing, how loving their being, how righteous they're being. But really, that's not a good gauge. The word of God is, the life of Christ is. And so you make a really good point. But how do Christians engage with these friends and family members who are showing so much hostility to them because of this decision or the abortion issue in general. Yeah, you know, one of the things that God downloaded into my brain as before the decision

came out, but certainly really confirmed it once the decision did come out, is that, you know, I don't spend time with Christians often trying to talk to them about, you know, when life begins or those kinds of things. Those are important apologetic arguments. But I think when you're talking to someone who's a Christian who professes to be pro-choice, I think the thing that you need to talk to them about is the two great initiatives that all Christians are encouraged to kind of live out in our daily lives and promote in the public square. And that's really the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. The Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Every decision that we make in life should correspond to that. So that should be the lens that we look at an issue through the Great

Command and the Great Commission. So when you look at the Great Command, I mean, it's in Matthew, Mark, and Luke where Jesus talks about that, and in particular in Luke, where he's asked that question, what must I do to inherit the kingdom of God, which every Christian should be concerned about? And he says basically, essentially, that all the scripture is distilled out in loving God in your heart, your soul, your strength, and your mind, and then love your neighbor as yourself. And so one of the things I tell folks to tell other Christians is explain to me how a pro-choice decision supports loving of God and loving your neighbor as yourself, particularly when you look at the fact that The word that's used for love in that verse is agape, which is a sacrificial love that we're asked to love our neighbors with, which is the same love that's used in John 316 where God so loved the world.

It's agapeo in Greek that word. And then the other thing is, when you look at the word neighbor in the Greek, it actually means near one, like a near fellow, right? So the neighbor of a woman who is facing a pregnancy decision carrying a child, her nearest neighbor is the child growing inside of her. The nearest neighbor for the guy who got her pregnant is the child going inside of her. So my view is that as a Christian, you should be able to look at the Great Commandment and say, aha, this decision that I'm making actually supports the Great Command. And I think when you look at the life issue through that lens, you can see that a pro-choice perspective doesn't really support the Great Command because when you're aborting God's Image Barrow and when you're aborting your neighbor who you're supposed to be loving like yourself, it certainly doesn't. and support, you know, what Christ said was one of the first of the great commandments that we have.

What do you say to those who say, okay, I got it, Roland. That's what I believe. I am personally pro-life because of that. But who am I to try to push that on other people? I'm politically pro-choice, but I'm personally pro-life. Is that possible? Well, I don't think it is. I think that when you kind of split the hair that way, it makes things very difficult.

I mean, as a black man, for example, I mean, you just put some other atrocity in there. Like, I don't personally hold slaves, but I don't think that I should have the ability to tell others to hold slaves. I mean, those who were professed to be pro-choice, particularly if they're kind of progressive folks in terms of their thinking around this, would say that's abhorrent. I would never have that perspective that I would allow an injustice for someone else just because I'm not doing the injustice. Like Dr. King reminded us, an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. So I think that kind of perspective is really one that you don't want to have because it really doesn't certainly doesn't lead to a God honoring. perspective. And certainly what you find when you have that kind of perspective and hold that worldview,

the vulnerable are always the ones who are sacrificed for the powerful. So whether it's slavery or whether it's human trafficking or what the other issue you're talking about, if you have the perspective says, hey, I would never use child labor in my business. But I'm perfectly fine with other people doing that for things that I buy. I think that when you start to reconcile those things and look at the life issue through that lens, I think you can see that people have a big issue with that perspective. But you might hear we have so many problems. We're not doing enough to help women.

And so until then, I still need to allow women legally to have these abortions because of poverty, because our welfare system is broken, because the foster care system is so corrupt because that child might not be wanted. They might be abused. They might go through really hard things. And so until all of those things are fixed, how is it the most loving thing to do to be against abortion? Yeah, I mean, again, you run into the exact same problem that if you use that logic in other areas, that you're not going to step into another area where there's an injustice until all injustices are fixed,

then you can see how many people are going to be harmed through that perspective. Now, I say that acknowledging that there really does need to be more done there. I think one of the real challenges that I've sort of laid out for pro-choice Christians is to really think about this issue, excuse me, pro-life Christians, rather, is to think about this issue not from a pro-life perspective, but from a pro-abundant life perspective based on John 10-10, where Christ said, I came that you might have life and have that life abundantly. And when you unpack what he's talking about there, he's actually talking about not just physical life, but he's also talking about spiritual life.

So really what we should be doing is building an environment where folks have the spirit life and the physical life that God would want for them. And a key driver to that is God's designed for family. And I use that quite a bit to talk to folks and saying that if you really want to solve the life issue, one of the very first things that we have to do is to focus on not just the sanctity of life, but the sanctity of marriage and family as God designed. So that's how you start to get upstream so that kids are not at risk for abortion to begin with. And the other piece is, obviously, God's call to discipleship, which is at the end of that, which means that, that we're trying to help those folks who are making the life's decisions be connected to the

transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the body of Christ coming alongside them in that way. So to me, it's not, you know, it's not an adequate answer to say, well, there's a lot of injustice in this area, so we're going to allow the sacrifice to continue the injustice until we can solve the injustice that we're not comfortable with. To me, that just facilitates injustice. I think the broader thing, certainly as a Christian, is that we have to look at this issue and say, what are we doing to help build strong things? and encouraging the culture to do that by supporting God's design for family. And then what are we doing to collect the life issue to the church?

So we look at the life issue, not through the lens solely of politics or material support, but through the lens of discipleship that the goal for us is to help folks who are facing pregnancy decisions become disciples for Jesus Christ. And that's a call that every Christian has. And a lot of people will say, okay, fine, but the church isn't doing anything. They're just pro-birth and they just want women to be forced to have these children and then they don't offer any help. But that's not true. Is it?

What are Christians already doing to help families who are in crisis? Yeah. I mean, again, that's sort of a red herring argument. Christians adopt more kids, do more work to help the needy in every single category, every study that's looked at giving, finds that Christians are right at the top of the list. related to that. But I do think that there is an important change that must needs to happen in the body of Christ. And that really is to view the life issue through the lens of discipleship. And what I mean by that is, see, every good work that a Christian should lead to discipleship,

water for the thirsty, food for the hungry, clothes for the naked, we instinctively in the Christian body understand that the reason why we do the good works that we do is not just to do the good works that we do. We do them for the same reason that Christ did them. He did them to what in to make disciples for Jesus Christ. And what has happened with the life issue in a large measure because of how politicized it's gotten is that so many Christians view the life issue primarily through the lens of politics. So if you're talking to a Christian, sometimes you say, well, are you pro-life? And they say, yes, and you say prove it. They'll tell you who they voted for. Again, that's an important aspect of it. Or maybe they provided some material support, which is important.

But we have to view the issue through the lens of discipleship. The goal of Christianity is to do good works to what in to make disciples for Jesus Christ. And when you think about the issue that way, it anchors it firmly in the church as a proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So one of the things that we're doing at Kerenet is that we have a ministry kit called Making Life Disciples, which is designed specifically to help Christians mobilize in the church to come alongside folks who are facing pregnancy decisions because life decisions need life support. And we have all these small groups and churches that need to be mobilized to come alongside those who are facing pregnancy decisions to offer them compassion, hope, help, and discipleship in order to break the intergenerational

cycle of abortion. So Christians have already been, obviously, been doing a lot, but really there's more that needs to be done. And I think a key to that being done is looking at the issue, not through a political lens or material support lens primarily, but looking at through the lens of discipleship, which frames our political engagement and our material support that we do. Because that's how Christ did. Everybody that he met a physical need, he met that need, whether it was a healing, water, healing, anything that he did. He met them at their physical point of need, but then he called them

into a discipleship relationship because he didn't want to see the woman at the well, right? There are twice. He didn't want return clients, if you will. And that's a key thing that we want around the life issue as well. Hey, this is Steve Deist. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news

of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for

commentary grounded in conviction, an unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I just want to read some ways that Karenat is accomplishing what you're talking about. There can always be more. They can be done. And I absolutely agree with you. The church needs to engage more. But I do just want to applaud and thank God for so much of what Christians are doing. Since 2008, Karenat has put our mission and vision into practice and saved more than 940,000 babies from abortion. This is from the website and shared the gospel with over

2 million parents by supporting one of the largest networks of pregnancy centers in North America with 1,200 affiliates, 30,000 volunteers operating the pregnancy decision line. America's only real-time call center providing pregnancy decision coaching to parents considering abortion. Obviously, there is the material support there, but there's also the counseling. There's the discipleship. I have visited many. pregnancy centers that go above and beyond even what their website lists that they do. So yes, they offer the parenting classes. They offer the education resources and courses and they provide material support and counseling

and pregnancy tests and ultrasounds and all of that. But there is so much behind the scenes work that happens through the relationship and discipleship building that you're talking about. They build a relationship with one girl who is in an ability. abusive relationship. While they may not advertise this on their website, they're helping her find refuge. They're with someone who needs help through the illegal immigration process or the legal immigration process. They're helping her with that. They're connecting them to all different kinds of support. I mean, there is so much unseen and unsung work at these pregnancy centers. And I just

encourage a lot of the Christians who are tempted to say they're just pro birth or there's not enough work being done, well, there could be work being done in your community right now. It could have been being done actually for the past 30 years and maybe you just didn't know about it. So I think first before people are tempted to complain and say, oh, well, you know, I'm just going to vote one way or the other and not really care about it. Maybe plug into the networks of help that are already there in your area because there is a lot, a lot of work being done for these women and their families. Oh, absolutely. And a core part of what we do, again, I talked about the family formation standpoint. Really, that's a central part of Kerenet's ministry model that, you know, we use the model of the birth of Christ, you know, that here's Mary facing an unplanned pregnancy from a human perspective, right?

And what did God do to make sure that Mary's unplanned pregnancy was in a crisis pregnancy? Well, he sent an angel to Joseph. And Joseph had a specific call to be a husband to Mary and to be a father to the child growing inside of her. So family formation is a key part of Karenet's pro-abundant life ministry model. And that's central why, because we did a national survey of women who had abortions and men who participated in abortions. And we asked the women and the men, these post-abortive women and men, who was the most influential in the woman's decision to abort. And guess who it was?

It was the guy who got her pregnant. Not her best friend or girlfriend or planned parenthood or anybody. The most influential was the guy that got her pregnant. So that's what I mean about getting upstream in terms of God's design for family. That's central to the life issue. And 86% of the women that have abortions are unmarried. And that's what people in the church have the ability to come alongside folks. So if that guy's running from fatherhood because he never had a father, well, maybe you've been a father for decades.

Well, you mentor that guy or they're living together and their relationship is afraid. They've never seen what a godly marriage looks like. Well, you're a married couple who's been married for years, you know. Will you mentor this couple? She doesn't have a place to live. Well, you got an extra room. She can't get to her prenatal visits. Well, you're retired.

Will you drive her? I mean, these are all the kinds of practical ways that life decisions get the life support that they need. So really, the network of pregnancy centers is an amazing, amazing network. But the reality is there's only about 3,000 pregnancy centers in this country. There's over 400,000 churches. If just 1% of churches continues to do the kinds of things I'm talking about, you've got more points of compassion in the culture. So that's why I really encourage folks in the pews go to. to MakingLife Disciples.com, get your small group trained so that you can contact a pregnancy

center so they can connect you with someone who's facing a pregnancy decision so you can walk alongside them or so that someone in your church who is facing a pregnancy decision would never look at Planned Parenthood or some other abortion provider as a compassionate alternative to the church. So there's really work that needs to be done, continues to be done. And that's one of the key aspects of what care and its pro-abunded ministry model is all about. So that answers my question that I was going to ask is how would someone a Christian who's like, you know what, I don't really see my church doing a whole lot when it comes to this. I think they're pro-life, but, you know, I don't really know if any action is being taken.

So making life disciples.com is where you would encourage people to start. Makinglife Disciples.com. We partner with Dr. Tony Evans, maybe. Some of your listeners are familiar with him. We partnered with him to develop this ministry kit because what we realized was is that even though you can't put a pregnancy center everywhere, you can put a pregnancy care ministry within churches. And also because we have a huge problem in the church with Christians having the abortion,

Guttmacher's data says 54% of the folks who have abortions professed to be either Catholic or Protestant. And in our national survey, we found that four out of 10 women and five out of 10 men, men were attending church at least monthly at the time of their first abortion. So we have an enormous challenge in the church in order to make sure that folks who are Christians who profess to know Christ never feel that the church is not a compassionate alternative to the abortion clinic. And so you've got to have that ministry in the church that's there. We have so many ministries in the church for all kinds of wonderful needs, whether it's celebrate recovery for addiction or

grief care, all those things. But the, one of the, One issue that we have that is the most time constrained in terms of a decision process, because a woman who faces a pregnancy decision has about nine days for the time that she confirms that decision until she actually schedules the abortion. And it's really gotten condensed with the abortion pill. We don't have the most logical way. Like here's one thing I always tell folks. I say, ask folks in your church, give them an index card and ask them, say, listen,

if a woman's facing a pregnancy decision and it's not good news, who should she talk to in our church, write down who it should be. And I can tell you, they will not all write down the same person. Now, if you gave that card to a bunch of Planned Parenthood people, they'd give you 1,800 or whatever. So that's an issue, that the woman facing a pregnancy decision, even in our church, doesn't know exactly who she needs to talk to. And that's what the Making Life Discipes ministry is all about. So you have a ministry in your church to offer compassion, hope, help to someone who's facing a pregnancy decision. Right. So they know exactly where to go. And I imagine it's not only, because maybe these people who are considering abortion who are sitting in the pews don't see

someone to connect to. So it's not just necessarily the lack of action, but it could be also just the lack of boldness from the pulpit. I do find that a lot of pastors won't say abortion outright or they won't say the word abortion. They kind of dance around it. Like we care about life, which of course is great. But I think because, as you said, a lot of of us see abortion through a political lens primarily. They think that they're basically up there saying, well, you know, here I am a representative of the Republican Party. They don't want to be divisive or anything like that. But this is a love your neighbor issue, right? And people of all kinds, they need to hear the truth about the dignity of life inside the womb. Well, absolutely.

That's why I started off talking about when you're talking to someone who's pro-choice and professed to be a Christian, that you talk to them. about the Great Commandment because it's about loving your neighbor and your neighbor is the near one. And actually in Luke, when Jesus gives that statement that these two loves, the loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, which is actually three loves, right? Then he tells the story of the Good Samaritan, right? And everybody kind of sort of knows that story as a vulnerable person and the Levi and the priest go to the other side. In other words, they go far from the near one. and then the Samaritan steps in and meets that need.

And then at the end of telling that story to the lawyer who asked him this question of who is my neighbor, then he says, which one showed mercy to the injured person? And he's, excuse me, which one was a neighbor to that person? And then the lawyer says the one who showed mercy, right? And then Jesus says, go and do likewise. Well, this issue is a mercy issue. It's exactly the same thing that's going on because the child going inside the woman is a neighbor. that she needs to love and everyone needs to love.

The guy got her pregnant needs to love. And the word mercy in Hebrew is that word rachim, which basically means it's the same word that you get the word compassion and mercy is the same word that means womb. And so the womb is supposed to be a place of mercy, and we as keepers of the book should understand that we're supposed to help a woman be merciful. And that's why that love that we're called to have in that verse,

basically, agape love, it's sacrificial love. So anyone who's a mom knows that when they carried the child inside of them, that was a sacrifice. So I always think about it. The womb is a place of mercy. And every time you hear the, you feel that heartbeat as a mother and you put your hand on the womb as the father. And you feel that kick and that movement. That's the baby saying, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy. And then the other piece, which is so key to this, is that the Great Commission essentially says to go and make disciples and teach them to obey all that I've taught you. Well, what did Christ teach us? It all can be distilled down into loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. So actually, what you're supposed to be doing is making a disciple of the

child growing inside of her. And that's why I say talking to Christians and saying, how does abortion support the Great Commandment? We're supposed to love our neighbor. And how does it support the Great Commission? We're supposed to help our neighbor become a disciple. And you know as a parent, the first discipleship community is the children that God gives you. So part of the reason why pastors struggle on this issue, in my view, is because it's being viewed through a political lens, as opposed to being viewed through a ministry lens. And that's why when I talk to pastors, the first thing I always say to them is that, look, are you looking at this issue through the lens of discipleship? Are you looking at through the lens of discipleship? Are you seeing that woman who's facing a pregnancy decision is your first thought, hmm, I wonder,

she's a disciple of Jesus Christ. She needs to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. The child growing inside of her needs to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. The guy who got her pregnant needs to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. When you start preaching about this issue through the lens of discipleship and the Great Commandment and linking those things together, then it takes the political narrative and puts it the same place that Christ did when he was given that going, right? He said, render onto Caesar, what is Caesar unto God? What does Caesar care about? political power and material wealth. Well, Christ said there's a higher thing.

Well, what is that higher thing? It's the law, loving God with all your heart, my soul, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself. And when you do that, you will be politically engaged because you're people of justice, right? And you will be involved in material support because 1st John 317s is what? You cannot love your neighbor without meeting their material needs. That's why framing it through this lens is so critically important for Christians that we view it rightly. It is a discipleship issue that needs a political engagement and material support, and it's an issue that needs to be anchored in the Great Commandment and needs to fulfill the Great Commission. Is that how you think about the life issue?

And I'm submit to you, as your folks who are listening to this, if you're not thinking about the life issue that way, I'm just going to boldly say it. Then in my view, you're not anchoring it fully in the gospel of Jesus Christ. and that's something that really needs to be done. And when you do that, it motivates you to get involved in this issue in a very, very powerful way because it's connected to your faith. Every time you help a woman who's facing a pregnancy decision, you're retelling the most amazing true story that's ever been told, which is the birth of Christ,

where God used an unplanned pregnancy in Mary, to what end, that we might become disciples of Jesus Christ. It is a discipleship issue, and when pastors start talking about that way, it mobilizes the church to go and make disciples, You can see that woman facing the pregnancy decision as a mission field to be met, and not just a lever to be pushed on a voting day. Yes. And it shifts people's perspective about providing people's material resources from,

well, I'm just going to allow the government to do that, to know, I am going to voluntarily do that. First Corinthians says that God loves a cheerful giver, that we are not supposed to give under compulsion. But we are supposed to be giving from a willing heart. That doesn't mean that all government help is bad or should be demonized. But that doesn't count as Christian love and charity. That doesn't count as cheerful giving.

We have to pay taxes or else we will be put in jail. So that's not the same thing as the charity and the love that Christians are called to. So I think that it is an important distinction when you shift, especially past your shift, away from thinking abortion is only or primarily a political issue to a ministry issue. It reminds us of our responsibility in it too, and that is a game changer. Well, absolutely. And the thing that works with Christian charity that doesn't work with government support is that Christian charity is transformative. See, it's transformative, whereas government support is transactional. So if you're a woman who's facing a pregnancy decision and you go into

your local government support place, you've got two kids that you're struggling in support, and now you're pregnant with a third, they'll give you whatever support they can give you, but they're not going to ask you how you live it. They're not going to try to transform your life. So they're not going to have that kind of conversation. That only happens through the transforming institution that God has designed, and the institution that communicates that is the local church. I mean, one of the things I did with pastors at our most recent men's conference, And by the way, we're going to have another men's conference in Dallas, March 3rd and 4th, 2000 and 23. So I encourage folks to come to our website and learn the men to come to our website and learn how to do that.

But we had a pastor's conference last year at Dr. Evans Church. And I had a group of pastors about 90. And I asked them, I said, how many of you became pastors because you wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade? Raise your hand. Nobody. I said, how many became pastors because you wanted to end abortion in your lifetime? Nobody raised their hand. And again, this is a group of very committed pro-life pastors.

And then I asked the question, how many of you? became pastors because you felt called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and make disciples for Jesus Christ. Every hand in the room went up. And what that shows in that moment, and I've done this with pastors many times, that if pastors not viewing that issue primarily as a discipleship issue, it's outside the church, something we care about, but it's not inside the church as the core work of the church because we look at water for the thirsty, food, for the hungry, clothes for the naked homes from the homeless as on ramps to discipleship. But compassion for the pregnant, it goes it goes someplace else.

And the other thing I always encourage, folks, is that even if you have pro-choice people in your church, when you start thinking about it through a ministry lens, it actually engages them. And the reason I say that, if you're a pro-choice, what you're supposed to believe is that there are two choices, abortion and birth, and you don't care which choice a woman makes

as long as she has the right to make it. Got it. Understand that. So you want to remove all the obstacles to abortion. Got it. Well, you also have just as much of an obligation to remove all the obstacles to birth. So now that's the Venn diagram that connects a pro-choice person in the church and a pro-life person

in the church. Because if you're a pro-life person in the church, you're wanting to remove all the obstacles. And if you're a pro-choice person, on the birth side of your worldview, you should be wanting to remove all the obstacles too. That's where making life disciples fits because it gets people working together to meet those needs to remove those obstacles there. And a pro-choice person's called to do that. Now, the power of that is that as that pro-choice person begins to meet those needs, what happens to their pro-choice worldview.

It starts the life part of that worldview, which is living, begins to grow and grow and grow. Anyone who was once pro-choice, who became pro-life, that's exactly what happened to them. So when I talk to pro-life, I don't try to convince them first to be pro-life. First thing I try to do is convince them to be pro-choice and then remind them that they have a birth part, a living part of their worldview. and what are you doing to support that? And what you'll find with many, many pro-choice people, they only focus on the abortion side of their worldview, not the life side of their worldview.

And that's where the church has the ability through a ministry model to bring that together. Yep. And ultimately, I mean, I know that this is only my audience, but I asked once, what made you go from pro-choice to pro-life? And there were a few in there that said, you know, I saw what an abortion was or someone challenged me. And those things are absolutely great.

And I think crucial because there are a lot of different. pieces to someone's journey to becoming pro-life. But I would say 98% was I became a Christian. I became a Christian and it didn't happen immediately. But I started going to church. I started engaging in ministry. I started reading my Bible. And eventually as much as I wanted to hold on to that because I was a feminist or because that was just how I was raised or just a part of my persona, whatever it was, it just started slipping away. I just saw that it. It just saw that it. was totally incongruent with this Jesus who I now loved. And so that is discipleship.

That's discipleship. Ultimately, how people's minds are changed is because the transformative work of Christ. Absolutely. And that's why, again, like a broken record, the Great Commandment, that's what Christ came to teach us and to do. All the acts that he did, all through Scripture. And frankly, even from the Old Testament on, were all about showing us how to love God and how to love our neighbor as ourself.

And what you find in those three loves, what the abortion piece does, and when you start, when you're transformed by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, you realize that abortion only focuses on one of the three loves, which is loving yourself. Not loving God or loving your neighbor, but just self-love, which is idolatry of yourself. And the Holy Spirit reveals that to you. And when you realize that you say, my gosh, I can't have a pro-choice worldview because it's in conflict with this call that we have of the Great Commandment. And here's the thing that's really interesting about this. Even folks on the other side know this. Gavin Newsom has done this billboard

campaign. I don't know if you if you saw that. He's putting billboards in states that are pro-life states. And one of the things he's done on these billboards is actually use scripture to try to frame abortion as loving your neighbor. He actually has the scriptural verse on the billboard about loving your neighbor. Of course, he deletes and doesn't include the part about loving God in there. So it's just focused on loving your neighbor. In other words, self-love in that context, which is adultery. And you can't separate those three loves. Like you can't, if you love God without loving your neighbor, there's a rejection there. If you try to love your neighbor without loving God, there's a problem there. And if you love yourself without loving your neighbor and loving God, there's a problem there.

All of those three things, they're like the Trinity, the Father's Son and the Holy Spirit. They work together in unity to have transformed power, the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, uses those things in unity to transform your mind, to transform communities, to transform the church. So again, that's why it's central when you're talking to people who are pro-choice and professed to be Christians, focus them on the Great Commandment, focus them on the Great Commission, let the Holy Spirit work with them as they wrestle with those kinds of things. And then I just believe the power of the Holy Spirit transforms lives.

And that's what you've seen in terms of the example that you gave. You know, when you were talking about mercy, I love how you made that point. I hadn't heard it, told it or explained it that way before. But I remember a couple months ago, Anne Hathaway, the actress, she was on, she was on the view. And she said the exact opposite of what you said, which I can only think of Satan, you know, disguising himself as an angel of light when she said abortion is an act of mercy. But it's the exact opposite, which again goes back to the point that you keep making so well is that really, it has to be about heart transformation because when you believe the opposite of what is true, that brutally killing a defenseless child could be merciful, you know that that's not primarily political. She's not thinking politics. That's not her problem. Her problem isn't primarily her politics, although I'm sure her politics are bad too. Her problem is that she is deceived in her mind and her heart.

There is a spiritual rot that is going on there. Oh, absolutely. I read the same thing. And it's just such an amazing, you know, the blindness that you have there. And that's what we know that the power comes from the transform of the Holy Spirit. It's exactly that point. And I read, when I heard her say that, and when I read that she said that, that was the thing that came came to mind. Isn't God amazing that the word compassion and mercy in Hebrew is the same, is the same word for womb? It's the same root for wound. It's that family. It's the most, look, here's the thing, which is so amazing for whether you're Anne Hathaway or whoever you are, right?

The most vulnerable place that anybody is has ever been in their life is in the womb. That's the great equalizer for all humanity. I don't care how power you become rich, muscular, it doesn't matter. We all shared a vulnerability in the womb and we all dependent upon the mercy of someone in the womb. And that's why I thought was so powerful that Jesus's question when he asked that the lawyer there, who was the neighbor? And the lawyer responded, the one who was merciful, the one who was merciful. In other words, anchoring it all the way back to the discussion of the womb.

So it's an absolute blindness and deception. God is integrated all of this into scripture. And it's the nature that we have as Christians to come to do that. So what's going to transform her life is really the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's central to the life issue, not the political engagement and material support. Central to all of this is the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is what we really need to be communicating in the public square. Yeah. Last question.

And I know we could go another hour just talking about this, I'm sure. But I just kind of quickly want to hear how you became pro-life. How long you've been passionate about this and how you got started in the position that you're in now. Yeah, very interesting question. Well, I'll say it this way. I didn't even know that I had this perspective when I, early in my life, but I was faced with the decision early in my life. When I was a 20-year-old college student, I went to Princeton undergrad, I got my girlfriend pregnant. She was 19. I was 20. I was a junior. She was a sophomore. And when she went to student health services at Princeton, The nurse did the pregnancy test and kind of came out and without taking an extra gulp of air said,

now, of course, you're going to have an abortion. And she said to my girlfriend down my wife of 40 plus years, well, you know, what year are you? And she says, well, I'm a sophomore. Well, of course, you're going to have an abortion. And she says, no, I don't want to have an abortion. I want to get married. I want to have my baby. And the nurse says, well, what do you want to do when you graduate?

I mean, how are you going to graduate from a principal with a baby? A, but what do you want to do when you graduate? She says, I want to become a doctor. And she's like, oh, my gosh, how are you going to become a doctor with the baby? Doesn't seem like it makes a lot of sense. You, you, you, this, the abortion decision seems to be the, the better a choice. Now, here's the thing. She didn't ask, she didn't ask her, you know, who got you pregnant?

Who's the guy? Where's the guy? Maybe he can come to support your choice and his child or any of that. She was an older woman herself that could have provided some support, but the abortion decision was on the table there. And so she came back to the dorm room and, and I imagine we were sitting on the edge of the bed, which is obviously where we should have spent all our time. And so and she, she told me that.

And in my 20-year-old way, I said, you know, we're going to move forward. And I'm going to be a husband to you and a father to the child growing inside of you. And we got married and she graduated from Princeton. He came a doctor. It's from practicing medicine for 30 years. The kid they wanted us to throw in a trash can, went to Harvard, smart on both of us. So not because we went to Harvard, but just because he's smart of both of us. So I saw that story played out in my own.

life. And I hadn't connected it to the life issue or any of that. And honestly, for many, many years, you know, we were Christians at the time that we were, we got pregnant, you know, was one of those things that we weren't proud of. We didn't really tell our story in the public square. But I saw firsthand what I'm talking about. God's designed for family and God's call to discipleship. The reason why my wife was less likely to have an abortion. Why? Because she had a guy who said, I'll be a husband to you and a father to the child growing inside of you. In other words, by the grace, God, he tapped into my inner Joseph and called me to come alongside her, to be a husband to her, and a father to the child growing inside of her, so that our unplanned pregnancy would not be a

crisis pregnancy. And then, by the grace of God, he called us into a discipleship relationship with him. In other words, to apply the discipleship, being disciples who make disciples to frame all of that. So in one generation, and I come from a single mother, I'm all the statistics, single mother home, My mother got pregnant when she was 16, 17, first time. Father was gone by the time she was in her 20s, four kids under the age of eight as a single. I have all the stats that you would see. But I saw in one generation by God's design for family and God's call to discipleship, breaking that cycle just like that.

So both of my boys, both married. I got grandkids. None of them got kids out of wedlock, the whole deal. Right. One generation. So I, you know, I've lived the story. I've lived it. So when I, even though I went to the business world first, and that was I was doing it, God called me to do this.

That story of his plan and his design. And that's why when I was reading through Matthew and looked at the story in the first chapter, the first book of the New Testament of the birth of Christ, he downloaded into my brain. That was what I called you to do. That's what you need to be calling other men to you. That's what you want. You want God's design for family. So we need to be engaging men as much as possible to help them step into the transatlantic. transformational institution of husbandhood and fatherhood. And we need to be tapping into those women

and kind of inspire them to tap into their inner Mary, that despite the unplanned pregnancy that they're facing, what they want to do is, like Mary, say, let it be on to me, as you have said. But then we need more than that. We need to be connected to the church so that they can be disciples who make disciples first of their children and then in the broader community. That's how you break the cycle on the abortion issue. That's the role of care that this ministry model in terms of what we do. I'm delighted to be a part of it. And we framed all of what I just said to you as being not just pro-life, but pro-abundant life based on John 10-10, where Christ came that you might have life and have it abundantly

from conception to natural death, having a pro-abundant life perspective. And so that's what we do. And that's why I do it. Yes, and amen. Well, that was excellent. Thank you so, so much for sharing your story and also a little bit of pro-life apologetics, but more than anything, bringing it back to the gospel. I just appreciate you and your ministry so much.

and may God continue to multiply the ministry and save lives as he changes hearts. So thank you. Thank you very much. Merry Christmas. Thank you. Same to you. Merry Christmas. Hey, this is Steve Day.

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