Pro-Life Reimagined: The Alternative to Abortion : Roland Warren

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hello, friends. Welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each week, I have the privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a topic to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you thrive in both life and leadership. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. I’m sure you all will enjoy it as well. Today, I am joined by Roland Warren. Roland is the president and CEO of Care Net. He is the author of a number of books, including his latest, entitled The Alternative to Abortion. Roland, welcome to FrontStage BackStage.

Roland Warren
Good to be with you, Jason. I appreciate it.

Jason Daye
Yeah, and thank you for making the time to hang out with us today. We’re talking about a very important topic. A topic that has been discussed for decades and decades now, and that discussion has ramped up, probably in recent times, and it’s an issue that impacts our society as a whole, right? Yeah, but it also impacts individuals. Roland, before we jump into discussing the alternative to abortion and what you share, I would love to hear your personal story as to why the issue of abortion is so important to you, brother.

Roland Warren
Oh, well, that starts the whole process for me. If you read the book, it’s actually the first chapter. I kind of tell the story of being an undergraduate at Princeton University, and my junior year, I got my girlfriend pregnant. She was a sophomore, I was a junior, and she went to Student Health Services to get the pregnancy test and got a test done. The nurse comes back and says the test is positive, and just assuming that the news would be negative, she says, Now, of course, you’re going to have an abortion. My girlfriend, now my wife of 42 going on 43 years, the punch line there, says, No, I don’t want to have an abortion. I want to get married. I want to have my baby. The nurse is like, Gosh, what year are you? You’re a sophomore. Oh, my gosh. How are you going to graduate from Princeton with the baby? What do you want to do when you graduate? Well, I want to become a doctor. Oh, my gosh. How are you going to be a doctor with a baby? It doesn’t seem like it makes a lot of sense. Doesn’t seem like the smart choice. And really persisted there. So, Yvette comes back to the dorm, I’m sure, we talk about it, we just move forward with the plan, and we got married. So I was 20, she was 19. We got married by a Justice of the Peace, with a couple of students there with us. She went on to graduate from Princeton, not with one baby, but with two, because it’s Ivy League, you’ve got to overachieve. So why go with one when you could do it with two? She carried our second son in the graduation and went on to become a doctor. She’s been practicing medicine for almost 30 years, chief resident program, all these things that the nurse said were just not possible if she were to bring the child into the world. So I wasn’t a pro-life activist. I mean, at that time, I don’t even know if I even knew anything about the “pro-life” movement, if you will. But that was the first moment where I was kind of confronted with this decision, and I saw the dynamics of how that played out that actually informed what’s in the book. Why we must be pro-abundant life. It’s the subtitle to that book, The Alternative to Abortion, why we must be pro-abundant life. It really started me on this journey of thinking about the issue differently than maybe how it’s presented in the public square, and particularly how it’s presented even in the church, but it was informed very much by the things that I saw in that relationship. So, anyway, I went on and graduated from Princeton, went to work in the business world for IBM, Pepsi, Goldman Sachs, and then God called me to nonprofit work with National Fatherhood Initiative, where I was president for about 12 years, working to help connect Fathers heart-to-heart with their kids. Then God called me from there to Care Net, this ministry platform, which works to help those who are facing pregnancy decisions by offering them compassion, hope, and help. Also, discipleship through our connections with the church. My story and the journey there actually really informed how I started to view the life issue as a relatively new person that wasn’t really “part of the movement”, if you will, but really had a perspective, a personal perspective, and then sort of a biblical and theological perspective, that connected into it and that’s what I cover in great detail in the book.

Jason Daye
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely love that. Roland, what’s so beautiful is how God has used your story and experiences. I mean, this is what God does. He’s a redeemer, right? He takes that which could look like your world’s falling apart for two young people studying at Princeton. Yet, look at how God is full circle, redeemed that story, gave you a beautiful family, and beautiful life. Now you’re having the opportunity to not just speak into the lives of people who are in similar situations as you in Yvette, but to provide through Care Net, and through your ministries. Action, support, and wisdom to help people in those same situations. I just love to praise God in those situations. See how God is at work. Now, Roland, I absolutely love, as I read through the book, I’ll tell you one of the things you kind of mentioned this because you’re outside of the pro-life movement, and so experiencing what you’ve experienced, seeing what you’ve seen over the years, you bring a kind of a fresh perspective to this entire conversation, which I think is so needed. It was so encouraging as I read through the book because one of the challenges, I think, is that we have well-meaning people, even many, many devoted Christ-followers, look at a lot of the effort, the energy, and the resources that are given to banning abortion, then they look at the effort, energy, and resources given to supporting mothers and supporting families, and they see a gap there, right? They say people are so hyped up on the one, but are forgetting the other. So, with this perspective that you have, the pro-abundant life, how does that address this gap that a lot of people, myself included, wrestle with?

Roland Warren
Yeah, no, it’s a legitimate question. Everything starts with ‘why’, right? So when I came, I started to say, ‘Okay, what is this work about? One of the things that God downloaded into my brain early on was this perspective of being not just pro-life, but pro-abundant life. It’s based on John 10:10, where Christ said, I came that you might have a life and then have that life abundantly. So I really started to dive into that passage, and I was like, What is Christ, I’m like, What’s he really saying here? Because this is important, because this is his ‘why’ statement. This is like, why are you here? I’m here so that you might have life and have it abundantly. When you look at that passage in the Greek, he’s really talking about two types of life. He’s talking about physical life, which we get the word bios, or biology, if you will, from the bios, which is physical life. But he’s also talking about zoe, which is a unique type of spiritual life that only comes from a relationship with God. So he basically saying, I came to link your bios to my zoe, that you might be heartbeats that are heaven-bound. I looked at that, I said, my gosh. Then I kind of wait a minute, is that what we’re solving for in the pro-life movement? Are we solving for heartbeats that are heaven-bound? Are we thinking about the issue that way? You know, look, you can be an atheist and be pro-life, but you can’t be an atheist and be pro-abundant life. Jesus wasn’t just pro-life, he was pro-abundant life. Heartbeats that are heaven-bound. If you look all through Scripture, Jesus had people coming to him with various bios needs, like those physical needs. Water for the thirsty, food for the hungry, clothes, and all these physical needs, and Jesus would meet them at their point of bios, and then call them into a zoe relationship. So it really started me down a path that’s saying, wait a minute, as Christians, we should be framing this very, very differently from how we’re framing it. The reason why that’s even more significant is that, and this kind of gets to your point, because the term pro-life, I don’t even know what it means anymore. I mean, if you really think about it, the term, let me put it this way, you have one person who says, I’m pro-life, and they base their pro-life perspective on a biblical narrative of Imago Dei. Children creating the image of God, right? They’re his image bearers, and the circumstance of a child’s conception and birth should not determine their humanity and worth. Whether you’re conceived in love, doesn’t matter. Your humanity is intact because you’re creating the image of God. That person’s pro-life. Then you have another person who says, I’m pro-life. They say, Well, I’m for a 15-week ban on abortion, okay? That’s kind of the stated position, like, that’s a pro-life position. But 96% of abortions happen before 15 weeks. And what about you? Well, I’m for a 20-week ban. Oh, okay. How many abortions happen before 20 weeks? 99%. That’s also considered pro-life. So what you see has happened is we took an issue that is a binary issue of life or death, and we’ve made it on a continuum. Why did that happen? It happened because we gave the issue to the politics. If you think about politics, by its very nature, politics is basically a framework of compromising convictions. You have two politicians who come and say, These are my convictions. These are my convictions. How can we compromise? Right? So, you gave the issue to a framework, by its very nature, that’s about compromising convictions in order to kind of move forward government, and we took this issue and we gave it there. So I’ve been saying we need to exchange this. We need to exchange the podium for the pulpit, because the pulpit has a perspective that’s articulated, that is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. It is based on John 10:10, why Christ came. It’s based on these broader concepts of the Christian faith. To me, if I were a child in the womb, and I’ve got to get somebody to advocate for me that it’s going to be sturdy and durable, I don’t think I really want the podium doing it. I’d rather have the pulpit. A podium, by its very nature, has no gravitas. That’s why, when the President speaks, they put a seal in front of him, right? And he speaks, and then when he leaves, they take the seal, because anybody can just run up after that and speak there. So that’s part of, I think, the challenge that’s starting with this ‘why’. Why being pro-abundant life as opposed to being pro-life? When you think about it from a pro-abundant life perspective, that means that pastors and the local church lead and frame the politics and material support based on their leading as opposed to the politics leading. So part of the reason why this frustration that you see is that so many Christians view the life issue primarily through the lens of politics. So you ask them, okay, are you pro-life? Yes, I am. Prove it. They tell you who they voted for. Well, they’re framing it based on the what? The podium. They’re not first framing it based on what? The pulpit. Because the pulpit is a very, very different perspective. So that’s the kind of overlay. I’ll just make one other point before we move on. When you say, how do you engage on this? Well, there are two ways that you actually kind of think about this pro-abundant life perspective. So, imagine I had a roof. I have this extra graphic in the book. There’s a roof with the words pro-abundant life, and there are two pillars that hold it up. The two pillars are God’s design for family and God’s call to discipleship. In God’s design for family, what you actually see then is actually all that support mechanism that you’re talking about that moves you beyond just a political narrative, right? It moves you beyond that, and you start looking at this issue the way that God kind of framed it, because the most celebrated unplanned pregnancy in human existence is the birth of Christ. From a human perspective, Mary’s pregnancy was unplanned. Hopes and dreams for her life that did not include a child at this time and in this way, right? And what did God do in that case? He didn’t give her a baby daddy and a government check. He gave her a husband for her and a father for the child growing inside of her. So, you just start thinking about the issue much, much differently in terms of how you do that. So that’s the kind of the first pillar. We can unpack that a bit more, if you’d like, but that’s kind of how you start to frame the issue out.

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, just a quick reminder that we provide a free toolkit that complements today’s conversation. You can find this for this episode and every episode of PastorServe.org/network. In the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. This growth guide includes insights pulled from today’s conversation as well as reflection questions, so you and the ministry team at your local church can dig more deeply into this topic and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. Again, you can find it at PastorServe.org/network.

Jason Daye
Yeah, Roland, I absolutely love that, and I love shifting that perspective and reminding us that when we’re talking about life, really, we don’t need to be leaning on the government or thinking the government needs to lead this. This needs to be led from those who embrace the eternal life of Christ, and that makes perfect sense. The question that I have regarding the support structure around a woman who has an unplanned pregnancy is, how do we help lean into what she needs around her? Because one of the big things you write about in the book is the fact that abortion is not just an issue for women, right? But, we have the idea that it takes two to tango, right? So, help us understand what that looks like for us to lean into and invest energy and resources in the support of that family, as you said, as one of those pillars.

Roland Warren
Well, again, going through the birth of Christ, right? Mary faced an unplanned pregnancy from a human perspective, her dilemma was the same dilemma that my wife had. The way she got pregnant was different, but the dilemma was the same. She had hopes and dreams for her life that did not include a child at this time and in this way. What did God do to make sure that Mary’s unplanned pregnancy wasn’t a crisis pregnancy? He sent an angel to Joseph with a very specific call to be a husband to her and a father to the child growing inside of her. So what you see in the birth of Christ, which is in the first chapter and first book of The New Testament, is two sanctities. The sanctity of marriage and family as God designed, and the sanctity of life. So the first part of how you address this, which, again, from a biblical perspective, you see that God created a family. I mean, Jesus could have come into the world via single mother. That would have accomplished God’s purpose, but it would have violated his principle, his design for family. One of the things I saw, frankly, coming from my own experience and also from the fatherhood work, is that there’s a disconnect with engaging men in this process. 87% of the women who have abortions are unmarried. 87%. My wife, when she got pregnant, for the first five months, there was one person who knew she was pregnant, me, other than her. That’s it. Not her best friend, not her dad. Nobody knew except me. Do you think I had an influence? Why do you think my wife was less likely to have an abortion? Right? God has a design to make sure that mothers and children get the support that they need. It’s called husbands and fathers. So when you frame the issue based on the narrative created through a political norm, or through, frankly, the pro-choice perspective, that this issue is about a woman and a question mark, and then we respond, no, it’s about a woman and a baby. In that circle, who’s not included, right? So part of the reason we’re not having the success that we need to have around this issue is that we don’t have a family-centric perspective. We don’t engage the guy in the same way that God engaged Joseph. Went to him, I mean, sent an angel to him, to be a husband to her, a father to the child growing inside of her. When Mary was at risk and Jesus was at risk because Herod wanted to kill her, who did he go to? Joseph. To provide and to protect. Are we doing that? No. That’s a biblical narrative, a biblical way of looking at the issue. So the very first thing is we’ve got to do a better job of actually engaging the guy in this process. I can tell you from first-hand experience, the reason why my wife was less likely to have an abortion is because she got the call, she had to tap into her inner Mary, and I had to tap into my inner Joseph. When that happened, guess what happened? We built a family, right? We never faced another unplanned pregnancy. The other problem that you have is that if you don’t frame it based on these institutions, that’s God’s design, you see her back again. Second baby, third baby, three different guys, four different guys. We see it. That’s not transformational, that’s transaction. But, oh, by the way, that’s all pro-life because she brought the child into the world. But that’s not pro-abundant life, because the abundant life is transformational, not transactional. Jesus didn’t do retail. He met the woman at the well one time, then he restored her physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially. Now, in the case where the guy is unable or unwilling to connect there, that’s the role of the church. James 1:27 says what? Religion that God our father finds is true and false, that they would care for the orphans and widows in their distress. What was an orphan at that time? It’s a child without a father. What was a widow? She was typically a mother without a husband. So the church has a very specific call to provide the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social support when that husband and father is not there. Now, in that case, the husband, proverbial husband and father, I mean, the actual husband and father, was not there because he died. In our case, the proverbial husband father might not be there because, you know, instead of him being dead, he’s saying to the mother and the child, you’re dead to me. So, when you view it that way, you say, My gosh, well, we as a church have a responsibility to these cultural orphans and widows, which we call single mothers and their children, right? You have to do that early on. A woman is making a decision about abortion from conception to birth. That’s where the decision is made. This whole issue is about nine months and one second. If she can’t see the support that she needs, she’s much more likely to have the abortion. I have this great chart in the book that really just transformed everything, because I had an MBA, so I had to write a chart. If you get the book, you’ll see it. But it was the thing, it was a big aha, because I drew this chart that basically showed support needed by mothers and children, type of support, and then time, and then this window of conception to birth, and then after birth, there’s all this missing support. Well, God has a design for the husband, the father steps in to provide that missing support, which is why 87% of women who have abortions are unmarried. So if you can’t solve that, she’s much more likely to have the abortion. So we need to engage guys aggressively, like Jesus, like God did. He sent an angel, not a Smurf or a gnome, to Joseph. Then, when that’s not possible, the church has a very specific call to come alongside these cultural orphans and widows, if you will, and to support them with their physical, emotional, spiritual, and social needs. That piece is what connects the other piece, and I see that through the network of 1,200-plus pregnancy centers we have across the country. But frankly, we have over what 350,000 churches, right? At least half of them are life-affirming. Here’s the question, if someone is pregnant in your church, they take a pregnancy test on Sunday morning, and the test is positive, but they view the news as negative, who are they supposed to talk to in your church? What ministry? Where are they told to go? I tell pastors, give index cards to like five people in your church and say, give them the same fact pattern. See what they write down. If they don’t write down the same person, then you have a problem. But let me tell you something. You hand that card to someone in a Planned Parenthood meeting, they got the number, right? So when that happens in the church, the Planned Parenthood and the abortion provider look like more compassionate alternatives to the church, because we don’t have a ministry on ramp, right? We don’t have a ministry on ramp for that. So we’ve outsourced the issue, if you will, to the abortion providers, and we’re surprised by this. The other piece that’s also tied to this is that, I mean, this is data that just blew me away when I first started. At the time, 65% of women, based on Guttmacher’s data, 65% of women who had abortions professed to be either Catholic or Protestant. I was like, what? I’m like, This is crazy. Now it’s 54%, if you will, 54-55%, but I don’t think it’s because less Christians are having abortions. It’s because less people are calling themselves Christians. We did a national survey, and we found that 4 out of 10 women were attending church at least monthly at the time of their first abortion, and 5 out of 10 men who assisted with abortions were attending church. We have an issue in the church with abortion. Now, just if you start to think through that, you go like, Wait a minute. When the whole abolitionist movement was doing its thing, imagine if they did a survey and they said, listen, we’re going to get the South because they’re doing the slavery thing. But we’re just a quick survey to see how many of us have slaves, and it’s 65%, right? Okay, let’s go get the South. Wait, I think Jesus framed that very clearly, the log in your eye versus the speck in your brother’s eye. See, so we have a log in our eye, which is the abortion in the church. Here’s the thing, and this is why the politics won’t save us. The premise around Roe being overturned was this, Oh, we’re going to send it back to the States, and then the people were rejected. Right? The people were rejected. Kind of reminds me of when we went into Iraq, and we will liberate them. They’ll call us liberators. And what happened? 50 years under Saddam Hussein changed the people. 50 years under Roe v Wade changed the people and changed the church. So when you throw it back to the states, what’s happened? Almost every one of the referendums, we’ve lost. The margin of difference of loss is guess who? Christians. Pro-choice Christians. Because we took the issue out of the church, gave it to the politics. So, anyway, going back to kind of your question, because I know I went off another little tangent.

Jason Daye
This is good. This is good.

Roland Warren
But, frankly, when you start viewing it through that lens, that pro-abundant life lens, you get all the support that you need, because you’re saying, wait a minute, these are cultural widows and orphans, and we have to have a ministry response. Imagine if, instead of like 3,000 pregnancy centers across the country, that we had hundreds of 1000s of churches that were offering compassion, hope, and help to those facing pregnancy decisions. That leads me to the second pillar of a pro-abundant life perspective, which is God’s call to discipleship. Remember, I said, bios. When a woman has a guy who says, I’ll be a husband to you and a father to the child growing inside of you, she’s much more likely to have the child. But that’s not the end of it. It’s also zoe, right? Heartbeats that are heaven-bound. When that woman, when that couple, get connected to the church and become disciples, who make disciples, first themselves and then of their children. Then what do you get? Zoe. So the other piece is now you’re starting to look at the issue through the lens of discipleship. So when you ask somebody, okay, what’s your issue with abortion? Or you know, are you pro-life? And they say, yes. And then you say, Prove it. Their first answer shouldn’t be who they voted for. It should be, well, I see everyone facing a pregnancy decision as someone who needs to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. She needs to be a disciple. The child growing inside of her needs to be a disciple. The guy who got her pregnant needs to be a disciple. What I’ve seen, because we gave this to the political narrative, is that all these other like helping things that Christians do, good works that Christians do, water for the thirsty, food for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and all those things. You never hear a pastor say, I ain’t preaching about none of that because politicians are talking about it. But you do hear pastors say, I can’t talk about the life issue from the podium. What happened? What happened was we allowed the issue to be framed as a political issue, and that took it out of the pulpit. Right? In reality, it’s water for the thirsty. You know, clothes for the naked, homes for the homeless, right? All of that. Food for the hungry and compassion for the pregnant. When you frame it that way, that’s a pro-abundant life. God’s design for family, God’s call to discipleship. Now the issue is anchored in the church. It’s the call of the church to lead on this issue, because it’s God’s design for family, which the podium certainly doesn’t have, and God’s call to discipleship, which the podium doesn’t have. Only the pulpit has God’s design for both of those things, and God’s call for both of those things.

Jason Daye
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Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good, Roland. I’m curious, as we look at this, all super helpful. Thinking from the perspective of a pastor in a local church, food for people who are hungry is not a super polarizing issue, right, right? I mean, everyone probably thinks, yeah, people should have food, right? But pro-life and abortion is much more polarizing.

Roland Warren
But it really should not be and is not if you frame it properly, if you frame it biblically. Let me give you an example.

Jason Daye
Yes, yes. Thank you.

Roland Warren
So there are two bookends in the Christian faith that make us Christians. Our marching orders from Christ. It’s two things, and Christianity, for me, is very simple. Living out the Great Commandment to fulfill the Great Commission. Two things Jesus said, Great Commandment, Great Commission, that’s Christianity, those two bookends of the Christian faith. So you should be able to find the life issue in there if it’s something the church should be involved in, right? Now, the reason why these other issues are considered less controversial is because people view them through the lens of living out the Great Commandment to fulfill the Great Commission. I was on the board of World Vision for about seven years. Dug wells. Everybody viewed that through the lens of what? We’re digging wells to what end? That we might make disciples. Not controversial. Abortion is in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Why? I love Luke 10:27, where a lawyer comes to Jesus. This is great because it’s all lawyers talking about it, all lawyers, all lawyers. So he’s coming with kind of a political, I mean, an advocacy, kind of legal framework here. What must I do to inherit the kingdom of God? Jesus says, What does the book say? He says, Well, love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, right? Your strength and your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Great. Jesus gives him thumbs-up. Now, if you look at that passage in Luke 10:27, the word for love there is agapeo, which is sacrificial love. The word for neighbor means near one or near fellow, near one. Now we define nearness by two things, proximity, I’m next to you. Or relationship, I’m your next of kin. The child in the woman’s womb is her near one in the nearest possible way, right? And the guy got her pregnant, it’s his near one, too. Bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, right? Abortion is a violation of the great commandment. No one gets a pass on the great commandment. I don’t care if you call yourself a progressive Christian or this, I don’t put adjectives in front of Christian, but some people do. Red-letter or whatever you call yourself. No one gets a pass on the great commandment. Now, once Jesus said that, the lawyer was like, Oh, wait, he just expanded the neighborhood. So the lawyer is trying to reduce the neighborhood. Okay, who’s my neighbor? I tell people all the time, this is where Mr. Rogers and Big Bird meet, because Big Bird and his crew walk around Sesame Street going, Who are the people in my neighborhood, right? Little song. And Mr. Rogers has got his own song, too. It’s, won’t you be my neighbor? Please, won’t you be? He gets a little James Brown on you, right? Won’t you be my neighbor? The baby in the womb is like Mr. Rogers saying, Won’t you be my neighbor? The culture and even, frankly, the church are like Big Bird and his crew. So Jesus is like, I see you’re confused here. Let me break this down. I’m not going to answer your question with the answer. I’m going to answer with a story. He tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and what do you see in the story of the Good Samaritan? A neighbor who cannot advocate for themselves. You see the church folk going to the other side, probably for very good reasons, right? Going to the other side. And the Samaritan goes near to the near one. In other words, the church, the rabbi, they went to the other side. They aborted the neighbor because an abortion is a rejection of vulnerable life for some other perspective. The Samaritan, what did he do? He went near to the near one. Time, talent, and treasure. Then Jesus says to the lawyer, So who was a neighbor to the man who fell? And the lawyer says, The one who showed him mercy. The word for mercy has the same Hebrew root as the word for compassion and the word for womb. So, essentially, the Lord is saying to him, the one who put the man in the womb, because a womb is supposed to be a place of mercy, right? God gives babies one voice, a heartbeat. We listen for a heartbeat. Do we hear a heartbeat? Right? Listen, listen, heartbeat. I believe that the heartbeat is God’s way of giving the baby the voice that says, Have mercy. Have mercy. Have mercy. Have mercy. Have mercy. What does the mother do? She says, I will agape you. Any woman who gives birth to a child is living out the great commandment, whether she’s a Christian or not. Why? Because she’s loving God by loving one of his image bearers. She’s loving the image bearer, and frankly, she’s loving herself. There are three loves, love God, love God, love neighbor as self, three loves. She’s loving herself. Why? Because when you abort and kill one of God’s image bearers, you create antipathy between you and God. So, when you think about it that way, oh my gosh. See, the reason why these other issues are not controversial is because they’re viewed through the lens of the great commandment. What we’ve done is we’ve created a neighborhood that excludes the most vulnerable, which is the exact story of what Jesus was talking about to the lawyer. Now, it’s also a violation of the second bookend as well, which is the Great Commission. What is the Great Commission? To go and make disciples and teach them to obey all that Christ taught, right? If you’re a parent, who is your first discipleship community? Your children. News flash, killing your children, even during the teen years, is not an act of discipleship. It’s not an act of discipleship. So abortion is a violation of the great commandment and the Great Commission. That’s why Christians can’t be pro-choice. Now, how many folks do you hear talking about this the way I just did? Now you start framing it that way from the pulpit. I really believe this. You say, Look, you got a problem with this? Then you got a problem with me, you got a problem with the great commandment, and you got a problem with Jesus. Because he said, we must live out the great commandment to fulfill the Great Commission in every area of life, and we must not create a neighborhood that excludes the most vulnerable. So the reason why we’re involved in this issue is because it’s a great commandment and great commission issue, not because it’s a Republican or Democrat issue. But that’s the pulpit. We got people in the pews viewing it through the podium. As a pastor, in my view, and I ain’t one, but my view is, as you start to frame it through the pulpit, you say, no, no, you got a problem with this? Then you got a problem with Jesus. I always tell people, You’re a Christian, yes, okay. They say, this issue ain’t really my thing. I said, Do you realize your entire faith is built on an unplanned pregnancy from a human perspective, and how God responded to it? What do you mean, it’s not your issue? It’s the only issue. God used the unplanned pregnancy in Mary’s life to what end? That she would become a disciple of Jesus Christ. That Joseph would become a disciple. That you and I would become disciples of Jesus Christ. So when you see a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, your first thought shouldn’t be, who do I need to vote for so she can’t have an abortion, or any of those things. Your first thought needs to be, could it be like with Mary, that God is using this unplanned pregnancy so that she might become a disciple of Jesus Christ? That God is using this unplanned pregnancy to give me an opportunity to live out the great commandment, to fulfill the Great Commission, which is what my call is as a Christian. That’s pro-abundant life.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good, Roland.

Roland Warren
That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-abundant life. I really believe this firmly. So for pastors who were, again, I’m not a pastor. Don’t play one on TV. I just download this into my brain. I’m just out there. I’m like a pastor groupie. You know? Because, and here’s the thing, this is the other challenge here. This is a challenge I’ve kind of put out, and I’ve said to the “pro-life” movement at times, which maybe makes me a little bit of a pariah to some degree. But I said, Listen, this is a John the Baptist moment for the pro-life movement, in my view. What I mean by that is, remember when John’s disciples came in and they were mad, and they’re like, look, we got our chairs set up, towels, everything, our baptismal music, everything’s set, and they’re going to Jesus to get baptized. John was like, He must increase. We must decrease, right? See, I’m a para-Jesus. The pro-life movement is a para-church. Para means to come alongside the church. So I when people say, oh, you know, churches, I want to come alongside the pro-life movement. No, no, you got it exactly backwards. It’s not the church coming alongside the pro-life movement. It’s the pro-life movement coming alongside the church.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good.

Roland Warren
The destination is the church. The destination is the local church. You don’t stop at the signs on the way to Disneyland and camp there with your kids. Well, we’re here. They said, No, no, no, that’s a pre-Disney. No, no. It’s a para-Disney. It’s to lead you someplace else. But when you frame the issue to a pro-life narrative. The destination is not the church. The destination is the poles. Again, this is all there in the first chapter of the first book of the New Testament. God’s design for family and then God’s call to discipleship. Guess where that is? In the last chapter of the first book of the New Testament. It’s all there. He laid it all out for us. The most celebrated unplanned pregnancy is our way forward. I’ll just say this one thing. If I say to you, okay, look, Jason, there’s a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy. You can change everything, any and everything about this, except the fact that she’s pregnant. What do you want to have happen, as a Christian? Okay, do you want to have the baby? Okay, great. So you want her to be a single mom with a kid? Is that what you want? No, no, I want the guy to be involved. Okay. What do you want him to be a, baby daddy who brings diapers every now and then? I mean, no, no, no, I want him to be married. Okay, married. Okay. What kind of marriage do you want them to have? A high-quality, low-conflict marriage, okay? What else? Anything more you want here? Well, I want the child to be raised in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Oh, so you want them to be creating a Christian marriage, to be disciples who make disciples, who live and love like Jesus. Okay, if that’s what you want, ask yourself a question, is that what the Christian movement around this issue is solving for?

Jason Daye
That’s good. Right.

Roland Warren
It’s not, and the political narrative is not solving for that at all. That’s why the political narrative cannot lead. And here’s the thing that you’ll see, too. This is what I say. Advocacy. What you’re talking about is, like, people’s frustration with advocacy versus care, right? There’s advocacy and then there’s care. In the narrative of the Great Commandment, you see advocacy and care. The lawyers come in with the advocacy response, and Jesus says, Yep, advocacy is needed. But then what does he do? He pivots to care. He didn’t just say, Well, you got it right. He pivots him to care. Advocacy has to lead to care.

Jason Daye
Right, right. Absolutely.

Roland Warren
In the biblical narrative and the Great Commandment, he pivots him to care. It’s not just about what the law says. It’s about what the people do. And from what the law says, the people are supposed to do what? Live out the Great Commandment to fulfill the Great Commission.

Jason Daye
That’s good. Roland, with that, it’s all fantastic. I imagine there are pastors and ministry leaders right now watching or listening who are on board. But the question is, what then? Yeah, so help us with that.

Roland Warren
It’s all in the book. In churches, many churches have small groups, and a lot of times our small groups are about us loving us. What if you’re small group became about us loving them? What if your small group was trained so that you could have a ministry response for someone in the church who’s facing a pregnancy decision, and those who are coming from pregnancy centers and from the community who are facing pregnancy decisions? So we developed a resource called Making Life Disciples, which is designed very specifically to train small groups in the church to come alongside women and men facing pregnancy decisions. Even if she chooses abortion, you still come alongside her. Why? Peter aborted Jesus by the fire. Because an abortion is a rejection of vulnerable life, right? What did Jesus do? Well, I guess I’m done with him. No, he restored him. Do you love me? Do you love me? So when you think about the issue through a discipleship lens, you realize whether she makes a decision for life or not, which we want desperately, just like Jesus wanted Peter not to reject him. His desire was for Peter to be a disciple who made disciples, and that failure that Peter had was what motivated him in his pursuit of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Some of the most effective people I’ve seen in this work are people who’ve had abortions. Which leads me to the second piece. So the pre-abortion thing is having a ministry in your church for folks facing pregnancy decisions and those outside the church facing pregnancy decisions, so that the church is not viewed as less compassionate than Planned Parenthood. You have ministry people coming alongside. Why is that woman having an abortion? She doesn’t have a place to live. Anybody in your church got a room? Why is the guy running? Never had a father. Terrified of fatherhood. You’ve been a father for how many years? We’ve mentored that couple. We’ve mentored that guy. You’ve been married for how many years they’ve been living together. They don’t even know what a Christian marriage looks like. Will you mentor them? Help them build a marriage? This is what the making life disciple team does. It comes alongside so the person transitions from a pregnancy center, from the culture to the church, for ongoing support and discipleship. That’s all the pre-abortion stuff, but there’s the post-abortion stuff, too. We’ve had so many women and men in the church sitting in pews today who have had abortions. They’re just like Peter. He went back to fishing. He didn’t feel like he could even engage anymore. They’re sitting there. But I can’t engage in this issue. How can I vote pro-life when I did that? We’ve got a ministry specifically to help them be forgiven and set free. Forgiven and Set Free is a ministry we have for women who had abortions, and then Reclaiming Fatherhood is a ministry we have for men who participate in abortion. So that’s pre-abortion and post-abortion, and all of those people are mobilized from a pro-abundant life perspective, not just about saving the baby, but building a family, and building disciples. That is the call and the work of only one institution on this planet, the Church of Jesus Christ. So, again, a lot of this stuff I cover in my book. You can go to Care Net’s website, which is care-net.org, to learn more about that. You can go to MakingLifeDisciples.com to learn about the Making Life Disciples Ministry. Yeah, I’m a business guy by training. Inspiration must be linked to action because inspiration is like perspiration. It dries up when there’s no action. So if you heard this and you’re inspired, take action. Take biblical action. Again, these are some of the things to do that. But the first thing, even before you get there, you’ve got to talk about the why, because it’s like the movie The Matrix. People have been plugged in for so long, they still think that you got the great glasses and the cool clothes, and you unplug them and, oh my gosh, we’re naked. That’s what Roe did. It unplugged us. Some folks said, Let me get back plugged in. I don’t even want to see that. But you until you get unplugged, and stay unplugged, and start moving in that way, that’s when they got the victory, right? That’s when they got it in the movie. You see things for what they truly are. So, to me, that’s the next step. That’s the next step. I lay out a lot of that stuff in the book and obviously, finding Care Net, as a way to do that. But, yeah, I walk through all of that in detail. Pretty much everything I’ve said, if you’ve read the book, is in there.

Jason Daye
Absolutely, and I absolutely love this role. I think this is an incredible resource, The Alternative to Abortion, your most recent book. You do lay all this out. One of the things I really appreciate about the book is that you also have these frameworks, these different frameworks that people bring, questions that people have, and kind of positions that people take, and a way to address those from kind of a gospel-centric view, which I absolutely love, incredible resource. You have a ton of resources through Care Net, as you mentioned, we will be sure to link, for those who are watching or listening along, you might be driving, in the toolkit for this episode, we’ll have links, not only to Roland’s book, The Alternative to Abortion, which lays all this out in a great way, and how you can really embrace this with your local church pastors and really, really lean into this. But also, we’ll have links to Care Net, and the other resources, websites, and resources that you have, because you guys at Care Net offer so much to the local church, like you’re saying. We’re not just telling the local church, that’s what I love, we’re not just telling the local church to go do these things, but we put a lot of energy, effort, resources, prayer, and thought into helping local churches do these things. You’re not on your own. Care Net is here to help you do that, right, brother?

Roland Warren
That’s absolutely right. One of the illustrations I use with people often is, if you’ve ever been to a wedding, you’re at a wedding, the bridesmaids are there, the groomsmen are there, the groom’s there, the pastor’s there, the sister’s hitting the keyboard, and the bride’s not there. Sister’s hitting again, pastors again, like the bride ain’t coming down the aisle. You never see a pastor turn to the maid of honor and say, Step in so we can keep this thing moving. There is no wedding without the bride. See, people have been trying to replace the bride. You don’t replace the bride. You assist the bride. If the bride ain’t there, find out why. She ripped her dress or left her shoes in the car. You assist the bride. So, people have been trying to replace the bride. That’s why we have not had the success. Jesus is not coming back for a political party. He’s coming back for the bride. When the bride is leading on this issue, then we’ll have the transformation that we need and the politics and all that stuff. Look, people who say, well, politics are downstream from culture. Great. But culture is downstream from what? Religion. Morals. Right? I think John Adams said that our constitutional system is designed for what? A moral and religious people, and wholly inadequate for any other. What’s he saying? So politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from the church. If we haven’t learned that from the vote that we’ve seen on these referendums, and I don’t know what else to tell you. You lose the pews, you lose the polls, you lose the pastors, you lose the pews. So if you want the polls, you actually gotta get the pastors to get the pews when you’re dealing with a moral issue. So it frames it properly. So the bride, that’s why I said, I’m a groupie. I’m a pastor groupie. My role is to assist the bride in any way, shape I can, and Care Net, as a ministry, our role is to assist the bride in the same way that a paralegal assists the lawyer. The paralegal never owns the client relationship. Women and men facing pregnancy decisions are members of churches that just don’t know it yet. We want to assist the bride. We want to assist the bride, not replace it.

Jason Daye
I love that, brother. I love that. Love your posture there, brother. Again, we will have links to the book. We’ll have links to Care Net, to their ministries, and to the resources in the toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. Real quickly, as we close down, Roland, what words of encouragement would you like to leave with pastors and ministry leaders?

Roland Warren
Yeah, I would just encourage pastors, just don’t believe the hype, the culture, or any of that. And really, I just encourage pastors, we need you to lead. We need you to lead. Because if you don’t, the people perish, and that’s what’s been happening. So, we need you to lead.

Jason Daye
Amen, brother, thank you so much for making time to be at this role, and I appreciate all the work you’re doing at Care Net, brother.

Roland Warren
Thanks very much. Thanks for having me on.

Jason Daye
All right. God bless you.

Jason Daye
Here at Pastor Serve, we hope you’re truly finding value through these episodes of FrontStage BackStage. If so, please consider leaving a review for us on your favorite podcast platform. These reviews help other ministry leaders and pastors just like you find the show, so they can benefit as well. Also, consider sharing this episode with a colleague or other ministry friend. And don’t forget our free toolkit, which is available at PastorServe.org/network. This is Jason Daye, encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well.